Missing Part
by Seanan McGuire

Cast off, sail away
Maybe I'll be back someday
It don't seem likely, but it's anything can be
Mama, Daddy, don't you cry
You always knew that I'd say goodbye
I got a beauty of a berth on a ship just made for me

She's the sweetest little darlin' that you'll ever find
A wee bit battered but the best of her kind
And she'll run forever with a good hand on her heart
I'm a little out of place when I'm on the ground
And that's the reason why I'm outward bound
Oh, can't you see that I'm a Firefly's missing part?

Time's up, have to run
I can't sit idle when there's work needs done
You raised me right and you know I'll make you proud
You both know that I'll be fine;
This world's for you, but the whole sky's mine
And I'll go just as far as an engineer's allowed

On the sweetest little darlin' that you'll ever find
A wee bit battered but the best of her kind
She'll run forever with a good hand on her heart
I'm a little out of place when I'm on the ground
And that's the reason why I'm outward bound
Oh, can't you see that I'm a Firefly's missing part?

What's the point in havin' wings if you never leave the nest and fly?
What's the point in havin' dreams if you never reach out for the sky?
I'll never know my limits if I never even try
You ain't raised no farmer's wife, you've raised the mechanic of a Firefly!

Big sky, bigger plans
I'm doin' what my heart demands
I'm gonna treat that engine sweet, and she'll take me far
When folks wonder after me
Just say I found Serenity
Where the sky ain't the limit, I'll be shining like a star

Cause this Firefly's the place that I'll make my home
And while she still flies, you know I'll still roam
So much to do, and now it's time to start
I'm the kind of girl who loves the simple things
And I can hear the future when my darlin' sings
Oh, can't you see that I'm a Firefly's missing part?

She's the sweetest little darlin' that you'll ever find
A wee bit battered but the best of her kind
She'll run forever with a good hand on her heart
I'm a little out of place when I'm on the ground
And that's the reason that I'm outward bound
Oh, can't you see that I'm a Firefly's missing part?

About the Song

Vixy:
Seanan has written many more Firefly songs than I have, so naturally I started covering her songs for Browncoat-themed gigs. We had actually begun recording it when I realized that I wanted to do a different take on it from the original; I wanted it to feel more to me like it really came from the 'Verse. Tony, as always, came up with the perfect guitar pattern, a slow and sultry feel, and we started performing it that way.

About the Recording

Tony:
Though Seanan wrote this song, she doesn't appear on this recording of it, even though she does sing on another song on this album. It seems strange when I say it that way.

We have been performing this song for a long time, pretty much ever since it was written. It was originally a much faster, much more uptempo kind of song, and we performed it that way until recently, when Vixy got the great idea to slow it down and make it more relaxed. Changing its style like that was a major turning point for us, it made us fall in love with the song all over again. The slower version is what you hear on this album. After having changed the way we play it, and after having recorded most of the tracks for the album the new way, we later needed to be Seanan's backup band at an event, and she prefers to play it in the original, uptempo style. It was very hard to shift my rhythm guitar playing back to the old style for that show.

There is a set of "stops" during the song's chorus, places where the instruments stop playing while the singing continues, occurring four times in each chorus. That's something I came up with when we changed the tempo, and I'm very proud of using that particular arrangement trick there. It's very fun to play and gives the song a nice set of catchy, interesting moments. Vixy didn't like the idea at first, until she heard it played through properly a few times and could clearly hear what I was going for. Now she loves it.

I'm really happy with Brian's drums on this song, they fit the style we were looking for perfectly. They provide the perfect backdrop for Chris Clark's amazing, bubbly bass lines. The bass and drum interaction on this song was so amazing that our string section voluntarily "bowed out" (no pun intended until after I noticed it) of the studio recording of the song, to leave more space for the bass. Listen closely to the bass on this song and you'll hear some really wonderful riffs, including fun tricks such as plucked harmonics.

All along, I'd intended for this song to have an instrumental solo break in the middle, and as the album's track listing came together I realized that this might be the one and only song on which I got to do a full honest-to-goodness guitar solo, so I reserved that slot for myself. I had the idea that I would keep the lead guitar work sparse throughout the rest of the song so that Chris' wonderful bass part would stand out and get noticed, then give myself a bit of room to have fun during the instrumental in the middle, playing off of the cool bass riffs that Chris had put in there just for that purpose. At the same time, Vixy was adamant that the song should feel like it came out of the Firefly universe, so... dirty acoustic slide guitar it had to be!

The only problem: I didn't know how to play slide guitar. And I'd somehow managed to put off recording this lead guitar part until shortly before our due date. I'd just kept procrastinating because it scared me. Turns out that the other fear, the fear of a deadline, is a great motivator to get you past your fear of creating something! A few YouTube instructional videos and some open-tuning scale charts later, I felt like maybe I might be able to tackle it. I bought several different types of slides to try out, eventually settled on a fluted glass slide, and sat down in the torture chamber recording booth and started hacking away at it.

One interesting side note about the guitar tuning: The song is in the key of C Minor, so on the rhythm guitar, I play it with a capo at 3 and use chord forms for the A Minor key. Most slide guitar pieces are done in an open tuning, for example Open G or Open D tuning, so that it's easier to form complimentary note pairings and chords with the slide forming a bar across all the strings. When searching for the correct open tuning for the slide part on this song, I realized that the C Minor key was the relative minor of E Flat Major. This made me excited because I already had another piece that I play in that exact same open tuning: "Modoc" by Steve Morse. I already had a custom tuning for it programmed into my Tronical. I took this as a good omen.

Anyway, I hacked away at a slide part for an entire evening and assembled a rough edit of my best bits, and played it all back to myself and Vixy. To my horror, I realized that I had been unconsciously matching Chris' phrasing and timing the entire time. Though I wasn't playing the same notes, I was playing exactly on top of all of his most interesting notes. I'd worked so hard to make sure that Chris' bass part shone through, only to stomp all over it at the last minute with my clumsy just-learned-slide brain. I had forgotten the first rule of jamming: Listening is as important as playing.

Sigh. Back into the booth for another shot. This time paying closer attention to what the bass was doing. The final edit from this second session is what ended up on the album. I think it accomplishes what I set out to do: A sparse sprinkling of texture which leaves the bass and drums a chance to be heard, with a little bit of fun in the middle. Though I think it still sounds like somebody who had just learned how to play slide.

Finally, Maya did a fantastic job on the backing vocals: She and Jeff managed to do something like a 1-day turnaround on them in the final days before mastering. Backing vocals are always the last thing we add to a song, and Vixy prefers not to sing her own backing vocals, so often they have to get recorded in a hurry. We like to have our friends do backing vocals whenever possible, partly because we love collaborating with other great musicians (they always surprise us in wonderful ways), and partly because it sounds more organic and real to have someone other than the lead singer do the backing vocals. It's also fun to get a variety of other voices on to the album to vary the texture. Anyway, Maya is wonderful and her parts on this song are no exception. In the mixing phase, Vixy urged me to make sure certain parts of Maya's vocals were particularly legible in the mix, such as her amazing chords on the bridge section before the instrumental. I couldn't agree more.