Last fall, I took a week off and recorded an album. Pretty much start-to-finish, soup-to-nuts (please e-mail me if you even know what that means), from the vaguest ideas to ready for mixing product. Seven days.
There was a warm, sunny Saturday last summer, that I spent an hour or two, rocking out on the guitar. I was all plugged in to the PC, my drum machine (the Alesis SR-16) and I. Basically, I would program a quick little beat and let it loop forever and jam out on top of it. Once I got something repeating, I would hit record and play for a minute or two. Sometimes there were two or three parts that had evolved in that minute of recording, sometimes it was a barebones sketch. I made it through nine ideas in a very short amount of time.
When the time came (when I was about to lose my mind at work and had to get away for a week before the holidays came and ushered me on into the land of the dead), I scheduled a week off, a week which, I knew the roommate was going to be on a 10 day tour of the northeast, and got down to business.
The plan was to develop these nine song ideas, write lyrics, and record them all before I had to go back to work. This was one tall order. But, my old reputation of eating coffee and pooping out songs was on the line. This was the challenge that I set for myself and one that I was going to win.
There was another song idea, pretty much a completed guitar line in my brain, that I could never do anything with. This starts the album. If you would like to listen along while you read, click the individual links to the songs as you go, or click here to open up the jukebox.
This, as all of the songs on the album, started out as a series of drum machine beats, one for each part of the song. I hooked up the midi cables and recorded a midi track of each of the song sections into Acid Pro. Then I arranged them to match the song structure that I had laid out previously.
I found a really good, free VST instrument, a bass guitar, which I then programmed in Acid Pro to match the individual parts of the song. Really basic stuff at this point. I found another really sweet Rhodes piano VST instrument and programmed a basic lead melody.
I then mixed the tracks down to a single stereo mix WAV file and opened it in Audition, to record the real instruments on. I hate the way that Acid records audio. I don't know why it has to be so awkward. They designed the loop and sample stuff so well. You would think that they never expected anyone to plug in a mic.
This groove of this song idea really reminded me of "Miss You" by the Rolling Stones... It doesn't sound anything like it, I know, but that's what you get when you paint in broad strokes and let intuition and instinct fill in the gaps as you go. The song has a real rocking sound to it, but put that disco beat behind it and the whole thing chugs along and before you know it, you're doing the hustle.
"Whats a matta wichoo boy?"
I recorded the guitars, did some cleaning up and mixing, put in a couple of bass and drum fills here and there to break up the monotony, then found myself standing in front of a microphone with a pencil and pad of paper. Time for some words.
I had gotten a phone call from a familiar friend, who always had some stupid crap going on. This person always had a habit of inviting bad drama into their lives, putting the best spin on it, finding some other way to explain it away. This ended up being the basis for "Everything's Great".
My favorite line, and hopefully what works as the payoff in resolving the theme of the song is at the end:
You called to say you lost face. God, I hope it matters. I would love to say everything's great.
I don't invite that stuff into my life. I do everything to avoid it. Still, I don't ever find myself telling everyone how well I'm doing at every turn. I feel normal. I'm doing normal. Thanks for asking.
It's interesting to note, after this one, that the following nine songs were recorded in the order that they were played and conceived that afternoon last summer.
I won't repeat myself about the process here. Each of the songs on the album started the same way. A programmed drum beat dumped into Acid, a programmed bass track, into Audition for the guitars.
When it came time to sing vocals and write lyrics for this one, I found myself a bit stumped. Everything's Great came out so quickly and easily, I was afraid I had jinxed myself and the week off would be wasted. The guitar line and melody of the verse reminded me (very closely, at the time) of some totally crappy song in a video game that I had played years before, Flat Out. I don't know which song it is, but the movement is pretty much the same. You research it, I don't care. I ain't a skairt.
The best line is the chorus:
Endless chatter, it muddies my water. It fractures my patterns, makes new ones.
This is where it got interesting. During the first weekend off on the break, I had a nasty break up that was rooted in the whole taking a week off to record an album thing... Taking a week off from everything but the girl was OK, but take the idea further than that and you've got trouble. Then you don't have any problems at all. The lyrics pretty much speak for themselves.
Calm down. It's all right.
The live recording portion of the process features a guiro, which I had owned for a while and never used. It's really hard to play in time, but after many takes, I pulled it off. Tambourines galore in the post chorus. I was showing off a bit, on a high from pulling off the guiro thing :)
Good night. Sleep well. Look where you found yourself.
This track, from the time I played the guitar line last summer, SCREAMED of a White Stripes rip off. When programming the drums, I decided to fully embrace the concept and did my best Meg White impression. I would just like to point out, she's my least favorite drummer of all time. I mean, really... Come on. Also, I got the crappiest distortion pedal guitar sound that I could find. That would be the Boss DS-1 with self-installed Keeley "All Seeing Eye" mod done to it, Tone on full treble, distortion at about 12 O'clock.
When I started singing, it was on the subject of ripping off the White Stripes. The track ended up being called "Sorry, Jack", named for White Stripes' Jack White.
Can you tell me who I should apologize to?
If you have ever heard the White Stripes, though, you understand the next line:
I'm thinking Page & Plant.
And that got me thinking, lots of the songs that made Led Zeppelin famous are either covers or very, very direct copies of existing material:
But wait! Hold up! Weren't you playing covers then, too?
Then it dawned on me, I was singing a close relative of the melody to "Sunshine of Your Love" by Cream, hence:
This melody is Cream-y
Then comes a turn in the guitar that is straight up Black Sabbath, hence:
TONY IOMMI!
I love it. The idea that rock & roll eats itself and poops out equally good rock & roll is awesome to me. I initially felt bad about ripping off the White Stripes, but it all turned out OK. Since then, on a side note, I have listened to every White Stripes track, trying to figure out which song it was, exactly, that I ripped off and I can't find one. I think it was more the general "idea" of what the White Stripes sound like that caught my ear in what I was playing.
My Metallica song. It's so funny going back and listening to these recordings, as I put these things into words. It doesn't sound anything like Metallica. There is a familiar harmonizing of the lead guitars in the middle of the song... I'll give you that. But there is also a nice piano going there too. They never pulled in a piano that I can think of. You can hear the edge on my voice, though. I was going for it.
A day or two into the break up at this point, processing information, getting some feelings out of the way and communicating what was going on in my head, rehashing the events of that evening...
You found the nerve to call me selfish, well, sure. I'm thinking only of me.
This was the first and only appearance of my Uber Metal pedal on the album. The rest of the songs feature the brilliant OCD pedal.
These next two songs, I was convinced at the time, were note-for-note Queens of the Stoneage rip offs. Again, I have gone through their entire catalog and can't find a single song that either one actually resembles. It's again the idea, the feeling of the song that is in question...
Basically, I was addressing myself, my patterns, as in track two, writing about the week and the experience.
Hey, bed hair. Why don't you clean yourself? Why don't you go outside?
Time as a commodity. Vacation break. Go be productive. Quit playing this game.
I felt I needed to mention that Left 4 Dead, a game that I had pre-ordered on Steam, was released two or three days into the vacation break. I found myself playing the game instead of playing the guitar. Eating Twizzlers and shooting zombies... You can see the allure.
It's funny, listening to the lyrics as the week progresses, the stages I was going through, dealing with the break up.
The time has come to address the issue. So let's get moving on. Forward, onward progress to a resolution.
This was the second of the Queens of the Stoneage songs. Again, it doesn't actually sound like them at all. That's just the way it works in my head.
There is a nice, little, cheesy guitar solo-ish interlude in between each of the verses. That's not something I normally do. Nice tambourine action, too.
This and the previous song feel like down-time to me, in the middle of the album. If there is a low-point, I would say it's here. I always think that, going into these songs. Then I end up enjoying them.
What a week it has been, the best possible considering.
The lyrics and this album often touch on that style of movie making, where the main character turns to the camera from time to time, directly addressing the audience. You know, like Kuffs.
I've seen shades of myself I hardly recognize; it's been so long.
I ended up crediting this album to "The James Machine" once it was all said and done. I had recorded under my real life name on the last few things I had done, because I didn't feel like any of the monikers were making sense anymore. This project got back to the roots of what it is that I do and have always done, and it just felt right.
It's good to see you, old friend and nemesis. Come sit and reminisce.
Back to using the free Rhodes-type electric piano VST here. It holds down the lead well.
Don't forget, next week, it's possible to feel this. To be this way.
There was such a feeling in the air. I felt like I had been working out or something. Parts of my brain, body, and voice were being strained that hadn't been used in years. My back was sore from singing. That doesn't even make any sense at all. All of the music that I have played and songs that I have written and other creative endeavors for years have been so well-planned and thought out in advance. This whole project was completely instinctual. It was a relief, in a big way.
Plus, I wasn't going to work every morning at too early.
This song has a really haunting sound about it. I like it.
I cheated a little bit on this one. I was about to throw this song away completely, because it was so uninspired. I didn't feel anything for it. It kind of sounded like a Beck song from the Mellow Gold era.
I didn't have any clue as to what to do with it. I originally recorded a whole song's worth of random statements, spoken, along with some rhythmic gibberish, and reversed it. Planning to make an instrumental track with weird backward crap going all through it.
Once I finished the last track of the album, on Sunday afternoon, before going back to work on Monday, I felt dread about this song and revisited it, knowing I could muscle something out that was better than the backward crap that I did originally.
The song opens with the only remnant of the original recording:
The next to last song -- backward.
It's called a waste, what I was doing. Throwing away this song. Backward lyrics are funny, maybe once.
But now I feel I've got another one in me. I just need to squeeze it out, if I can pull it off, I will.
I think I was actually folding laundry as I was humming out the tune and working out the phrasing and lyrics.
But now I feel I've got another one in me. Whether it's good or not, if I can pull it off, I will.
There was a place in the original recording where I repeated "Random Crap. Random Crap. Random Crap. Random Crap." which also was referenced in the final product. The phrasing and everything was the same:
It's uninspired, but over random crap. An improvement, true, but over random crap.
One of the best written songs that I know is "Hook" by Blues Traveler. He just lays it all out there and puts it into words. And you have probably never noticed what that song is actually about.
Need to appear invested and enunciate. How was that?
This, being the last song to write and record, probably got a little less attention than it would have if it were earlier in the album.
The song opens with an incredibly difficult to program drum fill... Each note was painstakingly plotted, velocities and volumes set, stereo panning, etc. to make it sound less drum machiney. It came together pretty well, I think.
This is a pretty hooky little number, a surprise, coming this late in the week, for something to come out and shine. I didn't have anything left to say. I didn't have anything to write about.
As a theme, I posed a question. I wrote about posing a question. Not actually ever asking the question, or even asking what it was. Just asking. Or saying. Or whatever. I don't know.
Even at the low points of this album, I still enjoy listening to it. Over and over. Sometimes three or four times, back to back. I think that is one of the benefits of just writing completely off the cuff... The guitar stuff that I played was in the moment, not planned, not contrived in any way. Just relying purely on instinct.
At last, I find out, I've been asking myself why, not what's the question. I never knew what I was asking.
I went back, once all the songs were recorded, and worked some intricacies into the bass and drums, to make them less repetitious. Then I mixed and mixed and mixed. I have had somewhere in the neighborhood of 14 mixes of all of these songs.
Every time I made a new mix, I made a new mix of all ten songs. Applying the exact same settings to each of them. That's the thing that I have missed in all these years of piece-meal recordings, is the continuity from one song to the next. When I sit down and record an album, I want it to sound as such.
I want it to sound like I didn't change guitar strings or move the mic stands from one song to the next.
I feel like I achieved that goal here. I hope you enjoy listening to it. I thoroughly enjoyed making it.