picottprojectprocess-blog

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Country Joe's vocals and the exceptionally minimal production on this album was a particular inspiration for 'Honeysuckle Hindenburg'. Many of the vocal lines were inspired from this album and the idea of combining this type of psychedelic music with the alternative rock and punk music that I love is the creative idea that drives most of the music that I write.

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The main inspiration for the bass tone for all of the songs and delivery of my vocals (with joint honours going to the previously mentioned Zach de la Rocha and Courtney Barnett), Yak have been one of my favourite bands since first seeing them support Peace in 2016. There isn't enough time left before the deadline for me to list everything that I love about Yak so I'll leave you with this music video for your auditory pleasure.

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Choosing one song off of The Free The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan as an inspirational track for my acoustic writing was close to impossible, but I realistically had to choose 'Girl from the North Country' as it was virtually the direct inspiration for 'Anhedonia'. After playing around with my 5 string acoustic guitar set up, messing with tunings and swapping string gages I was playing this song when I accidently hit the opening chord for 'Anhedonia' and then the whole song simply fell out of my head in one go.

Where would any of us be without Bob Dylan?

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Rage Against The Machine is one of my biggest influences in most elements of my approach to song writing and production. All of their songs manage to contain so much power not only the instantly recognisable riffs but also their heavily political lyrical content and the passion in the delivery of Zack de la Rocha intricate and densely packed lyrics. Tom Morello also remains one of only 3 guitarist I can ever stomach full on guitar solos from (the others being Josh Homme and Annie Clarke) as his playing style doesn't revolve around intensely technical and theoretical playing, he's simply a master of experimentation and can crank sounds of guitars that seem demonically unnatural but make Rage Against The Machine's stand out identity unavoidable.

Rage was the first band that both Josh and I connected over our love for and has served as the main inspiration for us whenever we hit a wall. "What would Rage do?"- Josh Waterfield 2017

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A glimpse at the process employed for editing the drums in Honeysuckle, Psycho CEO and Queeny. Giving the kick drum’s Audix D6 even more of a powerful boost to its low end and boosting the snare’s high mids and annihilating it’s inhumane resonant frequencies, letting it ring strong throughout the mix.

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Recording bass for 'Honeysuckle Hindenburg' and 'Psycho CEO' was a fairly straight forward process. Electing to use a smaller room for the recording process in an attempt boost the presence of the bass recordings both of these songs recordings where very straight forward. With a Beta 52 and MD421 both pointed at the centre of the speaker cones to collect the low end and mid range of the amp's output and an RE20 pointed at a sound hole within the amp we managed to mix the sounds together to create a bass tone that we were happy with in the studio. We also had a U87 set up as a room mic that we ended up not using in the mix and the larger sound it gave seemed to impede on the large guitar field of sound.

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Our 4th song ‘Anhedonia’ (named after the exceptionally upbeat concept of being unable to feel all positive sensations) is a far softer acoustic song that I particularly wanted to include to provide the recordings we submitted with a wide range of material and genres to draw on. I felt my off beat 5 string acoustic guitar alterations and this songs fairly unconventional subject matter and lyrical content would give it a place among the others in the group, although this was not instantly the case. After beginning the recording process for this song in the large live room of Studio 2 in an attempt to use multiple microphones to give the acoustic guitar a warmer sound, to create contrast to the lyrical content, a choice made as if to lull in listeners at the start of the song before unleashing the verbal content, the sound that we were creating became to large an grandiose for such a delicate finger picking song. After writing a new closing section for the song I went into the far smaller vocal booth with the intent of recording vocals for some other songs and potentially demoing some acoustic guitars for this song. After Edward Nixon’s thoughts on cutting back the amount of microphones he used to record various instruments until he felt that he could confidently use that many microphones to get the sounds that he wanted I decided to try recording the acoustic guitar with simply one microphone, a Neuman TLM. I wasn’t satisfied with the entirety of the tone captured by the single microphone, but I liked the closed in feel of recording guitars in the small vocal booth. To this end I added a Neuman U87 in a figure of 8 polar pattern placed further down the fret board to capture both more of the guitar’s tone and a little more of the room’s ambience.

Linking this song with the other we were planning to submit did initially seem like it would be an issue, however it led to a very beneficial trait of the song collection as a whole, which was the use of similar lyrics and lyrical themes in multiple songs. During the process of recording this song I was in the process of putting the finishing touches on the lyrics for our other song ‘Queeny’ and came across the idea of cross using lyrics. Lyrics from ‘Anhedonia’ “Nothing’s easy and life’s long” appear in ‘Queeny’, as well as the metaphor of “food bank shrines”, taken from ‘Psycho CEO’. These small inter textual references helped to create a more cohesive piece as a whole as it gave the songs an inherent interweaving quality that I aim to carry forwards in both my production and writing from now on.

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Contrasting to the techniques employed while recording both ‘Honeysuckle Hindenburg’ and ‘Psycho CEO’ (formerly titled ‘Family Friendly Social Destruction’) to record the guitar for the third of the heavier songs in our repertoire, currently titled ‘Queeny’, we wanted to create a slightly different texture to the song and our chief way of creating this different tone was to re design the ways in which we recorded the previous two songs. Electing to keep our process of recording the drums for the song fairly similar, in terms of our choices in both microphone models and placements in an attempt to recreate the same tight back bone of the other two songs featuring a full drum kit, with the notable exception of switching from using two C414 microphones at cymbal height placed a few feet back from the drum kit to using two Neuman KM184′s as more traditional overheads, to allow us to record the full extent of the song’s large, scattered and booming drum section.

The song also felt as though it required a different technique in regards to recording the guitar sound inhabiting the song as both of the first two songs we recorded are fairly heavily lead by guitar throughout the entirety of the songs, however ‘Queeny’ (again only a working title...) prominently has the bass at the forefront of the song, excluding the song’s main riff. As a result of the difference in the structure of the songwriting it made more sense to opt for a singular guitar amplifier and as we were still after a muddier guitar tone to match with the feel of the other two songs in the same vein as ‘Queeny’ it seemed inherent to swap back to the Fender Hot Rod that we had decided not to use before to capture the blown out mid range guitar sound that I had imaged in my head and leave the lower frequencies of the track available for the bass guitar inhabit uninhibited.

For various sections of the song we placed the guitar amp in different sections of multiple rooms with a similar attitude to microphone type and placements to create the sense of a moving and contrasting guitar tone with the fluidity of the similar microphone to create a continuous yet evolving sound throughout the song. The image featured above shows the placement of the guitar amp during the delay and reverb filled second verse to create a juxtaposing clash between the lengthened guitar notes and a boxed in feel having the guitars packed in close to the wall. This did result in some unwanted resonant frequencies needing to be reduced once the mixing stage was underway and their being a need to automate the EQ adjustments in certain frequencies in sections where there were changes in guitar amp placements recorded on the same tracks, but dealing with the embellishments on the track after the recordings also aided in the tracks recorded in different locations being altogether more uniform in the one continuous piece, while still reflecting the changes in recording techniques that were put in place by moving the amplifiers during the recording process.

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After previously having worked with predominantly minimal guitar recording techniques, using SM57s, C414s and MD421s to capture single amplifiers for a tighter, more aggressive guitar sound and simply doubling up and overdubbing guitar tracks to gain the sound field that I aimed for, I wanted to experiment with more complex microphone and amplifier setups, mainly the use of multiple amplifiers which contrast between thicker valve amplifier tones and a solid state bass amplifier. After taking inspiration form Eric Valentine’s techniques recording Josh Homme’s guitar tones on Queens of the Stone Age’s album ‘Songs For The Deaf’ (pictured above in gorgeous black and white) I spent time experimenting with the exact placements and guitar amplifiers which I wanted to use. Being a large fan of Fender guitar amps and generally gravitating towards them for both recording and live purposes I began this process by attempting to sculpt my guitar tone by running my instrument through a Fender Hot Rod and into a Gallien Krueger solid state bass amp, but because I was aiming to create a natural over driven sounds through this recording by pushing the amps and guitars to make them provide as much of the overdrive as possible the Fender Hot Rod’s naturally ticker dirtier sound didn’t necessarily fit with the tone of being pushed to distort itself and remain the tone I was seeking for recording purposes. Because of this I opted to use a traditionally slightly cleaner amplifier the VOX AC30 at the start of the chain, before the bass amp, to lend itself more to the idea of creating the drive on the recordings through means other than pedals.

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As of yesterday our second song is now fully written. 'Family Friendly Social Destruction' blends a scratching, clawing vibe tone to the point of explosion with a naturally over driven guitar and amp sound, matched in the last third with a heavily saturated low fuzz shroud. These paired together with tightly held, yet still booming drums and lyrics evoking governmental protest sits the song comfortably with the other songs in the batch. This video is from the very end of our practise and gives a scope of the energy contained in the song.

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After sending him the first version on the sting he said that he would like the addition of a piano accompaniment to the track and that the two sections be separated more clearly into  very melancholic first half and a much more upbeat second half. To achieve what he wanted for the sting I added both piano and bass to the track to create the more melancholic feel that he desired for the first half of the motif and a much clearer resolve to the end of the track.

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After being approached by a friend making an advert for a charity to make music for him, I accepted with the desire to use the product that I created for material for this module. Being asked to create both a 30 second sting and a version of the same motif that was a few minutes long I set about creating the 30 second sting first, to give my friend working on the advert an idea of where I was going with the music so that he could give me some input on what he wanted and any changes that he’s like to be made.

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A very interesting and useful insight into the way in which Queens of the Stone Age created their guitar sound on their album 'Songs For The Deaf', this short documentary provides a deep and useful insight into a guitar tone and guitar playing that has been a large influence on both my writing and previous recording sessions. In particular the amount and variation in both the microphones used and the microphone placements that are demonstrated in this video are of a lot of interest to me. As I play my guitar through both a guitar amp and a bass amp simultaneously a range of microphones is a vital aspect of picking up all the different aspects my guitar. I created my own technique through experimentation in the studio of having both the guitar and bass guitar amplifiers being played simultaneously, as I would while playing live, but instead of having them facing forwards they're at a right angle to each other, with 2 microphones in front of each of the amps with a further microphone behind each of the amplifiers. I also had 2 room mics set up, one in front of the amps and one behind, both in a figure of 8 polar pattern to pick up the full effect of the sound moving around the room. One aspect of my set up that I didn't end up using was the addition of a DI box in between the signal chain of the two amplifiers. I wanted to attempt to get a dry signal of the sound of my effects pedals having gone through only the VOX AC30, but this proved to not sit particularly well with the mix of cleaner and more muddied sounds already captured by the microphones, although for other songs in the future the inclusion of a DI box at this point in the signal chain could prove to be a useful element of creating the guitar tone that I strive for.

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Controlling and setting up for ‘Heaven (andalltheshitthatcomeswithit)’ demo session, with a glimpse of guitar microphone rig in the background.

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Second demo for music being written for EP, might not make the cut but led to very beneficial studio experimentation with some unique set ups for recording guitars that will definitely be used throughout future recording processes.

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Inspirational Track #3

The Wytches first album ‘Annabel Dream Reader’ was recorded in just 2 days, mostly live, onto an 8 track tape machine. Because of this method of production the entire album sounds like a beautiful cacophony of moderately organised chaos. The song ‘Weights and Ties’ is my favourite song off of the album and while writing and recording a demo of a song written only a week ago I realised the influence that this song had over the way in which I was playing and recording my song ‘Heaven (andalltheshitthatcomeswithit)’. On their own the solo guitar tracks for each of the songs are somewhat clean and could be performed on their own as complete songs, but through the addition of other instrumentation, in the case of The Wytches bass and drums and in my case many layered guitar parts, the songs begin to morph into a more cluttered soundscape that creates a much more unique sound for the song than by simply getting down an acoustic recording with some vocals on top.

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Recording slide guitar for a song with the wondrous Bobby Scaife and experimenting with microphone set ups. Got some strange half muffled sounds seeping through our soft Americana cover of the Arctic Monkey’s ‘Suck It and See’. Many delicate harmonies to be layered on later.