Notes on Goodbye My Friend

Writing and production history

This song was written in May, 2019 as a farewell to Tom Hedges who died in November of 2007. I worked with him for 30 years and we became business partners at Fractal Design, where we created Painter, ImageStudio, ColorStudio, and other great products. The song is all guitars, bass, and drums (aside from vocals). Tom was a Beatles fan, and he liked John Lennon. Lennon mainly respected rock songs that used the traditional rock instruments, so that's why I arranged the song this way. I also altered my voice like Lennon, who always wanted something different. The song chronicles many memories, and tries hard to show how much he influenced me.

It starts with a chorus, with the drum setting the tempo and an iconic guitar riff, subtly fuzzed. In the background are some descending chromatic vocals. Slow arpeggiations on a clean guitar trace out the harmony in a wistful way while the drum fills get your attention.

The first verse sets the scene. He was, at first, my mentor, but eventually I took over as lead coder. Apps took over in importance and salability. The B-section of the first verse chronicles our relationship - we fought over lots of things but always somehow remembered to be friends the next day.

The second verse talks about how we were the progenitors of our software Apps. But we didn’t write them all — others helped write them like John Derry (UI and brushes), Bob Lansdon (watercolors), Priscilla Shih (general coding), Shelby Moore (PC version, multi-point color fills), Glenn Reid (R&D Management), Christina Hall (general coding), Vahe Avedissian (general coding), Scott Cooper (general coding), Erik Johnson (general coding), and our Ray Dream friends, Damien Saint-Macary (web features), François Huet (web features), and Nicholas Barry (Web features). These were the people that actually touched the code (and there were a few more I can’t recall). These were “our loyal crew”. And they were awesome!

But our loyal crew also consisted of a few more people who were instrumental to the development of the complex software base. For instance, Michael Cinque, who headed QA and Steve Rathmann, an early hire that always adapted to the task.

In the B-section of the second verse, the tale of difficulties competing against the software giant Adobe gets told. We fought the Painter fight ten years. All through the time, Tom’s health got worse and worse. He was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1989, went into remission, had it flare up in 1995, and went into remission again. However, his radiation therapy treatments ended up creating a spreading neuropathy that started with his hands, and eventually affected his lower arms, and then his whole arms (by 2005) and finally his lungs.

We believe what caused this was his brief tenure as KSJO’s chief engineer. He spent a lot of time in the Optimod room up near the peak of Mt. Hamilton, where their radio antennas and microwave transmitters resided. I went in there once (but only once). You could literally feel the radiation.

KSJO's Antenna Tower - Next to the Optimod shack

He also had a spectacular lack of good luck with the women in his life. And I’ll say no more about that (for now).

Reprise references

The reprise from this song contains a dozen references to arcana from Tom’s life and the time we shared. Here, I’ll pick it apart, line by line.

Remember the days in Boston town

Tom and I were Fractal Software, a partnership, in 1986-1989, with Letraset as our marketers. We often traveled to Boston for the MacWorld East show, to show our product. Letraset had demo artists and a medium-sized booth. Later on, Fractal Design, the company that Tom and I had a hand in founding (along with Steve Manousos, Lee Lorenzen, and Steve Thomas), had a much larger booth presence. Tom and I would arrive in August in Boston, set up shop in a nice hotel, hit the bar, and wait for the other people showing products to arrive. It became a growth period for both of us.

Remember the day we lost our friend

Bob Lansdon was our odd friend from academia. He was constantly in search of a PhD in math. There was no doubt he was smart. Bob introduced me to Fourier transforms, and taught me how to vary the phase of the frequency signal, an incredibly useful trick. He and I dreamt of laser interferometry for measuring paper surface texture. Bob wrote the first watercolor capability in Painter. One day in 1994, Bob came into Fractal Design the office on Spreckels Drive in Aptos, and into the suite where Tom, John Derry, and I had our desks, and we talked for a bit. He had completed his PhD, finally after all these years (his thesis advisor was Ralph Abraham). We were a busy group and he left. A few days later we learned of his suicide. When I announced it to the new at Fractal, that was one of the few times I actually cried in front of the company I ran.

Remember how Water Tank went down

In the early 1990s, Tom was married to Joanne Etheridge (née Stoner) and they became a couple. They had two kids, Colin and Broghan. By the late 1990s, the relationship between Tom and Joanne was strained for a reason I never knew. It might have been Tom’s personality, which was a wee bit crude for many people’s taste. I don’t know. But there was a point where Joanne hired her parents, both real estate agents, to get them a second home. They bought a house on Water Tank Road in La Selva. To me as an observer, I felt that their strained relations, compounded with the fact that Joanne was literally creating a bachelor pad for Tom, meant that they were headed for divorce. But somehow Tom never saw it.

Remember the goldfish bowl and then

WhenI first met Tom Hedges at Calma Company in 1974, he was an RA at Stanford with his first wife, Rabbit (I never learned her name). So he came in late because those were his remaining working hours. I had been hired at Calma (at 4 bucks an hour, by Art Collmeyer) as an applications programmer for a new APL-based language (called GPL) that Carl Smith was creating. I needed a real workstation to do the work I was doing (which usually involved not doing what I was supposed to do). I was working on a demo of a rotating dodecahedron with hidden lines suppressed that ran on a Tektronix storage scope. One night Tom and Bruce Holloway, high as a kite, entered the demo area at Calma, which was surrounded by glass, and hence its name “the goldfish bowl”. They hopped on to the wheeled chairs and scooted themselves across the demo space, very close to me, and said “boo!”. I barely looked up from my code, which irked them a tiny bit. But they just kept abusing the 5-wheeled chairs, skating to and fro. It was a funny time for me, to be sure.

Remember the wall-sized plots we made

Tom introduced me to Bob Lansdon as a one time co-resident of Ruddock house in their days at Caltech. I myself was a Page house resident, but a few years later on. Bob was a shy nerd who rarely spoke. But he knew his math. At Calma one night, with access to a brand new Versatec raster printer, with four-foot-wide rolls of paper, they decided to make a plot. Tom suggested that the plot be of a nice mathematical function. Bob suggested a Fourier transform of a set of points on the unit circle (I think it was 9-point). A gigantic plot was produced and it hung on the walls for a time. I've recreated the plot here.

The end of your set you played that song

Tom worked for KZSU, the Stanford radio station as a DJ for a while in the 1970s. He divorced his first wife Rabbit (she was unfaithful to him I heard) and married Carolyn Foster. At the end of his DJ set at KZSU, Tom always played a song “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond as a tribute to her.

Remember how partner’s draw was great

Tom and I were partners in Fractal Software from 1985 to 1990. When we got Letraset as a marketer was when we met Marla Milne, a product manager from Soho in New York. She spotted my demo of Gray Paint at a party thrown by Marc Canter. Once we built our first image editing App, ImageStudio, the royalty checks started coming in once a quarter. When they arrived, we deposited the check and then each drew out half of the check in “partner’s draw”. We bought houses on those checks and bought our first BMWs.

Remember how Cheshire cowed your dog

Tom and Caroline had a large German Shepherd mix, Pokey. It was a huge dog. One day they came to visit me and Ruth Zimmer (née Rasmussen), my second wife at our house in Evergreen. Ruth’s old black cat was named Cheshire and it was, let’s say, a bit strong-willed. Once Pokey came through the door, Cheshire pounced! Cheshire, with one tenth the body mass of Pokey, soon had Pokey literally cowering in the corner by the door. Poor dog!

Remember the Gershwin rhapsody

Tom’s dad, who had passed by the time we became partners in Fractal Software, was an avid pianist. He often played the Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue. When Tom and I met Ed Bogas (Steve Capps introduced us, I think) and his crew of musicians and programmers in the mid-1980s (including Neil Cormia and Ty Roberts), we both got interested in the possibilities of music and computers. We were tasked to sample a piano, so we did exactly that and produced an 88-key set of sound samples. I had created a program that could play MIDI format, triggering sound samples, and mimicking the sustain pedal and Tom laboriously keyed in the Gershwin Rhapsody so we could play it back. He also keyed in Wasted on the Way by Crosby, Stills, and Nash. With the Rhapsody, I think Tom was literally constructing a tribute to his Dad.

Remember when Painter saved the day

Tom and I had both profited from ImageStudio and ColorStudio, both Letraset-branded products, because we received royalties from their international sales. One day in 1990, we got a call from Letraset’s General Manager Jack Forbes who told us they were getting out of the software business in North America. I had been working on Painter for 11 months at my home (in secret). I chose that day to introduce it to Tom. He and I both thought it had definite possibilities, so we contacted some friends and started Fractal Design.

Remember the exit strategy

Tom, John, and I worked on Painter for nearly ten years. The board of directors had hired me back as CEO (of MetaCreations) and ordered me to sell off the software. Which I proceeded to do. It was an unpleasant time for me. But as it happened, we sold Painter and associated products to Corel and set up a consulting gig with them for the three of us. That was our exit strategy. It wasn’t planned.

Remember neuropathy’s dismay

All through our time when Fractal Design was in Scotts Valley, Tom Hedges began experiencing neuropathy in his hands. This was a result of his radiation therapy in 1898 for Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, an aggressive cancer. Unfortunately his radiation therapy had to be concentrated on his lymph nodes in his neck. At first he had problems typing. Now, Tom was always a two-finger typist to begin with. Eventually it cost him his productivity. Later on, it cost him the use of his arms.

Remember the picture Marla made

In 1985, we built ImageStudio, to be distributed by Letraset. Marla Milne was our product manager. Tom had a picture of his family. Tom also had a chipped tooth. Marla, as a joke, scanned that image and applied Tom’s chipped tooth to all his other family members. When I saw it, I had a laugh for about an hour. What a crazy, disrespectful idea. After I had my laugh, I said “Bummer, man” to Tom and resumed my coding. It was a thing we did. The funny thing was that Tom had that chipped tooth fixed within a week.

Remember the sadness near the end

On Tom’s 57th birthday. He had a small gathering in his local pub, CB Hannigan’s. Tom’s arms hung limp at his sides because of his neuropathy. He and I spoke for fifteen minutes or so. His situation was not good since his lungs’ function was finally being impaired by his neuropathy. I listened to his situation and gave my final “Bummer, man” to him. He smiled (the only time that day I saw a smile from Tom) and we drank our beers. Mine was from a mug. His was from a tall glass with a long straw. It was a sad moment.

Remember the time you were betrayed

Really it was the “times” he was betrayed. But this line is referring to his months-long relationship with a woman known as “Yolanda”. She wasn’t straight with him. He took her to Tahiti on one vacation I remember, and lavished her with jewels and such. But as It turned out, she had never left her relationship with her previous boyfriend and actually brought him with them on the pretext of scuba training (for her). Later, when he wised up, he had a detective discover that she was still seeing him, with pictures and all. And that was it.

Remember I’ll always be your friend

Goodbye old friend.

Lyrics

Goodbye My Friend

Goodbye my friend

I said goodbye my friend

Though your time is gone

I look back upon

All those years we spent together

Working on and on

You were outta sight

And you taught me right

When you handed me the reins

I drove on through the night

Day by day

We learned to get along

Along the way

We remained strong

We both wrote the song

Others sang along

You know, even when the earth moved

We kept on keepin’ on

We worked to create

And our stuff was great

Yes our loyal crew was awesome

When they stepped up to the plate

Year by year

We fought the hardest fights

Have no fear

Soon comes the night

Goodbye my friend

Goodbye my friend

Goodbye my friend

I said goodbye my friend

Too much time in the radio station

Took its toll out on you

And even so it never made you blue

Too much trust in the ladies that found you

Left a few scars on you

Too bad that none of them could be true

Goodbye my friend

Goodbye my friend

Goodbye my friend

I said goodbye my friend

(Reprise)

Remember the days in Boston town

Remember the day we lost our friend

Remember how Water Tank went down

Remember the goldfish bowl and then

Remember the wall-sized plots we made

The end of your set you played that song

Remember how partner’s draw was great

Remember how Cheshire cowed your dog

Remember the Gershwin rhapsody

Remember when Painter saved the day

Remember the exit strategy

Remember neuropathy’s dismay

Remember the picture Marla made

Remember the sadness near the end

Remember the time you were betrayed

Remember I’ll always be your friend

Writing Songs

Creativity serves us well, as a source of ideas. Sometimes it comes from the cross-pollenation of ideas between disciplines. Sometimes it seemingly comes from the blue when our minds work when we are asleep or when we are idle, mentally. And sometimes creativity is a visceral thing, springing forth from situations of trauma or intense joy, as our souls try to heal themselves or simply work to process what they have gone through.

This last source is so often the one that makes us sing.

When I get overwhelmed or troubled, I usually turn to the piano to work out my angst. And heaven help me if I don't have something to record it. I have captured these improvisations from time to time, and some days there are two or three.

I like to write songs, because I'm somebody who feels things. They are a great outlet. You can find some of my songs on Soundcloud. Check out Not Enough Time for instance.

Starting Songs

How do I write songs? I start three ways. The first way, I have something to say. If it needs to get out, melody and words will occur to me simultaneously. The second way, I think up a melody and I then need to put words to it. The third way, I write a song instrumentally, and I record it and play it back, writing words and framing phrases as I sing to it. But these three methods are only how it all starts.

Once it's started, then it needs to be completed.

Songs are typically made up of sections. You probably know these: verse, refrain, bridge, intro, outro, hook, etc.

Verse

Verses are the body of the song, where most of the matter of a song occurs. But what's in a verse?

A song can tell a story. Then the verses do the telling, scene by scene. A good example of this is Rocky Raccoon, by the Beatles. No doubt that's what is going on in that song!

A verse can tell a point of view; a later verse can alter that point of view. One verse can have my point of view, and the second can have your point of view. A third verse can apply to a group.

Verses can be similar in form and structure. For instance, Joni Mitchell's Clouds has three verses with similar structure. The first is about clouds, the second is about life, the third is about love. This is a common pattern, because, as listeners, we want to see where the songwriter is going with it. The similarity forms a comfort zone, a familiarity that helps us absorb each verse. Also, a principle of songwriting is: if you repeat something, do something different with it. So, for instance, you might bring in the drums and the bass on the second verse, for example. This is called buildup.

Sometimes having a similar structure can simply mean repeating the same words at the beginning of the verse (like Dear Prudence).

There is plenty of creativity in verses.

Verse patterns can also be interesting. Countless songs have two verses of vocals and the third verse is taken up by the solo. Then, the fourth verse often returns to vocals.

Refrain

Usually a hit song will have a refrain, or chorus. A refrain is most commonly a headline phrase, like Here Comes the Sun. A songwriter will save the most catchy melody or chord change for the refrain. It is generally the most memorable part of the song, and this is by design.

Sometimes the refrain is a round, or a four or eight bar phrase that gets repeated. Think Hey Jude. Even when the refrain is not a round, it can get repeated, so be prepared to rework the end of the refrain for the purpose of dovetailing with the beginning of the next repeat.

Usually you won't repeat the refrain the first time you introduce it. Repeats of the refrain are simply more common at the end of the song, because you want to leave the listener with the best and most catchy part in their mind when the song is done.

Bridge

The bridge, or middle eight, can link the verse to the refrain, or just be a nice contrast with the repetitive nature of the song. Sometimes the bridge is the jewel of the song. In my song Tagman, the bridge is a flash of virtuosity.

Often, in the bridge, I modulate to another key, for instance the relative minor. Then the trick is to modulate back into the main key of the song.

I like the texture of the bridge to be different from the rest of the song. This can mean a different rhythm (say, triplets), a more edgy drum beat, or even a totally different treatment like a classical version or a blues version.

Intro

The intro of the song is the part that gets the listener's attention. This is usually something novel. In Wish U Were Here, Pink Floyd begins their song with an AM radio-compressed guitar solo that another guitar, seemingly more live, begins to jam with. Now that's novel.

Some songs don't have an intro, like Ruby Tuesday, by the Rolling Stones. It just begins with the first verse directly. Other songs use the hook as their intro, which is quite common. Think Day Tripper, Satisfaction, and I Want To Tell You.

One particularly useful kind of intro is the rhythm intro, where the drums begin the rhythm of the song and it gets amplified with each repeat. Here, songs like Steve Winwood's Higher Love and Rob Thomas' Her Diamonds are good examples.

Some songs have two intros, like Queen's Somebody To Love. You get an a cappella section followed by a short piano intro.

Outro

Many songs use a modified intro as their outro. This provides a sense of closure, and is often poetic.

I think an outro is essential, because I tire of songs that just repeat a round at the end. Well, Hey Jude did it and others followed ad nauseam. But it seems like the sign of a song that isn't finished, when it just fades out at the end. But even epic, classic songs like Procol Harum's Whiter Shade of Pale do this.

The traditional musical term for outro is actually coda.

Hook

A hook is a riff that catches the ear directly because it has a novel rhythm and melody. Rock music is so full of good hooks. The opening bars of Tom Petty's Mary Jane's Last Dance certainly suffice as a simple example: a guitar riff that helps to build the rhythm of the song while catching the ear. The Beatles' Day Tripper also has the quintessential prime example.

But a hook must be integral with the song. If it is stand-alone then the song can seem manufactured, or formula.

I traditional music, the hook is often called the motiv.

An Example

Here I will take apart one of my songs. It's a bit like the reverse of what I did to put it together, and it's also a bit like how I put it together in the first place. But you can take apart any song, really. I think it makes me a little odd: instead of listening to a song in an unbiased way, I take it apart. "Oh, listen to that bridge!" "Wow - third verse a cappella, very interesting!" That sort of stuff. I probably drive people crazy with this.

The song Not Enough Time shows I have some organization when I write my songs. To the right you see page 1 of the lyric sheet. These were not just written the way you see them here. They were changed, listened to, endlessly edited, tried out, and rearranged.

First, I usually just get a verse idea in my head. Then it's just a problem of making sure its a good lead-in verse. For this one, the really big problem was getting the second two lines of the first verse right.

Then one day, it just occurred to me that dictionary could be pronounced the British way, and it all fit together. I was trying to get the cadence of accents of the syllables to fit into my meter.

One day, probably a year after I wrote the basic verse melody (which also fits the round) I figured out a nice bridge format. Then I sat down at the piano and put some chords down. Pretty soon I could play it reasonably well. This is the first step in becoming comfortable with a new section in a song.

The second lyric sheet has very few lyrics, but it highlights another problem with Not Enough Time.

How do you end a piece?

I referenced a concept before called an outro, which is a modern term for coda, the end of a composition. At the end there might be some kind of definitive statement. The Beatles used to sometimes end their songs on an unusual chord, like the fourth of the scale. This is used to great effect in And Your Bird Can Sing.

Interspersed in the lyrics is a reference to a round. This serves as the refrain in this piece.

You see, the more I played with the verse, the more I wanted to sculpt it into a 4-chord round.

Modern commercials are the home of the 4-chord round these days. And it does kind of make me a little ill. In the case of this song, it took probably three years before I had it right enough to produce.

Here you see the score sheet for the round. The piano part is very foursquare. That's to contrast with the rest of it, which tends to be syncopated.

Vocals 1 to 3 are harmony vocals that define the chord structure of the round: D - A - Gadd2 - A.

The 3 flutes are additional orchestration that adds color to the round.

The bass is highly idiosyncratic and natural. It bounces at first and then proceeds in small scales. Note that the bass has a different ending for the second repeat of the round.

The drums add a fast beat to the round, giving it energy. The kick and snare are flammed: in other words doubled.

The other two vocals actually wrap around the round, stretching into the next repeat. This is a nice trick if you can carry it off, and it makes the round seem much more natural.

Here we have the structure of the song. I always write a structure sheet out so I can remember the chords. If you forget the chords, all is lost!

Also notice the exact timing of the song is given, in mm (stands for Maelzel Metronome) and it is the number of beats per minute. In this case, it is the number of quarter notes per minute.

Here I give the round as D - A - G - A twice in a row. This also serves as the chord sequence of the verse. Except that the back end of the verse has a quite different set of chords.

The bridge is notable, with a chromatic bassline in the tail end.

The secret chords of the coda are revealed here, and they are quite a parallel harmony indeed.

For the back end of the verse, I did some harmonization using multi tracked vocals. This required some planning beforehand, to get the chords right, particularly when the G is compressed into a G2 chord, since the third of the scale (B) becomes replaced with the second (A) in the chord.
Here you can see that I did three vocals. My trick is to double-track each of the backing vocals to give a bit of chorusing to the sound. It makes the backing vocal fatter and slightly more ethereal.

Other vocals were multi tracked, and required a bit of preparation as well.

When you look at the structure, you see that the round serves as the intro, and the second round backs up the solo.

If you listen to the song, you might notice the backwards guitar solo in the second round, just before verse 3. I reversed the entire section, recorded three solos to it, and chose the one that sounded the best when I re-reversed the section (with the solos) back to forwards.

It is a bit disorienting to listen and practice to music that has been reversed. You should try it sometime. It really has a spooky feel to it.

This serves to show a bit about how I write songs. Most of it is hard work and meticulous planning. And the real ideas come after quite a while of letting the piece percolate into you brain.

I have a confession: this song is not typical. Most songs I can crank out in a couple of days. But songs always sound better when you sit back and listen to them after leaving them alone for a while. And new ideas are easier to come up with too.

When I write songs now, I usually start by singing them into an iPhone while driving. I use VoiceNotes for this, because it is simple and very handy for capturing ideas. Then, when I get home, and I have a moment of relative silence, I create a piano backing for the song. This I record using an iPad or some other handy tool, just so I can comp up the song in GarageBand. Quick and dirty.

I have used tools like ProTools in the past, for multitracking. I find that modern hardware has more than enough horsepower to do the same task without expensive outboard DSP cards.

I do love living in the future.