Stream

Where's the chorus?

About

I wrote this song back in 2005 for my girlfriend.
Then we broke up.
I modified the lyrics to be about my band.
Then we broke up.
I stopped changing the words after that.

Credits

Released May 7, 2020

Tieg Johnson

Guitar / Banjo / Voice

Tara Louise

Voice

Shelby Lindley

Voice

Yu-Ting Wu

Violin

Chris Rolontz

Double Bass

Gabriel Grinta

Drums

Music and Lyrics : Tieg Johnson

Vocal Arrangers: Shelby, Tieg & Tara

Recording Engineer : Cassidy Turbin
Recording Studio : Willowcrest Recorders - We recorded all the intsruments with Cassidy. Everything was recorded live except for the banjo overdub. It's not really a banjo actually, but an Ovation guitar strung up like a banjo.

Recording Engineer (in this case, a fancy way of saying "guy who plugged in the vocal mic) : Tieg Johnson
Recording studio : Tieg's Living Room - Tieg and Tara's vocals
Recording studio : TXL films - Shelby's vocal

Mixing and Mastering Engineer : Buck Snow

Cover Art Photographer : Poh Wei Chuen on Unsplash.com

Something else? : Tieg probably.

ISRC: QZES62056578

About

Shelby, Tara and I came up with this arrangement back in 2011 during our "Shelby, Tieg & Tara" days. One of the main ideas behind the arrangement is that the melody is constantly being handed off from one singer to the next. We were really into the choral arranger Eric Whitacre at the time. Eric is known for writing harmonies where the notes are often very close together. These are often called "clusters". We called them "Whitacres".

Now, how did I discover those shapes you see? Well it was a total accident and a lot of things had to happen at the same time for me to discover it.

I decided to put our arrangement down in sheet music form. I used my recording software Logic Pro to do this. During this time I was reading a book called "Harmonic Experience" by W.A. Mathieu. The book goes in depth on the topic of tunings.

There are a lot of ways to tune notes in music. The different tunings are called "temperaments". These days we tune to something called "equal temperament" where all 12 notes of the octave are an equal distance apart. But music for most of history was not tuned this way.

The beginning of the book teaches you about "just intonation" where tunings aren't based on mathematically dividing an octave into twelve equal pieces, but rather by creating simple ratios between the frequencies of the notes. For example, if one note is vibrating at 500 times a second and another note at 400 times a second, that would be the ratio 5:4; a pretty simple ratio (and a very "in tune" note). The closest version of those same notes in equal temperament is the totally nonsense ratio of 1.25992:1. In equal temperament, all the ratios except the octave are some totally unusable number so we don't actually talk in ratios when talking about notes in equal temperament. Because of this fact, many people like to say "the piano is technically out of tune". I think that's a harsh (or at least misleading) way to put it. Listen to your favorite songs in just intonation and the majority of people that grew up in Western society will be begging for their "technically out of tune" music again.

In my recording program, there is a way to alter the tunings from the standard equal temperament that the program usually spits out. So I entered the values for just intonation into the program to hear what our arrangement would sound like in the pure tunings of just intonation. (Surprisingly, great!)

I also for some reason had the program playing the notes using sine waves. A sine wave isn't a sound found in nature. It's the simplest sound possible. You know how when you throw a pebble into water, the ripples create ripples? The same is true for sound waves. Sound waves create other sound waves. But a computer can create a pure sound wave without any of those other by-product waves. That's called a sine wave.

Another thing I did was called hard panning. In order for us to hear the individual parts better I put Shelby's notes all the way in the left speaker, my notes straight out the middle (this is accomplished by sending volume equally to both speakers), and Tara's notes out the right speaker.

The last thing I did was open up Logic's goniometer for some reason. This is a tool that helps you see how much stereo information is in your song. If you put an old mono record through it, all you would see is a line. Stereo recordings show up as a puff ball. If you have too much of the music coming out of the right speaker, the puff ball would lean diagonally to the right. These days, properly recorded music just looks like a puff ball. It's almost a useless tool. I guess if you are partially deaf in your right ear and need to use it to verify you didn't put too much music in the right speaker, it could be useful. Otherwise, I don't find the puff ball to be too enlightening.

But something wild happens when you put purely-tuned, hard-panned, simple sine waves into the goniometer. You can see music! No longer is it a puff ball that shows up but beautiful shapes that get simpler or more complex depending on how simple or complex the ratios of the harmonies are. A simple 3:2 ratio gives you a simple fishing net style shape. More complex ratios give you wild solar system planet trajectory type shapes. When we all sing the same note (a 1:1 ratio), you get the simplest shape - a line.

Credits

Released May 8, 2019

Shelby Lindley

Voice

Tieg Johnson

Voice

Tara Louise

Voice

Music by John Stafford Smith, Lyrics by Francis Scott Key

Arranged by Shelby, Tieg & Tara

Vocals recorded at Tieg's apartment

Editing, Mixing, Mastering, Cover Design, Video Editing, Color Correcting etc. by Tieg Johnson. Tieg is color blind by the way so if it looks green, that's why.

Stream

Please click the 'like' button. Bandcamp spells it 'download' for some reason.

About

I originally wrote this song after watching a montage on YouTube of military members coming home from overseas and surprising their loved ones. I felt the song in the background wasn't appropriate so I wrote my own.

The original bridge featured Shelby, Tara and myself making horn sounds with our mouths. It went over great live but when it came to time to record the song, it sounded incredibly stupid. So Shelby and I got together and wrote a new bridge. In songwriting books they teach you that lyrically the bridge is supposed to show another point of view from the rest of the song. I thought we could take that literally and have Shelby sing it by herself from her character's point of view.

I really like the bass line in this song. On a lot of our tunes, I can just set Chris loose since he's the pro and knows what to do. But on this song we worked together and came up with some really nice melodies for him in the verses.

My favorite moment comes at 2:22. I just love the note choices on the flute part. I don't know why I like it so much.

Credits

Released May 8, 2019

Tieg Johnson

Guitar / Voice

Shelby Lindley

Voice

Shannon Canchola

Flute / Voice

Yu-Ting Wu

Violin

Chris Rolontz

Double Bass

Gabriel Grinta

Drums

Written by Tieg Johnson & Shelby Lindley

Arranged by Shelby & Tieg from an earlier arrangement by Shelby, Tieg & Tara

Vocals recorded at TXL Films and engineered by Tieg Johnson
Instruments recorded at Willowcrest Recorders and engineered by Cassidy Turbin

Cover Photo by Daniel McCullough on Unsplash.com

Editing, Mixing, Mastering, Cover Design and anything else not listed is Tieg's fault.

ISRC: QZES71973311

Stream

Is that a download button?! Touch it. Just once. It'll be fun.

About

"Lovelight" is our 3rd single. Buzz-Music interviewed me when the song was released. Here's what I told them about it:

The general theme of “Lovelight" is just telling someone that they are strong enough to live their own life and to go do that. I have a friend who listened to the demo of this song a lot around the time his mom passed away. When she was alive but sick he was struggling with wanting to spend as much time at home as possible but she was insisting that he go attend a prestigious music school that he got accepted to. I never actually asked why he liked the song so much, but I imagine he pulled a similar message that his mom was giving to him at the time out of the song. He did decide to go to school and I know his mom was very proud of him for doing well with that.

Tara on the other hand described it as "Tieg friend-zoning someone for 3.5 minutes"...This is also an accurate interpretation.

Credits

Released September 26, 2018

Tieg Johnson

Guitar / Voice

Yu-Ting Wu

Violins

Shannon Canchola

Flutes

Chris Rolontz

Double Bass

Gabriel Grinta

Drums

Shelby Lindley

Voice

Written by Tieg Johnson

Arranged by Shelby & Tieg from an earlier arrangement by Shelby, Tieg & Tara

Vocals recorded at TXL Films and engineered by Tieg Johnson
Instruments recorded at Willowcrest Recorders and engineered by Cassidy Turbin

Editing, Mixing, Mastering, Cover Art and anything else not listed is Tieg's fault.

ISRC: QM2PV1801384

Stream

What was that? You like the song and want to express that by helping me with my groceries this week? You're so kind. Just hit that download link and you can have it for any price you want. You can help me buy an orange or (if you really like it) a food more expensive than an orange!

About

“The Cliffs Of Moher” is a song I wrote when I was first thinking about starting my new music project TIEG. I was still involved in another music project called Shelby & Tieg at the time but it was clear the ending was near despite my desire to hang on.

I remembered hearing about natural wonders of the world like The Cliffs Of Moher and learning that they are created by the very forces that will one day make them disappear completely. The idea that “what breaks us makes us” is a fascinating idea to me and coming at my problem from that angle made me feel better about letting go and starting this new chapter. After all, Shelby & Tieg wouldn’t have happened had the band before that not broken up, and the band before that, and so on (I’ve been in a lot of bands).

In short, this song is about finding the silver linings in the various endings of life and a celebration of new beginnings.

"The Cliffs Of Moher" was our 2nd release and the song officially launched TIEG as my primary musical outlet. This song is about Shelby and I going our separate ways so, naturally, she became one of the members of TIEG.

Credits

released June 20, 2018

Tieg Johnson

Guitar / Voice

Yu-Ting Wu

Violins

Shannon Canchola

Flute

Seana Thompson

Cello

Chris Rolontz

Double Bass

Gabriel Grinta

Bodhrán

Robbie McCarthy

Oboe / English Horn / Irish Concertina

Written, arranged, recorded, edited, mixed and mastered by Tieg Johnson, so if you hate most any aspect of this, blame him.

Recorded at TXL Films

ISRC: QZDA51802191

Stream

This song got released first before the band was really a thing, and therefore will probably always be the least popular even though it's probably my favorite. Help it not feel sad by clicking that download link and showing it what it's worth.

About

"What I Used To Know" is the first song TIEG released. I have a fear of losing my memory in old age. I thought it could make for a good song topic. It ended up being "The Notebook" in song form. That's a really good movie, so I left it as is.

Credits

released July 26, 2017

Tieg Johnson

Guitar / Voice

Yu-Ting Wu

Violins

Shannon Canchola

Flutes

Seana Thompson

Cellos

Chris Rolontz

Double Bass

Robbie McCarthy

Oboe

Written, arranged, recorded, edited, mixed and mastered by Tieg Johnson, so if you hate most any aspect of this, blame him.

Recorded at TXL Films

ISRC: QZDA41847288