Category: Production

Production

The Music is Done

psycliq

That’s right — done, finished, completed. After riding around with different test-burns in my car for a few days each, I now officially declare Results Not Typical to be musically complete. I’m currently just waiting to get the physical CDs in stock online before calling this one “released”, and that’ll only be a couple weeks or so, depending on how quickly all the parts come into place. But if you really can’t wait to get the new music, drop me a comment. You see, I’ve got a whole stack of download codes good for a free album download, just waiting to go.

I have the first batch of CDs lightscribe-labeled and ready to have music added to them, though while doing this I realized that I’m out of cases now and need to pick up some more. Still waiting to get the insert cards in from the printer and really hoping those came out good. I am quite eager for this! Eager, I say!

Update: I just got the ship confirmation for the covers! Everything is on its way here.

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Production

Off to the printer

psycliq

I’ve finally settled on song content and ordering, and with a last few tweaks the artwork is done. I am happy to present the final front and back sides to the cover of Results Not Typical:

I’ve sent the artwork off to a short-run print shop to be printed on dual-sided cards. This promises to be a step up from my traditional completely-homemade approach to the problem. It’s also an experiment, and we’ll see what the quality is like and how much I care to deal with the overhead. Even though it’s a shorter run than a “real” print shop, I still had to order 50 covers. I’ll be surprised if I run out of those any time soon. Sometimes, I’m so indie it hurts.

Also! After listening to these songs over and over I’ve found that I still have a little bit of the music to polish up, but any changes from here will be simple overdubs, mixes, compressions, and things like that. I can’t afford to bring things to a mastering service, so what you hear is exactly what comes out of my speakers in the moments before upload to the web. Thankfully, though, most of the songs are recorded and mixed. And just because I love you, here’s a third bonus preview track! This one’s called “Mettle” and it’s one of my favorites from the album:

Depending on when I can get time to work out the finishing touches, we could be seeing a digital release in as little as a week. Excitement!

Production

Atypical

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I’m not sure where they all came from, but I currently have seventeen (!!) tracks set up that will probably be a part of Results Not Typical. Of those, I have thirteen finished and four more to complete the recording, mixing, etc. These numbers are a little surprising to me, especially since this is coming less than a year after I put the wraps on halt. I guess that makes this album all the more atypical.

Part of what’s helped in this case is the stripped-down production and raw aesthetic I’ve been going for in this album. It’s not sloppy, really, but it’s a lot less tweaked-to-death than I usually do. And in general, I’m really liking this way of working. One of the hardest things to learn when making music is knowing when to stop, and that’s a lesson I still haven’t totally figured out myself. Sometimes, I push things past where they should have been, and sometimes I stop a bit too early and always wish I’d gone back and fixed that one bit that bugged me. But one thing I always do for sure: once something has been “released” out into the world, I leave it alone. I think it’s the most fair thing for the music, to let it have a solid definition at some point in time and space and embrace that. Maybe one day I’ll look back at these old recordings and decide to do a fresh “remixed and remastered” version, or something. But for now, what you hear is what’s there.

There are a lot of things coming up on the calendar in the next couple weeks for me, but I’m hoping to really start getting these last four songs tracked. Already have a decent scratch track set for “Dustwood”, and sketches laid out for the other three; I’m going to call that a good start on them. After all, I don’t want to have to leave anybody behind.

Production

An Inadvertent Time Warp

psycliq

This evening, I was able to grab a little time in the studio to work on some stuff, and I found myself pulling out my trusty old Silvertone guitar and the shiny still-on-loan-but-I-promise-I’ll-give-it-back-sometime wavedrum and did some tracking and overdubbing for “Open To Suggestions”. This song started its life when I was asked to “just go play something on the piano for background music” in church one night. I just began noodling around and this neat lilting cadence came out. A friend joined me on the conga to add some structure to the rhythm, and things came together pretty quickly there. Back in my home studio, I was able to transcribe the piano parts from memory, and the wavedrum filled in nicely with a pair of percussion sounds to round things out.  I’m still not a very good drummer, but that’s OK for now.

Also when recording it here, I very quickly realized that it needed some kind of melody countering things over the top. This is something that electric guitars are very good at. So out came the big red beast and the little green Tube Screamer, and away I went. I was liking where things were headed, but something was missing about the guitar’s sound. Now, I’m really not much of a tone-head. I flail at knobs and settings on amps and pedals with no idea what I’m looking for, hoping that eventually something useful will come out. On a whim, I threw a flanger effect onto the guitar channel. That’s when something weird happened.

The song instantly turned into something from the early 1970’s. I’m not sure how it happened, but it went from being modern to retro as quickly as I flipped a switch. Mind you, the rest of the song that I’d been working on didn’t change at all prior to this. And in my opinion, this jump is just what it needed to find its home.

This may also be a sign that I’m turning into an old guy and starting to make old guy rock. We’ll just have to see how that one turns out.

Production

Tracking and Titles

psycliq

Somehow, I’m finding a decent amount of time to work on this album. I’ve been able to track two more songs in the past two days. And what’s more amazing to me is that they’re nearly done in their current state. The aesthetic for this album is going to be a lot more sparse than I’m used to working with. There are songs on here that are a solo piano with nothing else involved. These last two are piano with a simple synth pad of some kind underneath them. Sure, there are more complex songs with multiple layers of guitars and all kinds of effects and stuff like that, but even those are a lot more raw than the norm. But I’m very happy with how it’s coming out, even though I’m also wanting to be done with this set of things so I can put some work into other stuff.

Titles for songs have always been fairly important to me. However, most of what I come up with is simply Too Clever for its Own Good. Which, incidentally, I’ve decided is going to be the title of my autobiography/memoir. But take for example “This Town Loves You, This Town Will Destroy You” off of halt. I like the title a lot here, it’s catchy and I felt it matched the two-part nature of the song. Problem is that the song itself isn’t as good as its title, in my opinion. You expect this epic tale of woe, but you get this noodly thing. It’s one of the most clicked-on tracks in the bandcamp page, which tells you that the title is grabbing people’s attention. But “Adoré”, what I consider to be the best track on the album, doesn’t get as much attention. The title is a much better fit for the song here, though.

And now the part that some of you have figured out was coming. I’ve told you that I have a lot of songs for Results Not Typical, and I told you that titles are important to me. Now I tell you the titles of the songs! At least, these are the probably-final titles from the most-likely-going-to-keep tracks for the album. There will be other songs, too, but I’m either not happy enough with the title yet or I’m not sure the song’s going to be good enough to make it on. These are also the ones I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to finish.

  • Amid the Stacks
  • Another Empty Hour In Every Day
  • By Pint and Pound
  • Closure
  • Dustwood
  • Ghosts of Persistence
  • Mettle
  • Open to Suggestions
  • Those Born of Kings
  • Unfurled
  • Whether or Not

Presented alphabetically so as not to imply any kind of album ordering.

Music, Production

A Weekend with the Wavedrum

psycliq

I’m currently borrowing a KORG Wavedrum from a friend of mine. For those unfamiliar with this fantastic instrument, it is an acoustic drum synthesizer. It works by using vibration sensors underneath a real drum head and rim that respond to all of the dynamic playing that a hand drum is used to, and then sending those signals to a synthesis engine. The engine then takes the input waves and modulates them with various PCM sources and algorithmic sound models to create the output.

What all of that technobabble really means is that this isn’t a drum, it’s a thousand drums in one box. And unlike a drum machine or normal synthesizer, it is played like a real acoustic drum would be. In short, it’s pretty awesome.

I’ve only had it at my place for a few days now, but I’ve managed to spend a few sessions just playing with it. It has an impressive range of tones, most of which mimic real drums of various flavors in addition to a bunch of very otherworldly sounds that have very little to do with drums. However, the fact that you play these sounds like a drum adds a rhythmic character to it. Another great feature of this instrument is that it outputs directly into the recording system. This means that any incidental ambient noises won’t bleed over into the recording. As you’ll recall, this was a necessary feature for my acoustic guitar as well. It turns out that a home studio is difficult to run with a 10-month old in the house. Incidental ambient noises are the rule of the day.

After my initial noodling, I set about using the Wavedrum on an actual song. This one has a bluesy little groove to it that my traditional drum machine just wasn’t going to capture. I tried to program it in Reason, but the timing was all off and it felt horrible. Ever wonder why so many techno songs are in straight 4/4? It’s because it’s really easy to program that. I’ve programmed a few different step sequencers before, and they’ve all been 16-step 4/4 sequencers. The Wavedrum, based entirely on hand input, has no sense of quantization. Thus, I quickly found out something I knew already — that I am not a very good drummer. I’ve got a decent sense of rhythm, but translating that into a particular instrument isn’t always so straightforward. Thankfully, modern post-production lets me tweak things in software where needed. That said, I am trying to have a fairly light touch on this.

In any case, I jumped in and tried a few different drum sounds before settling on a nice round conga sound. With a little compression, it gave me a nice snappy sound that complemented the acoustic guitar and bass that drives the rest of the song. The Wavedrum, being a very different kind of sequencer, turns out to be quite difficult to program. I wasn’t getting the deep booming tones that I was after for underlying the higher accents, so I ended up breaking out the drum machine for just those bits. After trying unsuccessfully to sync with the underlying groove, I simply recorded the drum machine output to a track and un-quantized it by hand to match. This is the opposite of what you usually do with drums.

After a few sessions of recording, re-recording, and tweaking, I’m getting relatively happy with the state of the song. I have a vision of some kind of bell over the top of it, or something to that effect, but I’m not sure it needs it. I always have trouble knowing when to stop.

Oh yes, the title? “By Pint and Pound”. Now you have the first title of a song from Results Not Typical. Originally the title was “Blood and Flesh by Pint and Pound”, I thought it was a little too macabre. What do you think though? Should I change it back or keep the shorter version? Maybe you’d have to hear it first. Maybe I can arrange that, if you want.

Production

Guitars and the acoustic properties thereof

psycliq

Like any self-respecting electronic band, I’ve got myself a fair bit of stuff that makes bleeps and bloops sitting about the studio. Some of which really likes to misbehave, but more on that another time. But anyway, it would seem that my preparations for this next album have made me break down and pick up some new equipment, quite in the opposite direction. You see, I finally went out and got myself a decent acoustic guitar.

What makes this interesting in terms of my music is that I’ve never actually used an acoustic guitar in any of my released material. Well, OK, there was that one time for the Kickstarter rewards project, but only the Kickstarter backers will ever hear that one. And in fact it was listening to that recording that convinced me that the old one just had to go.

But now I’ve gone and picked myself up an acoustic guitar with a built-in pickup. I know, the wonders of technology, right? Since my house is rarely quiet enough to use a microphone these days, this is an especially important feature. And now that I have it, my mind’s already started to run along with possibilities for adding this sound into the mix. It will definitely be in use on Results Not Typical, as I’ve already got three songs tracked out waiting for it. But I’m also thinking past this odd little project into how I could use it in other stuff. Being mostly a keyboard player that dabbles in electric guitars, I look forward to the challenge of incorporating this instrument into more of my music.

After all, why limit myself to just a bunch of sinewaves?