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2004-06-11 - 1:07 a.m.
I like my beats with knock
A few Saturdays ago, I headed down to Takoma Park again to record with Mat. We booked time for the whole weekend, so we could get more done, and I crashed on their floor one night. That night they had a BBQ and had some people over, so we didn’t get much done that day, we only recorded for a couple hours, but it was a good starting point for the next day. The last time we recorded was back in March while I was on spring break, and for maybe a week or two after those sessions I kept writing and working on demos, but after that I got wrapped up in school stuff, and stayed busy right up through finals and the end of the semester. So there was about a month that I didn’t really touch my 8-track or keyboard at all. And I didn’t really get back in the groove until a few days before that weekend. But in those couple days before going back to Mat’s studio, I ended up getting together a new song that I was really excited about, which was more or less 2 or 3 different keyboard parts that I’d written a while ago, and suddenly realized could fit together really well, and it all came together beautifully. So I was pretty hyped, and we started working on it as soon as I got there the first day. I’d only played the melody over drum machine patters on the demo, so I pretty much only had an idea for the live drum arrangement in my head. So after we got my kit set up, I started tooling around with it for a few minutes, until I felt like I had something. So we decided to make a go of it, and Mat hit record and wham bam, I got it on the first take. I wasn’t sure right away if there weren’t any mistakes or problems, but we listened to it a few times, and it really just had an urgency I knew I’d be a fool to try and replicate when I pretty much had what I needed already. So that was pretty satisfying. So far I’ve been pretty good about getting things down without a ton of takes, but for a drum track I’d never played before but in my head, it was a pleasant surprise to get it out that quickly. We didn’t do much else that day because I wanted to go check out Atomic Music and shop for a tom-tom. My Zuul bandmates had been hassling me about needing toms on my set for some time now, and I was itching for one myself but had had no luck with most of the stores I’d looked at. It seems like everyone sells only whole kits, no seperate toms. But Atomic has lots of second hand stuff, so I was bound to have better luck there. I’d never been there before, and I was kind of surprised at how disorganized it was. It was really hard to get service, maybe it was just a busy Saturday, I don’t know. But Mat helped me pick out a nice Ludwig tom. They couldn’t help me with new heads or a stand for it, though, so we weren’t able to test it out that weekend. We had a good BBQ and hung out for the rest of the night. Then on Sunday we got back on track. I felt a little underprepared because I didn’t have a big pile of stuff I was sure I was ready to work on, but we managed to fill the day with productive stuff. We laid down a bunch of keyboards on the new song, and while I’m not sure we got the right tone for the lead, I at least laid down the groundwork so that if I decide to re-do it, I know what I want. The problem is that I play keyboard but so much of the stuff I come up with is inspired by guitar songs that I can never quite replicate. So I might get a guitarist to play some stuff at some point, but I’m kind of stubborn at this point about playing everything myself. Eventually, I want to include other musicians in what I’m doing, but for now I feel like I’m really testing my own limits, and if I bring anyone else into the process it’ll throw it off. Plus I’m a control freak. Mat’s really good to work with, though, considering how accustomed I am to working alone, he’s helpful but hands off enough that I’m comfortable. I think it’s funny that he says I’m one of the most prepared people he’s had in his studio; really all my songs are pretty much works in progress at this point. I just come in and lay down what I do have, usually at least the drums and a main synth line, and hope that next time I’ll have more to add. I want to do vocals, but I’ve really been procrastinating on getting together lyrics and demoing vocals. I’m really just afraid of my voice, and kind of got out of the habit or writing lyrics for too long. But lately I’ve been more inspired in that department. Mat and Emily are moving in July, so in a few weeks he’s going to shut down the studio for a couple months during the transition to the new house. Hopefully I’ll get in at least one or two sessions before then. At the very least, I want to have a mixing session so we can get rough mixes of everything we’ve done so far onto CD I can take home and listen to and get a firm grasp on what we’ve got. We’ve basically got 10 or 11 songs on the ADAT so far. Probably about half of them haven’t been filled out yet, just drums and maybe a bassline or something, but the other half have a bunch of stuff tracked and are somewhere near where they need to be. Right now I’m pretty hopeful that by the end of the year I’ll have enough finished tracks to release a record as Paragraphs in 2005 on Olympus Mons Records. Mat recently got confirmation that he’s going to release an album of new material by Mark De Gli Antoni and Tempo Team, a collaboration with a couple of his former Soul Coughing bandmates. It’s really a coup for an upstart label like us to get to work with those guys and it’s exciting stuff to contemplate about the future. -al
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