Waiting For The Night

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4. Halo
5. Waiting For The Night
List of Violator songs
6. Enjoy The Silence
Waiting For The Night
Album-Violator.jpg
Song Waiting For The Night
By Depeche Mode
Songwriter Martin L. Gore
Produced by Depeche Mode
Flood
Recorded at Puk Studios, Denmark and Logic Studios, Milan
Length (mm:ss) 6:12
Tempo 91 BPM
Time signature 4
4
Key B♭ Minor
Engineering assistance Daryl Bamonte
Dick Meaney
David Browne
Mark Flannery
Mixed by François Kevorkian
Recorded May 1989 – January 1990
Originally released 19 March 1990
Live performances as Depeche Mode 284 times *
Total live performances 284 times *

"Waiting For The Night" is a song from the 1990 album Violator by Depeche Mode.

Notes

This song is sometimes erroneously titled by fans as "Waiting For The Night To Fall". According to Alan Wilder on Shunt Q&A ARCHIVES  : DEPECHE MODE  : VIOLATOR, about halfway down the page; the original title for the song was not "Waiting For The Night To Fall".

On the same Shunt Q&A Archives, a fan asks:

Fergus: One question I've been dying to ask is just how you created the loop for 'Waiting For The Night'? Did you use an arpeggiator? How did you get the loop to change key?

A: "Flood and I had been listening to Tangerine Dream and decided to try and create a similar atmosphere for this track. The main sequence was put together using his ARP and the sequencer that accompanies the synth. Due to its many velocity and filtering possibilities, this unit has a unique quality which is difficult to replicate using a modern-day sequencer triggered by MIDI. Once it has been set-up, in order for the sequence to be transposed to follow the chord structure of the song, I needed to play in each chord change from an external keyboard. A similar principal was applied to achieve the bubbling bass part which, together with the main sequence, forms the backbone of the track. The charm of the ARP sequencer stems from the slight tuning and timing variations that occur each time the part is played. This gives a sense of fluidity and continual change which seems to suit the song."

Alan Wilder elaborated on this for Electricity Club in 2011:

"The main sequencer part here was produced using the ARP 2600 synth and sequencer, because it has many flaws when setting up your 16 note sequence (for example tuning and gate length) – this makes for happy accidents and almost random events. We would have fiddled around with that sequence for a while, tweaking the filters and envelopes within the ARP until we arrived at that particularly hypnotic end result. The resulting sequence shape would follow any held note on a keyboard to transpose between the song's basic chord changes as it ran, which we would then record, and that is essentially the spine of the whole thing. All the other sounds in that song act as mere embellishment."

When Martin Gore was asked by The Boston Globe to explain this song, he said:

"I spend the day waiting for the night. It's a natural, perfect conclusion to the day."

In 2006, all of Depeche Mode's studio albums were being remastered. Engineer Kevin Paul told Sound On Sound magazine:

"'Waiting For The Night' was a particularly hard song — not hard to recreate but complicated. It has something like 15 different delays in it — there are loads of little spins on the end of lines of vocals and drums, and it is amazing. I had the recall notes from Violator, so I knew what [Depeche Mode] were using and what effects, and I had to try and piece together the recall notes with the music. Some of the effects I had to just try to do my best to recreate, by bouncing the delays and using distortion. It is actually one of the songs I enjoy the most in 5.1, but the process of recreating it was incredibly complex. I remember at times thinking "How would [Francois Kevorkian] do this? How could he possibly try to get that effect?" and it was a combination of three or four effects, certainly. I'd get the [Eventide] H3000s out and patch them across and try to use the presets that were written on the recall to see if it was anywhere close — sometimes it wasn't and sometimes it was. But even as you were finishing the mix you were thinking "Yeah, I've got everything, everything’s fine," and there'd be something else and you'd think "Aaargh, what's he doing?" and it would turn out to be another snare or kick drum reverb, or a delay on the bass line would suddenly shoot in."

Lyrics


Waiting For The Night

I'm waiting for the night to fall

I know that it will save us all

When everything's dark

Keeps us from the stark reality

I'm waiting for the night to fall

When everything is bearable

And there in the still

All that you feel

Is tranquility


There is a star in the sky

Guiding my way with its light

And in the glow of the moon

Know my deliverance will come soon


There is a sound in the calm

Someone is coming to harm

I press my hands to my ears

It's easier here just to forget fear


And when I squinted

The world seemed rose-tinted

And angels appeared to descend

To my surprise

With half-closed eyes

Things looked even better

Than when they were opened


Been waiting for the night to fall

I knew that it would save us all

Now everything's dark

Keeps us from the stark reality

Been waiting for the night to fall

Now everything is bearable

And here in the still

All that you feel

Is tranquility


Songwriter: Martin L. Gore
Publishing Information: ©1990 Grabbing Hands Music Ltd/EMI Music Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved.

Composition

Sample sources

"Waiting For The Night"
Depeche Mode
1990
Self-made samples
Sample Notes Audio
Synthesizer elements Wilder describes the production of this bass part in a Q&A on Shunt, the official Recoil website:

Flood and I had been listening to Tangerine Dream and decided to try and create a similar atmosphere for this track. The main sequence was put together using his [ARP 2600] and the sequencer that accompanies the synth. Due to its many velocity and filtering possibilities, this unit has a unique quality which is difficult to replicate using a modern-day sequencer triggered by MIDI. Once it has been set-up, in order for the sequence to be transposed to follow the chord structure of the song, I needed to play in each chord change from an external keyboard. A similar principal was applied to achieve the bubbling bass part which, together with the main sequence, forms the backbone of the track. The charm of the ARP sequencer stems from the slight tuning and timing variations that occur each time the part is played. This gives a sense of fluidity and continual change which seems to suit the song. [1]

Bass sequence Musician and remixer Ehron VonAllen confirmed in a YouTube analysis of his remix collaboration with Alan Wilder that Wilder employed a bass sequence originally recorded for use with "Waiting For The Night" in "Electro Blues For Bukka White".[2]

Sample sources
Sample Source Status Notes Audio
Vocal elements Dmitry Damba-Darzhaa - "Край Артыы сайыр / Artyy Sayir Area" - 1969 or earlier
Confirmed
A looped chant-like sample used starting from the bridge section of "Waiting For The Night" is derived from a Tuvan throat singing recording performed by Dmitry Damba-Darzhaa, originally released on Melodii Tuvi - Throat Songs And Folk Tunes From Tuva, a 1969 collection of Tuvan music published in the Soviet Union.[footnotes 1]

Click to display/hide audio example

Vocal elements Emulator II factory library disk #12: Voices - SAMPLE 8
Confirmed
A vocal pad heard throughout "Waiting For The Night" utilises a vocal sample derived from Emulator II factory library disk #12 "Voices"

Click to display/hide audio example

Synthesizer elements Emulator III OMI Universe of Sounds - Guitar Chimes - "CHIME A4"
Confirmed
The bell-like arpeggio audible during the verse sections of "Waiting For The Night" as it was performed on the World Violation and Exotic tours is comprised of a series of edited samples derived from the "Guitar Chimes" voice featured in Emulator III OMI Universe of Sounds.

Click to display/hide audio example

Note: In this example, a sample from the Emax II sound bank containing the musical parts performed by Alan Wilder for live use with "Waiting For The Night" is compared to the equivalent sample in the "Guitar Chimes" voice featured in Emulator III OMI Universe of Sounds. The two parts are then played together, producing audible phasing artifacts when superimposed.

Live performances

Main article: Available recordings of "Waiting For The Night"
Main article: List of dates where "Waiting For The Night" was played

Trivia

  • 'Waiting For The Night' has been covered by Panic on the Titanic (1996), Children Within (1997), Rabbit in the Moon (1998), Lindum & Lindum (1999), Ultra Vision (1999), Lights of Euphoria (2000), Silent Promises (2001), Wickhead (2005), Último Misterio (2008), Lyynk feat. Xavier Bertrand (2009), and Ghost (2013).

Notes

  1. The recording was included in a 2016 compilation album АНТОЛОГИЯ НАРОДНОЙ МУЗЫКИ: ТУВИНСКАЯ МУЗЫКА / Anthology Of Folk Music: Tuvan Music, which features reissued recordings of Tuvan music performed between 1958 and 1984.

  1. Wilder, Alan. "Shunt Q&A: ARCHIVES : DEPECHE MODE : VIOLATOR". recoil.co.uk. https://web.archive.org/web/20170906204256/http://oldsite.recoil.co.uk/forum/qa/dviol2.htm. Archived 6 September 2017, p. 2.
  2. Source: Recoil - Jezebel (Seductress Mix) by Ehron VonAllen with collaboration details 1080p HD - Ehron VonAllen