Singled Out: Jake Dreyer's Drawing of the Three

I began writing "Drawing of the Three" around ten months before the song was finished. I had just gotten back from a vacation and picked up my guitar when the first two minutes of the song, as they appear on record, poured out of me. I demoed the parts out using a webcam and then left the song alone for a few months until it was time to finish up the writing for In the Shadows of Madness. In April, I had just gotten off a tour and while on the road I had religiously listened to Al Di Meola's Elegant Gypsy EP. While warming up for the shows on those dates I would try and figure out some of Al's alternate picking runs just to break up the monotony of the regular pre-gig warm up routine. During this time I had really come to enjoy his Latin influence and thought that a clean Latin section would be a really cool contrast to the heavy progressive first half. With that in mind, I began arpeggiating a chord progression and playing a rhythm that had a somewhat mainstream Latin feel. I thought the parts fit together in a certain way and acted as if they were two separate scenes in a story. Now, you are probably asking yourself Drawing of the Three, isn't that a Stephen King reference? The answer is a 100% yes. Although, King's story didn't really influence the actual writing of the song more so than the cover of the book, after I had finished writing the Latin section I was lost on where I wanted the song to go. I wasn't sure what I should do next. After a frustrated writing session that was going nowhere I walked into my room at around four am and on top of a shelf was a copy of Drawing of the Three. The title and the artwork just triggered some form of inspiration and I knew that the song should be a trilogy and that to conclude there needed to be an entirely new section written. I went back into my "studio" (Not a studio, just a room where my guitars, amps and a computer with Adobe Audition downloaded) and started grooving on the one note 7/8 bridge that transitions out of the Latin section. After that, the next riffs followed similar to how the intro riffs had ten months prior. The sweeping arpeggio section was something I had written a few years earlier for fun and I really liked how it all fell into place within the song. When I brought this song into pre-production I had originally had it as a fadeout after the arpeggios. The producer of the EP, JJ Crews was not digging the fadeout and literally sang back to me what wound up becoming the half-time feel outro. The recording of this particular song is something that really stands out. It was such a cool feeling hearing this song being brought to life by having the drummer, Adam Sagan and bassist Noah Martin lay down their individual parts. Adam had so many great ideas for what he wanted to do that we spent two full days just going over the arrangements before tracking his drums and trying out all his ideas. One moment in particular about the drums was that there is this ridiculous fill he does right before the doom esque sounding outro and for about an hour and half Adam was cutting that fill and each take he would do something new that would be better than the previous. JJ and I were in the control room and kept on telling Adam "Man, we got it! Were finished with this track!" and Adam would come back with "No way! I got something better" and sure enough he would blow away the previous take. The main pivoting guitar theme that is heard during the first section was written on the spot during the tracking of the guitars. JJ and I both agreed that there needed to be a guitar line over this "verse" rhythm to make it a little less boring. I remember us putting the progression on a loop and one of the first melodies that came out was the theme that's heard� Judging from the mail I get regarding this particular song it has a Love or Hate effect on listeners. I think I am partial to this tune, because it happened to be one of those rare occasions where the song turned out pretty much as I as I had imagined it. I knew from the beginning I wanted this to be an adventurous song that would introduce different peaks, valleys and hopefully emotions to the listener. If anything else, I hope the seven minutes at least takes people on a journey of some kind.