Tag Archives: recording

Usual Rubbish

Punch out.

I think it’s CMD-O or CMD-SHIFT-O, something like that. No? Okay, try CMD-ALT-5. Do it again. Okay, now divide 87 into 214 and multiply the dividend by the square-root of fuck-all. Jesus!

That was a bit of a tantrum, I admit it. It’s just that I’m living in the wrong freaking century, that’s all. I’m from that period in history when people did different things for a living and those things all looked different – the doctor had a stethoscope and a mirror on her forehead, the accountant an adding machine and a legal pad, and the musician a freaking guitar. Now everybody’s sitting in front of a computer, pecking at keys randomly and hoping for some elusive result. Smarty alec kids! Get off my lawn!

Matt and I are in production on another tranche of songs, and it’s taking a while because we’re transitioning between recording systems. Now we’re using a computer-based DAW instead of a proprietary hard disk system, and well … I miss the simplicity of just pressing record and punching stop. Those were the days, right? (Well … they were days.) Our autopunch back then was Marvin (my personal robot assistant) with his claw on the console and a complex series of eyebrow movements. What could possibly go wrong? (Listen to some of our albums and you’ll find out.)

Uh, dude ... Thanks, but no thanks.Right now we’re kind of winging it, I admit … though that’s a bit more considered a state than we’re usually in during recording sessions. I boot up the new system, punch a few keys, then start playing whatever instrument is called for – piano, sousaphone, kazoo, triangle, whatever – and realize a few moments later that nothing has been captured. Rinse and repeat. I need a team of scientists! And I don’t mean mad scientists – we’re all set on that score. If we were to ask Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, to reconfigure our studio, we would end up with something on the order of what Magic Alex threw together for the Beatles back in the Apple Records days, i.e., a decorative, non-functional studio full of flashing lights with a speaker for every track and other non sequitur features.

Well, we don’t want that. (No offense, Alex, wherever you are.) So if you’re looking for me, look for that guy sitting at a computer terminal.

Usual Rubbish

Knob turning.

That doesn’t sound right to me. Twist the knob a bit further. No, no – not that knob! The one below it. Give it a good twist. Wrong way! That sounds horrible. Try the next knob down.

Oh, man … these sound consoles are so confusing. All those knobs and buttons and sliders and levers, each one doing a whole different thing. And then there’s the analog/digital thing, so a lot of the knobs and switches are assignable, which means they do DIFFERENT things for DIFFERENT people. Holy shit, that’s complicated. My brain hurts.

You see … that’s the trouble when you spend most of your life writing and playing songs and very little of your life learning the complex technologies involved in putting those songs across. Like most musicians, our reaction is … you mean I have to learn TWO things? That’s outrageous! Double duty, indeed. (As you can see, we are truly in the mainstream of American thought and sensibility.) I think about this every time I listen to old tracks from our various albums and ramshackle collections of unreleased material. I remember the hours of pulling random levers, spinning random knobs, etc., that lead to the final product and I ask myself: How? How is it that it sounds like anything at all?

Too damn complex, Mitch ... Must be a reason that sound comes out of the speakers when you play our recordings. All I know is that we make noises, put them into machines, and voila. Maybe Mitch Macaphee goes in there after we’re done and fiddles around with the sound molecules, perhaps in hopes of precipitating some kind of sonic explosion. Perhaps not. (I know that there’s usually an subsequent economic explosion, or implosion, to put the matter more precisely.)

As you know, our process for writing songs is somewhat unorthodox. I’ve described it in these blog pages before. Matt pretty much writes songs in his sleep, which explains a lot. I tend to write best in the shower, but I usually don’t have much to show for it other than some sodden, blotchy shreds of paper.

Do what you do best; that’s what I was taught. Now if I can just work out exactly what that is.

Usual Rubbish

Song mill.

You looking for a song about the Crab Nebula? Yeah, we got that. How about one that mentions the Green Nematode? Uh-huh. You betcha.

There was a day when the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill used to churn out, well … hammers, day in and day out, first with steam power, then electricity. Now it’s an assembly line for weird songs about Green Nematodes and other stuff – a row of songwriting machines, powered by trail mix, bug juice, and pizza. No, you can’t build a house with these songs. You can’t drive a carpenter’s nail into a 2 by 4. You can’t tack up some dry wall in your uncle’s unfinished attic. In fact, the songs are pretty much useless … but they’re free. Free as a freaking bird.

Sorry for running on at the mouth. I always get like this when we’re finishing out a new batch. This week we’re mixing six new songs for the next Ned Trek episode, all of which are content-focused on the human brain and its many failings, particularly that singular example of the thinking organ that resides in the skull of Willard Mitt Romney, captain of the Free Enterprise. Most of the songs are written on that theme, anyhow. That’s a lot of brain music!

Here comes another song.Of course, we’re building them stick by stick, using the usual bailing wire, string, tape, toothpaste, and whatever else is handy. And, well … they sound it. These are homespun recordings, my friend. We’re not riding over to the Record Plant and laying down some serious tracks. No, sir … we march straight down to the hammer mill basement and bang on those pots and pans. We tune up the tired old strings on Matt’s Rickenbacher bass and start thumping along, hollering into distressed old condenser mics, cupping my superannuated headphones to our ears. Not a lot of nuances, friends. Not hardly.

So what the hell … when are you going to hear these numbers? Patience, my friends, patience. We are working as we speak. Watch this space!