All for Nothing

Robert James

If ever there was a song that begged to close an album, it was this turkey.

A couple of things here. First, I don’t really know what I was going for. Quiet, slow, boring? Probably not boring, but there you go. The cool thing happens in the last 8-12 bars or so. First, last month I finally noticed the little reverse playback function in GarageBand audio tracks. Have I been over using it since then? Yeah, a little, but this is different.

The whole song has two rhythm guitars, one panned hard left and one panned hard right. Under the solo that closes things out, I took those two tracks and reversed them. Just for the eight bar phrase. I then added a third guitar track where I played along with the backwards tracks. It was tricky to do because everything fell on the wrong beats and it got confusing quickly. Fortunately, the part I had playing backward was insanely easy so it wasn’t too bad to figure out.

Once I had a track where the changes lined up with my reversed tracks, I re-reversed the two guitar tracks so that they played forward again, and then I reversed the third track and blamm-o, you have a groovy effect. I then panned that backwards track back and forth for the whole eight bars, and added an extra little bit at the end where I played one Eminor chord that rung out for a couple of bars and then reversed that too.

The guitars are all Les Paul, the amps are all Bassbreaker 15. The rhythm parts used a RYRA The Klone. The lead used a Phase 90, a KTR, and a Hall of Fame mini.

Chorus
Its all for nothing
Its all for nothing
Its all for nothing
it feels bad
it feels wrong
Its all for nothing

Verse 1
reassure me
Not too sure
so osbcure this
given
one chance
close the door

Verse 2
picture me here
do you see
you could be there
rephrase
always
living free