✒️ |When you can raise up [English Transcription]
Before the stories were told, we wrote them. In this chapter we wanna tell you a story of a song Levantar (Rise up) wrirtten by Evelyn Delgado (Ev)
Veronicá Rodriguez ( Presenter): Hello, Friends to Lo único mejor que la música. Welcome to this new episode. My name is María Verónica Rodríguez, live from Caracas, Venezuela. Very soon I will be reunited with the team to continue working together.
In this final chapter of our first season, we want to thank those who listen and follow us, inviting them to continue check up on our content that we create from our Instagram and Medium profiles as Lo Único Mejor que la Música; which we talk about artists, songs, reflection points and diverse opinions about the sounds and the culture that surrounds us. In this episode, we’ll discuss about the construction of “Levantar”(Rise Up), that last single of Ev. Mateo, go on.
Levantar Sounds
Mateo [Presentator]: Evelyn Delgado, known as Ev, is an Indie musician and compositor of Medellín, Colombia. Her career started when she published her song “Time’s Up” in 2018 and rocketed her career with her song release of “Cosas Guardadas (Things Put Away) in May of 2020 . In her minimalistic music, the protagonists are her lyrics about those thoughts and personal feelings, accompanied with the sound of her guitar and voice. On September 25 of 2020, she published Levantar, a song she cowrote with Juan Antonio Toro from the band Armenia, and who would be producing with the help of Samuel Huertas. We spoke with them about the creative process of the song.
Levantar Sounds
Ev [compositor]: Well, my name is EV, and my proyect’s name is also EV. I’m a musician and create music, how I like to say.
Juan Antonio Toro [compositor]: Ok, my name is Juan Antonio Toro, I’m 21 years old, and the creator of the band Armenia, and I’m the singer and guitar player. Currently, I’m a producer. I have worked with lately along with artists, casually from Medellin, like Pablo and Ev likes Pizza.
Ev [compositor]: When we wrote Levantar, Toro and I were like: emmm… we were going through a labyrinth moment. Oh but, specially me, right? This is what I say, because it’s like…ehh, we’re in quarantine, we didn’t know, like how things were going to be, I just released my EP, that song we wrote it somewhat around May of this year, and well, we didn’t know what course to take, if I want to continue making music, I was a bit lost, right? So, then I told Toro like, in one of our conversations, because we talked a lot about the music industry and it’s circumstances… I was like, nothing comes out of my inspiration, it was like no, no…I felt blocked, I can’t, no, I don’t know what…how…where to go, right? And he was like: ok, we’ll do a song about that. And I was like, then let’s go for it.
Juan Antonio Toro [compositor]: Ev told me that I was a person that the constantly will search for me during her creative blocks, because I’m a hyperactive person. All the time she is creating, thinking about music and having an instrument in her hands. And I would tell her, I have never experienced that because I’m always writing and doing stuff, let’s talk about that.
Ev [compositor]: We were barely adapting, get to know each other virtually, also in a very weird situation to be writing together, it was like… Writing, of course, it was like these are my emotions and my heart, no (laughs), it isn’t easy to do. Then I remembered that the first thing I did was a lyric and it was a bit corny, in this moment I can’t recall very well. It was like, seeing the cars pass by, time pass by, and Toro said: “no, no, that isn’t the way”. Then we were trying to write together, and I said: no, no. I’m going to mute you, I’m going to mute myself, you keep working on there, and I’ll write something. I said: give me the chords, where we stand so for, and I started to compose on the guitar.
Levantar sounds
Juan Antonio Toro [compositor]: And when Ev says that, like “everything sounds the same”, like all the songs that she was writing all of those days, they all sound the same, they all end up finishing the same way, they all have the same progressions, the same melodies “I got stuck in the middle and I can’t repeat this anymore, it seems like I’m in the ocean and I forgot how to swim and feel like I’m going to drown” If you have something that in a certain way is an obstacle, you have to stick to that to do even more things.
Ev [compositor]: And well, everything started with the music, in fact we started to do via a video chat, and Toro send me the first things, and I was saying: oh, I like this; ew, I don’t like this. How about this and that.
In my case, the songs have a lot of starting points, sometimes I start with chords, other times with an idea about something I want to express, or sometimes I start with a beat in the synthesizer.
Juan Antonio Toro [compositor]: And well, talking about how Levantar was conceived, it was more like these two creative and diverse forces to get close to these process, right? For EV, she feels very identified with the clouds, she identifies herself with the aquamarine color and people relate a lot with that. I wanted to do something that sounded like that, do a synesthesia process that is beautiful, and to add bass and guitar sounds, for me the guitar and bass are the best thing that exists.
Ev [compositor]: The first thing I remember was the beat, the bass and the guitar.
Levantar sounds
Juan Antonio Toro [compositor]: What is the thing that matters? The motherf***ing bass. I want it to sound like the Beatles. I think that my bass lines very similar like how Paul McCartney thought them. This could be, this could be Silly Love Songs of Paul McCartney with Wings.
Silly Love Songs sounds
Juan Antonio Toro [compositor]: I wanted it to sound very 70s like, and listen to the drum, it’s a drum that that has that type of color, like who sings it… Also it’s incredible, inspires a lot to be lifted up in terms of the bass and drums, (sounds drums) I wanted to do the hype pattern that would justify a lot what is happening with the drum.
Ev [compositor]: Toro and I were there, and how the things we were doing started to be liked. We didn’t have specific references of songs. Maybe Toro did, because he does think in those things like the instruments, or this can be here, or a certain element. I was think more along the lines of: I like this, or over here or if we take this path, oh well, maybe let’s take that off. I imagined [the song] like a movie, when the movies try to give you those sensations that you’re in a confused state of mind, like when the background noise becomes very diffused, you can’t listen to nothing and you’re like there: frozen.
I have a turbulent past with music, I would run away from it. But because of my parents’ influence, they never wanted me to do music. I don’t know, it’s like one of those fears that sadly are passed down. I think those things are like things to be lifted up, but never I could never escape from it. And that is what made me take the decision [of becoming an artist], because I started to major in Physical Engineering, then Administrative Engineering, then four semesters in periods that I did not know what to with my life. After that, I went to Germany and lived there for two years, and over there I was going to continue to study Engineering.
And in Germany, was where I said: I can’t, I can’t, I can’t escape from this, and I said; I’m going back [to Colombia], I’m going to dedicate myself to music, play what I have to play and I worked as a waitress to buy my first guitar, then as a receptionist to buy a computer, it has always been like a struggle but with a lot of love.
My first approach to music was when I started to play piano when I was very young. There was a toy piano that I remember that I created melodies by hearing and it was like an obsession all the time, and I would wake up just to play and no more. They became obsessions, waking up to play the instrument and if I didn’t create a song, I would play 300000 times until the song came out. In that moment, I didn’t realize but look in retrospective, I do say this girl, Ev as a child did have an affinity with music.
Let’s see, consider me as an anxious person, an anxious millennial, like those that, those that…are the common denominator, right? This has been a huge part of my life. My relationship with anxiety, right? And this is what inspires me to write, or I believe that, because it is a constant theme, like in interpersonal relationships having anxiety and be asking yourself and saying: so, this is what it feels?
It was like thinking where are we [anxiety and I] in your career or if life in music would be good. This is ok, over here is good, should I write, this is good, and all of this would generate like a huge…a huge conflict, right? And I would always write things I have in conflict, and that [anxiety] is my main conflict, basically.
It costs me a lot to write love songs, for example a song to say something to someone like: hey, I love you or things like that…(laughs), it costs me so I rather write to my anxiety.
Levantar sounds
Ev [compositor]: Writing songs is very personal, right? I had the opportunity…is that I couldn’t even produce songs with other people, like in shape. Until Toro arrived in this virtuality [we live in], and from a distance, him being in a city and me in an another.
I wanted to describe how, what I feel, and what makes sense, do you understand me? Describing that emotion, in words. That’s why it says [during the song]: “Me quedé parada en la mitad” (I stood still in the middle), and it’s when one is there like “no, I can’t make it, I can’t reach the other side”. And that feeling of not repeating that was like: ahh, I’m stuck, please I want to get to the other side, I don’t want to be here frozen but want to leave here, that is why the chorus is:
Levantar’s chorus sounds
Ev [compositor]: It’s like when you have mental obstacles. This is the song of the mental obstacle.
Samuel Huertas [Productor]: My name is Samuel Huertas. I was the producer and mixing engineer of Levantar.
Ev [compositor]: The first time we talked with Samuel, we showed him Levantar, we showed him a couple of references that we wanted, sounds and stuff, but we said: we trust your vision, do what you want with Levantar. The first draft was very mad, but it wasn’t the vision we wanted for Levantar, it didn’t have the guitar solo and it sounded very electronic-y, we wanted to sound a bit more down to earth, it sounded very airy and had a lot of elements like that like electronic candies and it was a very crazy thing.
Samuel Huertas [Productor]: The song, at first, I felt that it was missing a bit of dynamism because it sounded a bit flat. What I felt was that I need to do was maintaining the song interesting because the song always has an emotive bassline that was in a “un tonto tonto tonto” sound, and that is during the whole song, and the drumline is always the same, firm. So, to do the song interesting is like how do I maintain the listener interested in what is going on; therefore, that was done using different atmospheric synthesizers.
But I felt something was still missing, like I wasn’t completely convinced, so I wrote to a friend to see, and I felt like trying to record an acoustic guitar to see what would happen. So I wrote to friend like: hey, there are four chords son can you record me, please? It’ll be a second, something very quick, we’ll take only five minutes doing that. And he send it, and I put that acoustic guitar that is in the song, that is now in the final version, and that was for me like what gave it life, it made sense of it all.
Levantar’s acoustic guitar sounds
Juan Antonio Toro [compositor]: And so, here appears a synthesizer super interesting (synthesizer sounds). There is a song by Juanes that is called “Una flor” [A Flower] (sings), the keys in this song was made by the keyboard player of Café Tacuba. And it comes out with that beautiful hook, something inspired from the Talking Heads, or I believe it’s the Talking Heads. David Berne is one of the greatest minds of alternative music and we wanted to, in a way, put something like that.
And about this, you can listen in “This Must Be the Place” which is (sings)…and there is a synthetizer that (sings) Juanes and the Talking Heads were the inspirations of that section, and obviously the guitar solo, because f**k it, in a guitar solo I want to put everything.
Guitar solo sounds
Ev [compositor]: The vocals were recorded in my house. I opened my closet and put the mic inside. I asked for advices to my friends. Which is the best way to record vocals? Because, let me tell you, it was an extremely frustrating process, recording those vocals, because of what I was saying. The phone would ring, the will open the downstairs kitchen faucet, kids would pass by running, airplanes in the distance. Later we had a great take and I said: Done, this is the one.
Levantar sounds
Ev [compositor]: I would say that is the conclusion. I told Toro that I don’t want the song to end up on a bad note, no. In fact, I want the song to have a positive part, because that is really what I want to do, not to stay in that mental state of rotation, translation and going around in circles; we can’t go around in circles in the same spot. The next step is to let go, tak off that weight, embrace it, maybe, it wouldn’t be what I expected. Not to go in circles in the same spot.
Levantar sounds
Mateo [Presentator]: We want to thank everyone for listening to us during this season. This podcast was recorded in Medellin, Colombia. Produced, narrated and edited by Mateo Mejía, Lorena Tamayo y Verónica Rodríguez Our team wouldn’t be the same without Mariana Uribe. You can list to all of our episodes on Spotify, Appe Podcast, Pocket Cast, Anchor or in our website. We invite you to visit our blog in Medium where you can read our articles and get to know us better in our social media accounts in Facebook, Twitter e Instagram like Lo único Mejor Que la música,
Because we believe that the only thing better than music, is to talk about music.
