A Very Long Process

How time flies. Looking back at the posts here adds some additional perspective to the protracted process that making this record has been (over 2.5 years by my count). I can happily report that I have finished mixing on the record, waiting only for a few tweaks from mixing engineer Nadim Issa before sending that sucker along for mastering. I'm pleased with how things have come out overall. We set out to make an expensive-sounding record for very little money, and though our goal was slightly quixotic, I think we more or less met it. The proof will be in the pudding--in this case what it sounds like after mastering is complete (mastering engineer TBD)--but I'm hopeful the finished product will serve as a fitting document of the blood, sweat, tears involved in writing these songs, rehearsing them, and committing them to tape.

Listening to the mixes from the new record aka "Self Portrait with Headphones and Toaster Oven"

Nadim at Let 'Em In Music did a remarkable job engineering and mixing the record, and I think the final product reflects his abilities and versatility. I think I also grew a bit as a producer, becoming more confident and forthcoming in my ideas and opinions and in doing so helping ensure that the recordings matched the broader vision of the songs. I think Nadim and I made a solid team in the control room, and I hope he would agree. There's a level of attention to detail in the mixing that I'm simply not capable of on my own, and when I had something in mind for the mix he often had an elegant solution at the ready, and if that one didn't work there was always another one at his disposal. At the same time, I felt that I brought a conceptual understanding of the material that allowed me to guide our decision making towards furthering each song's essence.

It's interesting how the recording process was very additive. AH&S is a trio and I like that our live show is lean and mean, but somehow I felt like getting the tracks to have the right emotional impact required doing a fair bit of layering on the record, in some cases adding second and even third guitar parts, harmonies, and a surprising number of keyboard parts. Hell, I even added a breakbeat in "Steal" during a pause that I found to be energy-deflating on the record. This is interesting phenomenon in music, where sometimes capturing the energy of the live show requires a different approach in the studio. We also weren't afraid to experiment with weird effects/approaches in the mix, and once I established that I was game for that sort of thing Nadim brought many of his own ideas to the table on that end, so it felt quite collaborative.

I have to say, I think I've become quite good at finding keyboard sounds that embellish the music while staying nearly hidden in the mix, I used a number of organ sounds to that end as well as some synths and effecty sounds. I first became interested in using keyboards in that way upon listening to one of my favorite records, "The Curtain Hits the Cast" by Low. In some ways their most minimal record (and that says a lot for a band like Low), it actually incorporates a surprising number of keyboards. I didn't even notice this until probably my fourth listen through!

It is my hope that the finished record will be the tool we need to raise awareness about our music and I'm brainstorming ideas about how best to get it out there. No matter what, it will surely involve more shows, hopefully in front of audiences both new and old.

Does it all add up to a good record? I'm too close to it to really know. Sometimes I listen to it and am incredibly proud of what we've created, other times I get a sickening feeling that we didn't quite "get there." All involved certainly did the best they could, and we've learned a great deal that will certainly make our next outing that much better, but here's hoping that our point comes across on this album artistically, whether or not anyone actually likes it.

-Terry

A Little Night Music

I had a great time playing last night at Sullivan Hall, though it was stupidly late by the time we took the stage. Many thanks to all who stayed up that late on a weeknight for our benefit.  We debuted a "new" song, Shining Second, which is to say new to those who hadn't seen my solo shows over the winter.  I feel confident in saying that the song is a lot stronger with Daniel and Pat's contributions and has really come together nicely as an AH&S song.  I think it's likely that we'll be putting into regular rotation in our sets.  I figured I'd post the lyrics, since everyone always complains that they can't understand anything I say.

DISCLAIMER: I may or may not have actually said all the correct lyrics during the performance...

SHINING SECOND

Don't you care about what she'll find

Alone at night?

Don't you dare let the moment by

Blink of an eye

Know she'll try

To testify

Justified

To fall in line

Tell her story speak every line

The same every time

Amidst confusion will it remind

You of a shine

Crystalline

Brought to light

By open eyes

Gazing wide

Shining second but twicely wild

Voice of a child

She reads moments like you read signs

Call her a knight

Of fading light

Sanctified

By ancient right

Shine one more time

A Diversionary Tactic

I haven't gotten around to much in the way of updates here in a while, and I don't have time at the present moment, but looking ahead to my solo acoustic show tomorrow I thought I'd provide lyrics for future AH&S song "Rust." I've played this number at my last few acoustic shows and a few people have asked for the lyrics, so here goes:

RUST

Keep your eyes on the dust
Flaking off of the dust
Flee to high ground if you must
Wait to be released by

Cool waters rushing
Washing away the detritus
Of fallen machines
A wrong-headed dream
Of a metal savior

All returns to the ground
Biodegrading compounds
Things we thought we'd lost are found
Memories revealed by

Cool waters rushing
Washing away the detritus
Of fallen machines
A wrong-headed dream
Of a metal savior

[bridge]

In the quiet of the rain
I can hardly contain
Will to wash away the stain
Smiling joyfully while

Cool waters rush in
Washing away the detritus
Of fallen machines
A wrong-headed dream
Of a metal savior

A Substitution

As I alluded to in my previous post , "Answer" has taken the place of "10 Miles" as our second release.  It's more of a piece with Aloud than Ten Miles is, but certainly quite different from it in many ways and I hope it will help flesh out listeners' sense of our sound a bit.

Answer has a somewhat interesting history in that the opening/pre-verse riff (which I just call RIFF in the structure chart below) and verse riffs are quite old, dating back to high school.  I developed them contemporaneously, consciously aping the style of Sunny Day Real Estate on the verse riff in particular, and quickly situated them together, with a chorus sandwiched in between.  It often takes me weeks, sometimes months, for the pieces of a new song to come together.  In this particular instance, however, I never reached satisfaction.  I toyed with a few chorus riffs, landing on one that I would hang onto in the back of my head, but never felt good enough about it to bother putting the song forward to any bands I was in at the time.

Flash forward to 2010, when I'm trying to get a band together in the city.  I had convened a jam session with two friends (neither of whom would go on to be part of AHAS).  After running through Aloud, Scared and Steal as my little showcase of the material I was writing, someone said "what else?"  Not having anything really worked out, I pulled out the riffs and gave some vague instructions on how I thought it would be arranged.  Thankfully, both musicians either weren't listening or misunderstood my intent.  The bass player ended up continuing the chorus riff, a descending bass line, over the verse riff.  The drummer played the whole thing in double time (at inception I had imagined the whole thing at the slow, half-time tempo you hear in the chorus and bridge/outro now).  This revealed some new things.  While I can often be rather incorrigible with my compositions, I was very opening to re-imagining this one a bit given that it had never really come together for me. I still wanted the chorus riff to have a slow plodding feel, so I asked the drummer to try starting out with that and then switching to the double time feel when the verse riff came in.  Now things were really shaping up.

We played it through a few more times before I had one of those rare moments where one is able to  conjure a riff out of thin air and it works.  Since the verse and chorus tentatively had the same bass line (which itself evolved significantly from Pat's tinkering later on), I took the opportunity to dump that very mediocre chorus.  I stopped the jam for 5 minutes to contemplate where I thought the verse was actually leading and managed to come up with what is now the chorus riff.  I played it over a few times to figure out exactly what I was getting at, and then we ran the song again with the new segment.  I also conjured an accompanying melody to go along with it.  Initially the section was in straight 4, but after playing it a couple times that way, someone commented that it was boring and I tried to make it interesting by messing with time signatures a bit and adding a little liason at the end of the phrase.  The exact timing was refined later on my own, but the foundation was there.  I thought it would be interesting to try playing the chorus with a dropped quick beat on the second chord without actually changing the timing of the melody at all.  I follow with a dropped long beat during the liaison at the end of the phrase, giving a a mathematically elegant 8 - 7- 8 - 6 count.  This effect, while probably not noticeable to many listeners, makes the chorus riff and melody a bit more unpredictable and a bit less Billy Squire (with all due respect to the named).

The bridge section of the song was added later, pulled from my mental compendium of orphan riffs.  It adds a little intrigue at a point in the song where I was worried about it becoming cloying in its poppiness.  Not unlike Aloud, Answer has a slightly interesting structure in that it doesn't bring the chorus or verse back post-bridge, merely the teaser pre-verse.  The format is RIFF-VERSE-CHORUS-RIFF-VERSE-CHORUS-BRIDGE-RIFF.  This makes the bridge function more like a "B section" rather than a traditional bridge and gives the song a proggier feel, despite it only clocking in at about 3:30.  It's interesting how cutting something out, in this case a conventional return to the verse or chorus after the bridge, actually makes the song feel more expansive/grandiose.  It's calls to mind ever so slightly the mini-epics of Field Music, a band I much admire though hadn't yet discovered at the time of writing this particular song.  I also like how the song is bookended by what I'm calling the "RIFF," and I tried to lyrically bookend the song too with the first and last lines, which are sung over the aforementioned RIFF.

Enough about that.  Lyrics follow:

ANSWER

(intro)
It started off, I guess, fairly well...

(verse)
In the wake of what's become of our lives
It's hard to tell you that I tried
Called away, called away
I guess there's something I'm yet to find

(chorus)
Another answer there beyond the line
A new reaction nothing can outshine

(verse)
Do you remember when I used to talk like
I couldn't leave you if I tried?
No way, no way
Try to remember what it felt like

(chorus)
Another answer there beyond the line
A new reaction nothing can outshine

(bridge)
How far I go you're never far behind
Until I'm broken I won't let it slide
I can't reclaim the pieces that were mine

(outro)
All in all it went fairly well...

A Gratification, Delayed

I am pleased to report after a prolonged silence that the next AHAS track is on its way out for mastering.  It has been a particularly busy stretch for me, and my obligations outside of music have made it difficult to make time for the laborious mixing process over the last few months.  At long last however, after a graciously granted evening session last night, the next song is mixed and out the door.  With luck it'll be posted within a couple of weeks.

I know I had said that the next song would be "10 Miles," but that is no longer the case.  Instead, "Answer" will be the next one out of the gate.  Why the change of plan?  I was struggling mightily with 10 Miles as we were trying to pull it together.  The arrangement as it was performed was exceedingly simple and minimal and my initial thought was to keep it really stripped down, with a single guitar, and let the vocal carry the tune (it's a melody I'm relatively pleased with).  We tried various techniques to widen the single guitar by panning mics, adding reverb, or using a delayed signal panned opposite the source, but I ultimately found them all to make the guitar sound a bit "squishy" and lose most of its character and attack.  I ultimately decided to take some time and rethink the arrangement a bit.  After several long sessions at my own rehearsal space experimenting with keyboard and guitar sounds and trying to come up with stuff, I finally hit on some keyboard sounds that worked at the 11th hour, with a mixing/recording session scheduled for the following day.  I had also devised a washy, heavily delayed guitar sound with tremolo to play open ringing chords during the dramatic parts. Suddenly the song was taking some shape, and at the mixing session the following day I tracked the guitars and keyboards (using the patches I had already created) and started shaping the thing.  We also did some doubling of the vocals for emphasis (and help).

Long story short, the song is coming together really nicely now and I'd say is about 85% ready, but during this time we'd made significant progress on Answer and when push came to shove Pat and I decided it would be a better second release anyway.  I'm really pleased with how it came out for a song that I've previously been on the fence about, often considering it my weakest contribution to our repertoire.  I think it gained a lot from a brief practice session just before our initial tracking sessions.  Pat had been fussing with that bass line since day 1, never quite satisfied with what he was doing with it.  But he had finally settled on something he liked and I insisted that we go through it several times and really try to lock up the groove so that my kick hits would fall on his bass hits.  Not only did we get a better groove going, we nicely developed the contrast where the chord shifts during the verse by switching from an on-the-upbeat groove to an on-the-downbeat one, then back again.  I also had suggested a few rhythmic things I was doing on the kick during the chorus that Pat could follow on bass.  The thing just sounds a good deal tighter than it ever did before, and the sureness of the groove lets the melody propel the song.

I also threw in some complementary shaker and tambourine stuff during the half-time bridge section, giving it a nice chunky backbeat.  A little organ here and there rounds the thing out in what is arguably a less dense arrangement than Aloud, but still surprisingly challenging to balance.  That said, I do think the finished product exceeds our first effort sound-wise and I hope y'all will like it.

Stay tuned for more posts and a release date.

A Mark of Approval

As many of you have learned I have received the final master of "Aloud" and given it the okay for release tomorrow, January 30th.  It's been a long time coming and it's going to feel good to get that sucker posted, get a little feedback from some friends, and get cracking on the next mix.

I opted to have the mastering engineer keep the level on the cool side, which will let it really sing on a decent set of speakers/headphones with strong dynamics but may force some people to have to reach for the volume knob when it comes up after Rihanna on their iTunes.  It's a risk because, as many people know, the brain perceives louder things to sound "better."  One can simply turn them up of course, but the blistering increase in mastering levels over the last 15 years owes itself in part to the quest for that awesome first impression, that blast of sound that outshines everything played before it.  I'll leave a lecture on the loudness wars for another time...

Let's just say I'm really excited to have this music finally reaching some ears.  As I had alluded to earlier, downloads will be free in any format of your choice.  I will ask that anyone who enjoys the song please tell one other person about it, preferably someone who I don't know.  Social media is great too and posting links on facebook and all that can get things moving but I know for me a personal, verbal recommendation is a lot more likely to get me to listen to something.

Thanks to all who have provided me with much-needed support during this process.  I can only hope to make you proud.

I'll be posting the link to the song on facebook tomorrow morning. If you haven't "liked" our facebook page, now's a good time: facebook.com/ahypocriteandslanderer.

-Terry

A return to form

And so ends a short retreat from this medium.  I've been putting off a return, hoping to have some modest tidbit of news to report that could inject a little excitement into my project, and I hope that some kind of news regarding a finished "Aloud" is just around the corner, but in the meanwhile I thought I might flex my writing muscle a bit and see if I can't get back into blogging shape.

Following my recording sessions in early December, I'd taken a few weeks off from A Hypocrite & Slanderer, and then a couple more with the onset of the holiday season.  In fact, I scarcely visited my studio during the month of December.  The only musical endeavor indulged during that time was hastily getting together a cover of Joni Mitchell's "River" on acoustic guitar for a staff holiday party at my office (if I ever come up with a good way to video myself performing some of these acoustic numbers maybe I'd post them).

I'm trying to get back in the swing of things, running through some of my newer compositions to keep them fresh in my mind (the only place they are presently stored) and also reviewing some older tunes.  The next step will be going over some of the songs that we've tracked and ruminating on embellishments and such things that I might want to add to the mix.

The performing outfit of AH&C (Nov 2010-April 2011 or so) was a three-man unit, with me handling all guitar duties and vocals, not leaving much room to experiment with layering parts or anything like that.  I kind of like that formal purity of that set-up in many ways, so I waver on how much to forsake that on the recordings.  One of my most admired guitar players is J. Robbins, and his two albums with his trio Burning Airlines are a lesson in crafty guitar line writing.  With the seamless interleaving of rhythm chunks and lead riffs, he almost achieves a sort of trick-of-the-ear effect whereby one could easily be fooled into assuming there are two guitars going (he cheats in a few spots on the records with overdubs, but relatively little).  This is possible by letting the bass do some of the heavy lifting, and it leads to some of the more memorable bass lines in rock music.  The vocals, bass, and guitar summed  together give you enough harmonically that you never feel like anything's missing, yet there's a feeling of space, punctuated by heft when things collide together on some power chords.  It's an incredibly neat package with little wasted space.  I'm a fan of efficiency in music, and in fact it may be the one thing that many of very favorite bands have in common.  How else do you reconcile Low and Yes?  While Yes is certainly maligned for being boundless maximalism, at their best moments (say on Fragile and Close to the Edge) there a distinct neatness to their work; each player shows remarkable restraint and taste, sharing the space and playing off each other in an uncluttered fashion.

Despite this predilection, I do feel like my compositions can in some cases can be embellished in ways that help get across the tone I'm trying to convey and add interest in key places.  That was certainly the case for "Aloud," whose main riff in truth perhaps overstays its welcome a bit and I think gained some contour from evolving clean guitar lines during the verses and some synth-gadget futzing in the bridge.  I feel10 Miles calls for a more understated approach, but I would like to experiment with some ethereal "padding" to give a little depth, while maintaining the underlying texture of the clean electric guitar chords.

And I end with a Burning Airlines song, which may or may not actually validate my point.