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]

lemme ax you guys this: how do you go about changing up your normal shit?

3. Pretend to be some one else, i.e., I am a middle school kid who is just learning to play but loves it, or I'm a 60 year old session guy from Memphis...

Don't tell anybody , but my band is imaginary. Sure, when I want to do it live I get together a few folks who will put up with my shit and we work some stuff out, but for recording (even some "live" recordings) it's all me pretending to be other people. All of the "official" members have names and faces and personallities and different influences. There's some overlap, of course, and sometimes we switch up instruments. For example, sometimes I play bass, and it tends to be a little straighter, more Cure influenced. Our main bassist, though, is (of course) a hot chick named Bill Ann. She learned to play bass emulating John Nichols from Low, and is way into deep down dirty dub music.

Other techiniques I use sometimes:

Start the song with some basic rhythm guitar thing. Then overdub something a bit more sparse, a more melodic/harmonic kind of thing. Then mute the basic track and overdub something else playing off of the last overdub. Then mute that first overdub and play something off of the second. Or leave them all going for the whole time, and keep trying to find the spaces which haven't been filled yet, and then strip out all but the last couple tracks.

Play a part with the "wrong" instrument, in the "wrong" octave.

Something I do a lot of on guitar: Write a part with full chords, arpeggios across the neck, or whatever. Then break it down and record that part using only one or two strings per track. Especially with more off-beat arpeggio type things, trying to hit just one string one time in a measure on an off-beat can completely change the way I feel the thing. Often the ways that I fail to accomplish this turn out to be some pretty cool parts by themselves.

[Flight Feathers]

Don't tell anybody , but my band is imaginary. Sure, when I want to do it live I get together a few folks who will put up with my shit and we work some stuff out, but for recording (even some "live" recordings) it's all me pretending to be other people. All of the "official" members have names and faces and personallities and different influences. There's some overlap, of course, and sometimes we switch up instruments. For example, sometimes I play bass, and it tends to be a little straighter, more Cure influenced. Our main bassist, though, is (of course) a hot chick named Bill Ann. She learned to play bass emulating John Nichols from Low, and is way into deep down dirty dub music.

I think we are in the same band!

Start the song with some basic rhythm guitar thing. Then overdub something a bit more sparse, a more melodic/harmonic kind of thing. Then mute the basic track and overdub something else playing off of the last overdub. Then mute that first overdub and play something off of the second. Or leave them all going for the whole time, and keep trying to find the spaces which haven't been filled yet, and then strip out all but the last couple tracks.

This is an excellent idea.

[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.

[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