fandangle

[fandangle]

creamstar, a creative journey

I’ve had that lydian riff bouncing around in my head for a couple of years, and have never found a suitable environment for it. I delighted at the outlines of the task, which required (in the style of Paul Mac’s Cataplexy) a contrasting B section which is decidedly murkier and otherworldly. I’ve been home alone since Saturday, and it’s turned out to be a great environment to compose in.

I wanted to have something to show for the Monday tutorial, so I decided to get cracking on Sunday. I actually spent the first 30 minutes or so attempting to learn and record the Cataplexy riff on the bass guitar, before realising that wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing. I had however, recorded a snippit of drums, and ended up using that looping that sample for the majority of the production time as my rhythmic foundation, before replacing it with a single take later on Tuesday.

The drum beat was a laid back, swung, typical Sticky Fingers style affair. I’ve become a real fan of dropping the hats on beats 1 and 3 in effort to ape a reggae beat. Using a four-bar loop of that as a basis, I recorded the A section on the other instruments. First was the rhythm guitar. I initially recorded single long strums of each chord for the A section, which ended up lasting about 1 minute and 30 seconds. I then recorded a bass track, then swapped back to the guitar to record a new, more ‘strummy’ and energetic take, replacing the original one.

I then started messing around with some Ableton plugins for the two tracks I had. I used Clean Guitar Amp for both since I didn’t want to use anything too heavy or obnoxious in the middleground. I also threw the Crossover Phaser onto the guitar, as I’ve always like the wavyness of a phaser. I decided to now record the lead guitar. I messed around playing over what I had recorded and settled on Lead With Cabinet, the same Crossover Phaser, and a chorus plugin called Flounch. This gave me a crazy, psychedelic tone that I really liked, and so I laid down the lead track. 

Towards the end of the Sunday night I wanted to create some kind of background sound to introduce and end the track, so I recorded a take on the guitar consisting of me drumming on the guitar neck with my fingers for the whole A section. After running this through... yet another Crossover Phaser, it took on a compelling, almost sentient nature, and I thought it would work well as a background layer for the whole section. I’d been tapping on the tonic note, but towards the end of the take I started tapping on the flat 2. Unknowingly to me, this would provide the basis for the B section I would write on Tuesday. 

Monday’s seminar made clear to me the importance of doubling in order to assert an idea as opposed to raising the volume. Damian also gave me some very helpful feedback in regards to EQing. After the seminar was over, I spent the rest of Monday applying what i had learnt. I recorded another rhythm guitar track then split them both on the centre left and right sides. I did the same with tapping sound - creating a new track by swapping the first and second halves around, and placing them on the right and left sides. It was amazing just how much of a difference this made. I placed the bass, lead guitar and drums in the middle. I was still anxious about writing a B section.

On Tuesday I finally cracked it. The aforementioned tapping on the flat 2 turned out to be a basis for a perfectly suited B section. I started jamming on the bass guitar trying to come up with a progression, but ended up with this weird, bouncy, Korn-style vamp that stuck around the tonic. When composing the rhythm guitar parts, I liked the sound of the F to E for the first half of the riff, but wanted something weirder for the second half, settling on G to E. The lead guitar line bends up from G to G# so it fits quite well. This creates some excellent tension with low F of the bass guitar. I was really happy with this section, and how I had used the tapping track to linking the sections together. I then figured out a transition back in to the A section using a bass riff combined with the tapping, then copied and pasted the A section there to see how it would sound. Happy with the overall structure of the song, I went to sleep, ready to re-record all the parts on Wednesday.

On Wednesday the first thing I did was record a full drum part. Due to the sometimes irrationally binary nature of my Roland kit’s hi-hat pedal, this took about five or six attempts. I eventually settled on a pretty simple beat, and tried to pull off a reggae-style one-drop beat during the chorus, but wasn’t too fussed about caching all of them. The drums present the one problem that I haven’t found a solution around, in regards to the mixing. I have a midi-usb adaptor for the kit, but have been unable to get it working nice with Ableton thus far. It’s not ideal, but I’ve been using a standard guitar lead to record the inbuilt sounds of the kit, which are quite good. I avoided using toms completely, yet the main problem is that I can’t separate the hats out into the left/right channels - they are stuck in the middle with the snare and bass. For this reason I thought the laid back simple beat was most ideal, as the hats are not super complex. 

I then recorded a new bass track, and new rhythm guitar tracks. At this point however the guitars had started to sound a bit harsh and brittle to my ears. I had been using my seymour duncan-equipped squier strat up to this point for the all the guitar sounds, but decided to try my dusty old Epiphone Les Paul Plus for the rhythm guitar tracks. This sounded much better, as the guitar lent the chords more warmth and blended together very smoothly. When it came to re-recording the lead track, I decided to keep what I had already recorded and simply do a take for the return of the A section. I wanted this time to be a bit different, so played a more improvised line - the guitar was cranked slightly louder as well.

Overall, it’s been a great experience writing this song, working out the kinks, and solving problems along the way. It’s been fun using a background layer to connect sections that I otherwise would have considered worlds apart and un-chord-progressionable. I didn’t know a thing about mixing or ever considered placing sounds in suitable areas before, and this track is easily the most listenable thing I’ve ever made, so I’m very grateful and happy that I could do this.