Tomorrows Become Today – The Story

Listen to the song while reading…it’s fun!!

Every song has a story but this song has a big story. There’s a lot that went into the making of this one long 9:30 minute song. It’s a marriage of many different parts and each part has a title and a theme. The graphic for the song represents all the parts of the song and many of the ideas of the song.

To start out let’s examine the image itself.

The Graphics and Song Sections Explained

Moving from upper left and down are the first sections of the song in order, then you move to the upper right and down for the next song sections and finally ending up in the middle for the finale. I’ll go into detail here and the orders of the section.

Life Begins

This start off the song with a Synth drone and guitar parts. It’s a long section of the song and actually has 2 parts in it. The representative image is the UFO landing. It has an important arpeggio that is repeated throughout the entire section.

The Only Ride

This is the first vocal verse of the song. It refers to the “Only Ride” as our life path. We only have ours and we know our path more than anyone else. The Image is of a car moving through a city which is analogous to our life path. There is also a reference to repeating which we tend to do, we get into patterns in our life and repeat behaviors.

Becoming

This shorter instrumental section is a transition time. A time of growth, possible our young adulthood or just a phase we go though. A very buddha image has been chosen for this time of transition. This is the return of the original guitar arpeggio. This is much shorter than the original instrumental section.

My Head

There are a lot of ideas in here and one of them is that we often want to get away from life, thinking of it as a no pain, no hurt sort of way, finding your safe place. This part ends with “Get it out of my head”, please just let me sleep.

Choosing The One

Life is full of choices. This instrumental section represents those. The arpeggio is gone and replaced by a more pumping synth and drum fills. A lot of Pink Floyd influence in this section.

The Now

“Here I’m in the Now” – Transitioning from the thought of tomorrow to the reality of today, or as suggested, the now. The verse walks though that journey. I live among the stars.

Find The Way

Another instrumental section that marks a tempo increase, a instrumental interlude and carving out your path to the future. The lead synth comes into play in full force during this section with echos throughout.

In My Skin

This forth vocal section is the final realization that you are indeed in your skin. It’s your only journey you have. That’s where your start the journey of the rest of your life. You need love on that journey.

Forever True

The thoughtful last instrumental section of the song represents acceptance and peace. It’s marked by backing harmonies and a smooth texture. The image represents that the music continues to live on.

Tomorrows Become Today

This ethereal ending is the final vocal section which reflects on planning wisely, once chosen, that choice can not be changed.

 

THE SONG COMPOSITION

This song started in Santa Barbara with this wonderfully cool instrumental which wasn’t that long and this really cool chord pattern I use the vocal verses. But I came on the idea of wanting to tell a story and I wanted a tempo change in the song to move from slower to slightly more brisk. The rest of the song was PURE evolution with was lyrically rewritten many times. The ending of the song was the last major piece to come into the song and came to me upon waking up one morning. I reflected on this many times and wanted a summary and powerful idea with a more ethereal ending in my older “Acquisotic” style as I call it.  I wanted a close to 10 minute song reminiscent of the old Pink Floyd Style.

Timeline: The first major revision was done in November 2020 in Florida in my new studio and each section slowly built out. I laid down the many vocal takes in SB but the song was still not polished or perfectly organized. When in Florida lots of revision took place with my last revisions were more of a sonic upgrade to the original with individual track treatments, remixing, changing some of the instrumentation and texture changes. I called it the 2021 Edition. With the idea that the world is in flux, why can the song also continued to be refined.

Guitars: There are a lot of guitar tracks in this song. For starters, there are 2 guitars in the intro, layered arpeggios, lead clean sounds and even some harmonic hits. The verse guitars are more relaxed chord structures with Rhythm. The later guitar part is slightly different with some Hendrix style technique. Two different guitar parts are in the later section where it speeds up and in the Forever True part.

Finding the right sonic texture with this song was hard because It has so many parts in it. The Synth was really important and honestly the bass was very hard and I struggling with the bass  with finding the right timing and feel. The verses, although well laid out with chords, has a loose feel which represented a 60s sound but was a bear to tighten up at times. It is part of the feel of the song however so it was worth the effort.

There are a lot of backing vocals which represented complete multiple takes in themselves. They are always important in any vocal composition I produce.

The 2021 graphic was redone during this time to be more tightly coupled to the song compared to the original graphic I did.

OLD GRAPHIC

The original Graphic was my first pass and laid down the style that I was looking for. For the 2021 graphics artifacts like the Open sign was removed, as was the car, my images. There was a general restructure and some very deep red coloring work done. I also added a retro image to diner because it represented our history. A new Buddha graphic image was added and colored as well as the triangle of “truth”. In general I usual shoot for a retro leaning theme.

Section Title

In summer of 2021 when I gave it a lot of thought and a locked in the name of the sections to more accurately reflect my thoughts on the song itself.

 

LYRICS:

TOMORROW BECOMES TODAY

It’s another day to test your mind (what did you find?)
Caught up in a world that leaves you way behind
There you go
You got a story to call your own
You repeat it again and again
Because it’s only your closest friend
It’s the only ride you know
 
I want to find a place to go to
Somewhere to call my own
I can lay my weary head there
Relaxing all my bones
Take me to a place of solace
Nothing can go wrong
When it gets late at night
I want to get it out of my head
 
Everywhere go I’m in the sand
What am I to do
Without a better plan
Every love I find
Will help me though another day
I live among the stars
Just looking for that rising sun
Here I’m in the now
That’s where I am
 
All of my senses they rule my life
It’s all I’ll ever know
As I work myself to the bone
Always trying to make what I call home
Please! Tell me!
What is the fire I breathe
What will become of me?
I believe in my own self
Cause it keeps me happy
And comfortable in my life
In my skin
That’s where I’ll begin
 
Tomorrows become today
What we choose is here to stay
Tomorrows become today
Don’t waste your time away
Riding along on the milky way
Riding alone on the milky way
Riding along on the milky way
Way, way, way

Lyrics copyright by Bruce Gombrelli, All Rights Reserved