the process, show and tell

[Gregg Juke]

Double-post self-deleted.

GJ

[Gregg Juke]

That stuff can work against you in weird ways, too, J. I remember doing the Steve Gadd "brushes on a tape box" thing on a bluesy-folk protest song once with a folk-rock group called the Dooleys. It was the perfect thing; bass was played like an upright (though electric), sparse acoustic guitar, growly vocal... Anyway, they all started to chime-in at once with "production tips," and eventually it was settled to/agreed upon that I should play absolutely no accents or fill type stuff with the brushes at all. "Just this great pulsing brush sound." I said, "hmmm, I not sure you really want that," but much to my chagrin, they insisted. So I played it perfectly straight with no accents or fills, just almost metronomically swishing brushes...

When the album was mixed and mastered, I was excited to hear all of the stuff we had done, and I really wanted to hear that tune. Listening; listening-- no brushes. "Hey guys, what happened?!?" "Oh, that. Well, you played it so straight, with no variation or accents at all, that it just kind of sounded like hiss or tape distortion in the mix. It was really distracting, so we took it out."

"Oh, yeah, too bad I didn't think of that."

GJ

[ashcat_lt]

[Flight Feathers]

[Smitty]

Great thread! Quite inspiring to hear other people's process.

@jgimbel: also being a graphic designer, I've also found a number of similarities in process.

My old band was power-pop kinda stuff, and the recording I'd do was just to demo new songs to get the idea across, mostly guitars and vocals and maybe some programmed drums if I thought our drummer needed um, "direction."

Now I'm way out in the country and am working up to some kind of solo project. The stuff I'm going for is going to be a lot more experimental and less straight forward (variable instrumentation and song length, not vocals-centered), so I need to alter my approach. I've been thinking a lot about setup and process, and my definite goals are:

1) All tools ready and at hand at all times. Every instrument plugged in and turned on, everything ready to go. For me, truly being in the zone of creating musically is like being in the zone during sex... it doesn't take a lot of distraction to totally ruin it (also I wish both would happen a bit more often...) If I have to stop mid-idea and page through a bunch of banks of presets or go find the right adapter in a disorganized box, there goes the idea.

2) Record everything. For some reason it's ingrained in me that recording is what happens when you've got everything finished and figured out. If I grew up committing to tape or something I guess this would make sense, but I didn't. I've lost a lot of good spontaneous moments that I was unable to recreate later because I didn't record them the first time.

3) There are no rules. This is my big one, and to constantly remind myself I'm going to make a sign that says exactly this and put it up in a prominent place in my recording cave in an effort to derail myself out of my comfort zone. I need to experiment, to hook things up differently, to try new approaches constantly (Maybe I'll buy an Oblique Strategies deck and put up a picture of Brian Eno as well).

That's the plan. Maybe I'll repost once I get rolling.
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"I try to hate all my gear equally at all times to keep the balance of power in my favor." - Brad Sucks

*Recording pursuits on impulse power whilst I bust my ass building up a small organic farm in beautiful rural Ohio.

[dsw]

I start with the words.
Usually the first line inspires the rest of the song.
Once I have a verse and a chorus I start to conceptualize the chords and melody.
When the song is done I show it to the band.
Then we go into studio and record it.
Then mix, then master etc....

then give it away free
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"Analog smells like thrift stores. Digital smells like tiny hands from far away." - O-it-hz

musicians are fuckers, but even worse are people who like musicians, they're total fuckers.