Second Sound

Album: Second Sound (2014)
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Songfacts®:

  • "Second Sound" closes Druckfarben's sophomore album and is their first ever long-form song, clocking in at just under 19 minutes.

    The group's songwriter and guitarist, Ed Bernard, told us that the progressive rock band always desired to write a suite. "We wanted to do it on the first record but we didn't really have the legs to get it happening," he said.

    Bernard revealed the recipe to writing such a lengthy song: "We just basically took a bunch of different sections - and I shouldn't be giving away the secret – but we had three existing songs and then a bunch of different little pieces. I took different chord sections and different melody ideas and wove it all together."
  • This was a collaborative writing process for the group as their keyboard player, Will Hare, came up with the first and second-to-last sections of the song. Lead singer, Phil Naro, brought the third part of tune, which inspired Bernard to write the fiddle part. "It gave me the opportunity to do a lot of the Cape Breton bowing articulations that I love. It's also not something that's typical in this genre of music so hopefully it's something that's unexpected, and I'm always happy to increase the violin presence in the band," explained Bernard.
  • Ed Bernard is an ancient text lover, and "Second Sound" was inspired by Gnostic writings. Bernard was greatly influenced by Michael Heiser, who has a PhD in ancient literature. Heiser gives a four-hour long lecture on all the Gnostic writings and their cosmology, so Bernard tried to include that in the song. "I couldn't really make it like you're reading a dissertation on it," he said. "We're not writing book reports here, so it has to fit along the melody lines. Basically, it ends up being loosely based on the Gnostic idea and that's their whole story."

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