“Hide Me In The Shadow Of Your Wings” Creation Notes

Part II: Music Deep Dive On The Song, "Hide Me In The Shadow Of Your Wings"

This is the second song my brother (David) and I (Daniel) worked on immediately after finishing “Death Is At Work In Us.” The main reason we chose to work on this song next was that much of it was already tabbed out. We recorded three separate videos, all on June 26, 2019, which is now over six years ago.

Before getting to the guitar riffs, I want to mention the drum intro with the vocal segue into the very first riff of the song. I feel like I recorded both the drums and the vocals several dozen times at this small juncture. The drums weren’t necessarily difficult to record, but coming up with something was the more frustrating part. I tried to come up with something that wasn’t done a million times over, but it proved to be much more challenging than I realized, given how little time I had to record something. Since the phrase was so short itself, it left very little room to do something vastly different. So, I came up with something quick, straightforward, and easily reproducible, and that was that. I knew before we ever started recording vocals for this song that it was going to be a pain solely because of the very first line. Once the vocal recording started, my initial thoughts on this one short part were confirmed: it was difficult to record the vocals for this one small part. You never realize the gravity of how slight changes in enunciation, breath control, and sibilance can affect and influence a vocal recording until you are deep in the throes of doing so. The timing was also a struggle because I wanted the last word of the first line of the song’s lyrics to line up perfectly with the very first hit of the guitar and drums, and it proved to be more difficult than I had thought it would be. Eventually, we got it, but recording vocals for that one small part was more difficult to get right than the rest of the whole song put together. Next, I’ll move on to the riffs of the songs. Here is the first of a few videos for the song’s riffs.

As you can see, the first video shows the chorus that has no vocals, which is the first riff you hear when you start listening to the song. To be completely honest and transparent, I have no memory whatsoever of how we came up with that riff. I think it may have been my brother noodling around with chord progressions, and me saying, “Repeat that and let me get my phone out so I can record it.” That has been a common way we gather our musical ideas. If we see or hear a chord progression or specific rhythm, whether in our heads or actualized in the real world, out come the phones. In the video, you can hear me improvising some gibberish lyrics with a fry vocal sound that is typical in black metal music. I thought it sounded cool at the time, but while recording the song, I realized that if we ever played any of these songs live, performing the drums and vocals at the same time for this repeating part would be very difficult. So, since I didn’t want to put myself through that pain should that situation ever arise, I decided to keep the chorus without vocals, and it stayed that way.

The second video shows the verse riff that occurs a couple of times in the song. Again, I have no idea how we came up with that part, but it somehow worked. At the time, I wasn’t sure these parts seemed to go together, since they were both pretty different from each other. But I decided to record the riff anyway for posterity. It just seemed like a straightforward and heavy riff that we might use eventually. Here's something I forgot to mention: as noted earlier, this riff was recorded in 2019. Every Thought Captive, as a band, didn’t officially form until 2021. This means that there are several music ideas that existed well before the band ever formed. If I remember correctly, I had been floating around the idea for Every Thought Captive since 2015 (the same year I chose the band name, by the way), but it wasn’t realized then since school for my brother and me during that time was extremely busy and Omnilarity (my old band) was still active at the time. I even had the idea for the title of the song for years as well.

Here's a video of the pre-chorus riff (which in some respects acts like the actual chorus in the song) that I have no idea how we came up with. Again, I believe my brother was playing guitar, and it came up organically. This was the only riff on the song that was written during the writing process in December 2023. Looking back, I’m a little surprised we combined all these riff ideas into one song because this song was the only one on the album that was sort of pieced together, which isn’t a bad thing; it’s more an observation on my part. These three parts make up the entirety of the song. I remember my brother playing the opening riff with a clean tone, and it sounded so good, I had to make it the bridge section. I wanted the bridge to come off soothing and chill the whole way through. After we recorded that part, I felt it was missing something, and that is when I decided to record a piano solo for it. I was hesitant to do so at first because I didn’t know how it would be received, but ultimately, I just trusted the creative process and decided to compose and record it anyway. The solo took me maybe a couple of hours to compose and record properly. The piano solo is the only part musically that plays in a different time signature for a bit. The entirety of the song is in 4/4, but there are a couple of parts where the piano is essentially playing in 5/8, but it comes back in on 4/4 after a little bit.

This song doesn’t have as robust a history as “Death Is At Work In Us,” but it is one of only three songs on the album that had parts for it before the band formed. In some ways, it could even be considered the very first song idea for Every Thought Captive. Recording the drums, guitars, bass, and piano for this song in particular was simple overall. It is perhaps one of the most simplistic songs on the album, but I enjoy it for that very reason. There are enough songs on this release that have complicated parts and odd groupings and phrases, so having at least a couple of songs on the album that aren’t like that is nice. Overall, I enjoy this song dearly, and I’m glad others have as well.