Track 01

Prelude South: Living in Dadeland

Video coming soon · check back for the official track video

Its Place in the Story

Dadeland Boulevard · next signal

For the uninitiated, Dadeland is a hectic area of Miami marked by strip malls, intersecting roads, shopping centers, apartment complexes, and traffic congestion.

“Prelude South: Living in Dadeland” opens the album and begins our story. It’s written from her point of view—imagining what life might have felt like after moving to Dadeland following a long marriage, surrounded by traffic, strip malls, and bad advice: a new way of living “half a life away from where you want to be,” the call of rapid change echoed by the sound the of onrushing traffic.

Lounging in the sun in Coconut Grove marina, ready to pounce with glad tidings.

Some well-intentioned actually helpful advice

bad advice, helpfully provided

As much a location as a state of mind.

As much a state of mind as a location.

A Few Words

I’m fascinated by the songwriting process and love talking and reading about it. I typically write in one of two ways.

Sometimes, with the guitar on my lap, I’ll start strumming until I happen upon an interesting chord progression or strumming pattern. When I find one, I’ll try to find a melody by singing over it, with a recorder handy just in case. The words are often nonsense at first; I’m just trying to find the melody and see what I can build from there. After all, the song “Yesterday” started out as “scrambled eggs.’

Just as often, melodies and phrases pop into my head already tied together—whether I’m in the shower, walking down the street, or driving. It wouldn’t be unusual to see me walking along singing into the watch on my wrist.

That’s how this song began. I wrote it while driving through the Dadeland area in Miami—past the mall, the traffic, and the apartment complexes tucked in between. I found myself wondering what life might feel like there for someone starting over in a new place.

As I drove, the melody and the words “There you are, living in Dadeland, half a life away from where you want to be” just popped into my head. I quickly sang the snippet into my Apple Watch and went home to write the song.

Written from someone else’s point of view, the projections, of course, are my own.

0.7 miles to Dadeland Mall · the place where the melody arrived.

About the Videos

When I decided to create a full website for Living in Dadeland, sort of an interactive album cover replete with lyrics and liner notes, the idea of having a lyric video for each song appealed to me as another way for the listener to experience the songs.

At first, I planned on using someone I found on Fiverr who churned out decent lyric videos at a low cost, but I found myself constantly questioning the visual choices they made. So, I decided to make them myself. (I wish this late in life DIY approach extended to home improvement.)

I did not invest a lot of money, or the time in learning, a professional video editing suite, opting instead for some basic video editing tools. In this slightly more relaxed approach I found a certain freedom to experiment and just have fun with an entirely new medium. That’s the spirit in which I made the videos. I’m not a filmmaker, and I’m certainly still learning the tools, but I’ve enjoyed the process–time consuming as it is. I think of the videos as visual companions to the songs — with a touch of humor even in the darkest moments.

The Vault

Demos · Alternate Takes · Behind the Curtain

Early on, as I was exploring Logic Pro, Apple’s virtual music studio, I discovered how you could turn a simple violin chord into a complex layer of arpeggiated violins just by pushing a button. These vibrant violin flourishes sprang to life—candy to my ears.

As you can hear, early versions of the track were festooned with them. I loved how they moved in and out, back and forth, especially toward the end of the song. Alas, I could never quite get them to sit properly in the mix.

Eventually, I hired a real violinist, Peter Voronov, to play some of these licks. I later doubled them on piano and, in places, acoustic guitar to arrive at the final version of the track.

Still, there remains something kinetically charged about that early version, including the carnival-ride synthesizer intro.

Early Demo

The Logic Pro arpeggiated-violin version before Peter Voronov came in. Listen for the synth intro and the violins dancing in and out toward the end.

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