Dancing Man
Context
Dancing Man is about resilience. A song to keep in your back pocket for the dark moments of life. The verses are tragedy — world on fire, love leaving — with an upbeat groove to dance on through to the other side of crisis.
The Story
This song is about resilience. Dancing man is a symbol. It’s a state of mind really — an antifragile resilience. It is a belief in yourself and your ability to take the punches and keep going. It is the ability to make a plan on your darkest day and chart your way out of a losing situation.
Various philosophers have pointed at the same idea. Kurt Vonnegut put it best:
“Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.”
— Kurt Vonnegut
This song is the dance version of that. Dancing as an active defiance against whatever situation or circumstances have got you stuck.
Everybody carries a little depression from time to time. There are these moments in life that are really hard to get through. Everybody’s gonna face hard times at some point in their life. So this song is there for you in the dark parts.
When I was writing the lyrics, I felt a connection to Bruce Springsteen’s masterpiece — “Dancing in the Dark” — which is an upbeat happy song about depression. Specifically, the line “waltzing in the dark” is a reference to that song. This song has a lot of elements of depression in it as well. “I lost my spark, but I’ve got a plan.” The song is the moment it turns around. You remember to dance. You plot a course back to a better place. It’s hopeful, not defeated, going into the future.
This song was really sticky. I really liked it from the moment I wrote it. Firstly, I felt my lyrical approach maturing. I didn’t have time to produce it for a couple weeks, but on my walks and bike rides, I would sing the song — especially that line “just because I lost, don’t make me a loser.” Most of my other songs, I try to forget about and maybe generate ideas for new songs when I’m relaxed. But this song really wanted to be sung, and it refused to be forgotten.
What Worked
My favorite line in the song is “just because I lost, don’t make me a loser.” We don’t have to internalize trying and failing something or coming short of our goals. We don’t have to take that on board as part of us. Losing and failing are a necessary part of learning and growing. They don’t define who you are. One event or one outcome — you get to keep writing your story.
My favorite sound in this song is the chord rhythm. In Pigments (software synthesizer) it is called “Christal Lines”. It is a bit dreamy and soft. I layered that with “Peppered Piano” and panned them about 25% to the left and the right so they overlap but also have some distinction. Peppered piano adds some percussive weight to the rhythm and allowed me to build energy by staggering it after a couple bars of “Christal Lines”.
The high-pitched lead after the chorus turned out perfect because it is dancy and simple and it fits right in and doesn’t distract. Then it delivers you back to the verse seamlessly.
Production Hurdles
I realized the vocal tracks were creating high frequencies that were conflicting with each other. This was a problem with the template I created to start new songs. It took me a while to find the source. It was a vocal presence effect I was using with poorly tuned reverb settings. It made me worried about the first three songs that are already released, but the ship has sailed on those. I guess they sounded good enough whether they’re optimal or not.
When I came back to this song a few weeks after initially producing it, the intro performance sounded thin and frankly uninspiring. I spent a lot of time working with OVox on the vocals. This is becoming a normal time sink for my productions, but lyrics are probably the most important part of a track. When I was in bands in high school playing live, I noticed people wouldn’t really pay attention — but then you’d say something into the mic and everyone looked up. In music, it’s generally easier to gain traction with lyrics than without. The message matters, and people pay attention to the message.
When I came back to it, I was able to try completely new OVox settings. I sang the intro again, more stretched out, and added a second track underneath it with harmonies. I am becoming fond of using “Dorian Fruit” for harmonies. Dorian is a minor scale — one of the seven “modes,” or flavors of scale. It has a minor third and a raised 6th, which gives it a brighter feel than your typical minor scale. This fixed the problem and set the intro apart from the rest of the track. The thinness was gone.
Another issue with OVox: on the final mastering bounce, my favorite line “just because I lost, don’t make me a loser” had a vocoder fart in the middle, ruining the line. It didn’t do this for any of the other bounces. It waited to ruin my final bounce. OVox processes in real time, so it sometimes has strange behavior that is inconsistent and inexplicable. I had to freeze the track and export it again to finalize the track.
One Thing Learned
Releasing imperfect productions is the only way because there is no perfect production. If it sounds good, it probably is. Sometimes happy accidents happen. Other times you’ve got to fix the problem, and that learning will make your future productions better. I’m becoming more technical the more time I spend in the studio. I am so grateful studio tools like Ableton exist to make it relatively easy to produce ideas.
🩷 Ben
Coming to streaming soon
[Dancing Man lyrics]
no matter how sad i am
just dancing manjust because i lost
don’t make me a loser
doing the best i can
just a dancing manlost my spark
but I’ve got a plan
waltzing in the dark
just a dancing manwhen the world is on fire
and I’m feeling so tired
and my love is leaving
ten years of grieving
dancing man