Perpetual Mark is a song created with parts written at different times in my life. The arpeggiated clean part played on the acoustic guitar at the end of the song was written sometime back in 94. When I revisited that part in 2013, I thought of turning its melody into something I could play on the electric guitar, and that’s what we hear in the song intro.

The heavy slow part in the first section of the song was written back in 2008, and it gives the idea of what I was feeling at the time; I was depressed, hence the lyrics in that part ("how I wish mistakes could be undone…"). My life was dragging, and that riff gives me that feel.

The part that follows was written on that same day. It is a little faster paced, and I played it on the guitar feeling like "I have to keep going!". The lyrics were written four years later matched the original intention: "if we are to follow what we feel, who’s to blame us?...".

The chorus and remaining parts of the song were written in 2013, when I finally sat down to arrange the song. The parts were built on top of the main chord progression written for the "slow heavy" section; I worked so I’d have a section for a "calmer" guitar solo, then a chorus, into which I’ve added a simple guitar lick on top of it, and then I sped up the part, turned the guitar lick into a keyboard lick, and then added a faster guitar solo.

Some friends heard the song and said that the slow section sounded somewhat like Candlemass; I certainly like the reference, even though I wasn’t thinking about it during writing. I can’t really thinking of having any specific musical influence when I was writing this song on the guitar.

As I started playing drums to a backing track, I guess I wanted the slow heavy part on the first section to have simple heavy drums, maybe reminiscent of some of the work Bill Ward did on Black Sabbath. For the other sections, I just tried to throw in some simple double-bass patterns, fitting what I could play at the time.

The bass lines were written to follow the main guitar lines. One of these days, I need to work on improving my bass playing!

Once the arrangement for the song was done, I figured I wanted two guitar solos: one on a slow part and one of a fast part. Following the way I normally write solos, I jammed to the backing track until I had some lines that stuck around. At some point, I was consistently playing some lines over and over, and had a general direction I wanted for the other pieces, so it was time to record it!

When recording, I did not want to go through the same hassle I did with Looking For You (having to relearn the recorded solo, which I had mostly improvised, then shoot the video, and finally syncing it up with the recording). This time around, I shot the video as I was recording, which I did in three takes: one take for each solo section.

I'm happy with how the leads came out: it has some catchy lines, and a good melody that closes both lead sections.

The lyrics were all written in 2013, shortly after the arrangement for the song was done, and they encompass both what I was feeling when I wrote parts of the song in 2008, as well as when I wrote the remaining parts in 2013.

The recurring idea that I can’t undo mistakes always comes to my mind, along with the sometimes dreaded feeling that those mistakes will follow me for life. Fortunately, there are also good things that’ll come along and stick around. As I go about learning from my own experiences, I’m always trying hard to filter what I bring back from the past, often whether I should I get the blame for doing things I believe to be right.

I had some lyrics by the time I started writing vocals for this song, but not enough for the whole thing. For the parts I had lyrics for, I just tried to find melodies for the words I had, whereas for the parts I didn’t have anything I just mumbled sounds until I found the melodies, and then I tried to find the words that fit the melody in a way that also made sense with the overall meaning of the song.

For the record, when I’m working on writing vocals for a song, I listen to the backing track a lot as I drive, and then I start to sing incomprehensible words, looking for the right sounds. That’s got sound weird/funny to the people I drive by. By the way, the video for this song shows some scenes of me singing as I drive around.

Most keyboard parts were put in place in order to add some atmosphere to the slower sections of the song. When the song changes to a faster beat, I was planning on keeping the guitar lick that’s played throughout the choruses, but decided to beef up the lick by playing it on the keyboard as well, and thought that worked much better.

Things, experiences, people… they come into our life and put a permanent mark on it. Wrongs and rights that make what we are. How great would it be If we could selectively erase some of those from our lives, keeping around only what makes us feel good?

As I mentioned before, when I was writing the heavy slow sections of the song, I was feeling depressed, sad about how my life was at that point, back in 2008. When writing the remaining parts, my life had gotten sort of back on track, and I think that comes through in how they all sound.

In the first half of the song, one can hear some spoken words in what may sound like an odd language to you; that is my wife repeating the words I’m singing, but in Portuguese (that can also be seen in the video).

The video starts off with a photo from a Beach. I took that photo when I was in Barra Grande, Bahia (Brazil) back in December, 2011. Sitting at that place for a couple of days has helped me clear up my thoughts and figure out what I needed to do with my life.

The video then goes on with me playing through the song, recording all the different parts. Occasionally we see some more footage of my personal videos; suffice it to say that each one of those pieces have a special meaning for me.

There are also some shots that show me driving around and singing. Like I said before, that’s usually how most of my vocal lines are create.

A final note about the video: did you notice the pop filter facing the wrong way? That has happened only when I was shooting the video: it was positioned properly when I actually recorded vocals. :)

Roland VDrum

iRig Keyboard

Living ghosts that will haunt us for life

Can we choose what we bring back?