This week’s song is a dark, cinematic one by my cousin Nate Graves (aka Kurtz). It’s a complex production – vocals, keyboards, squeeze box, violin, bass, and a ton of other synth sounds stirred into the mix. On top of that, the song has tempo and time signature changes. In other words, it was a blast to produce!

Let’s try the one where we
Feed the bears
Oh what love
Oh what terror
I will mix sugar
With blood
And feed, feed us
To the young

Uh oh, uh oh
Uh oh, uh oh
What is happening?
Uh oh, uh oh
Uh oh, uh oh
I am stuck again
Uh oh, uh oh
Uh oh, uh oh
Let’s try the one…

Let’s try the one where we
Shoot the gun
Oh what hell
Oh what fun
I’ll eat rocks
And shards of glass
Oh discomfort never lasts

Uh oh, uh oh
Uh oh, uh oh
What is happening?
Uh oh, uh oh
Uh oh, uh oh
I am stuck again
Uh oh, uh oh
Uh oh, uh oh
Let’s try the one

Where we bash our skulls
Up against the wall
What am I saying?
Which one is this thing?
The one where I-
Where we-
But wait
But please

I get thinner
I get faster
I get perfect
For disaster

Recording keys in Nate's basement

Nate’s been involved in a bunch of artistic projects worth checking out. Back in March he put out a futuristic concept album under the alias Kurtz:

Nate also produces avant-garde films with his brother Matt. The two of them are also members of the dissonant rock band With a Gun for a Face. Their stuff isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I think it’s all pretty fascinating and awesome.

Behind the Scenes

Our biggest challenge at first was figuring out how to do tempo changes while still keeping a metronome going. I’d messed around with that in Ableton Live once before, but this was the first time I actually used it for a song. It was really just a few steps of work though.

1. Recorded a scratch track of the whole song
2. Found the tempo of each section
3. Mapped out the whole song in Ableton with the tempo changes (using envelopes) so our metronome would be right on

After we got the basic keyboard part down, we went up to record Nate’s vocals in his attic recording room. He’s developed a pretty cool vocal technique of recording takes in a ton of different styles, all the way from yelling at the top of his lungs to whispering. That gave us a huge palette of vocal sounds to work with. We discovered that blending them all together turned out to sound really haunting and cool.

Recording squeeze box in the attic

Next came the layering on of effect instruments. Nate recorded single notes on his squeeze box, and we pitch shifted them as needed to add a little organic drone to parts of the song. We came up with a few more synth lines and a simple MIDI drum part that night.

Back at my place, I had one main task: make the chorus more intense. I happened upon an awesome sounding MIDI taiko drum (“taiko” actually just means “drum” in Japanese). So I came up with a pretty fast beat, using a lot of thunderous rolls. Then I tried to match that style with the bass part, and man, was my right arm dead after recording that chorus. It’s the most athletic bass strumming I’ve had to do.

After that I dusted off my violin, which I was excited to try out for Nate’s song. For the pre-chorus and the bridge, I recorded two harmonizing lines. Then I tried out an effect called col legno, where you rotate the bow and use the wooden part to tap the strings. It’s an eerie effect used in a lot of classical music to evoke skeletons, evil, etc. One of the best examples is in Gustav Holst’s Mars:

Sound like Star Wars to anyone else? Guaranteed John Williams listened to some Gustav Holst.

Anyways, it was a fun song to work on. Hopefully Nate and I will do some more collaborating in the future.

This week I recorded with two of my former roommates, Pat Boerner and his fiancé Brittany Miller. This is actually the first song Pat ever wrote and Brittany helped out with, and now years later it’s finally recorded!

Hey don’t you fret now I know you’ll make it
You’re feeling blue and your thoughts are racing
Just breathe in slow and let me squeeze my baby

Hey baby don’t wait too long to stop thinking
You keep so quiet, you’re not helping anybody
Well don’t be afraid, you can tell me

I don’t know why you keep me so far away
But I’ll wait, I’ll stay
Until you think you’ve got something to say
You keep me so far away
But I’ll wait, I’ll stay
Until you think you’ve got something to say

You’re so composed but I know you’re faking
You try to smile but your lips are shaking
So I’ll be here when you just can’t take it anymore

Hey baby don’t wait too long to stop thinking
You keep so quiet, you’re not helping anybody
Well don’t be afraid, you can tell me

I don’t know why you keep me so far away
But I’ll wait, I’ll stay
Until you think you’ve got something to say
You keep me so far away
But I’ll wait, I’ll stay
Until you think you’ve got something to say
Until you think you’ve got something to say
Cause if you think you’ve got something
Then say it to me baby
If you think you’ve got something to say
Think you’ve got something to say

Pat and Brittany have written and recorded several awesome songs, many for the SpinTunes songwriting contest (check out “Baby Go To Sleep” – one of my favorites). So I was excited to work with them and bounce ideas off of each other.

Pat and Brittany, clearly in awe at how awesome the song was sounding.

We started by recording pat’s piano part. I was considering recording the audio signal from Pat’s keyboard, but I decided instead to record only the MIDI signal from his keyboard. If you haven’t tried using MIDI, I highly recommend checking it out. Instead of recording the actual sounds from a keyboard, you record the raw data of which notes are pressed when. The old-school equivalent of MIDI is when people recorded piano rolls for player pianos. The sweet part about MIDI is that you can change the timing of notes, change the pitch of indiviual notes, or draw completely new notes in. You can also decide at any time what synth instrument you want to play the part.

The MIDI "piano roll"

So once we had the piano part down, we moved onto Pat’s vocals. He knew from his own recording experience that he would want to do a bunch of takes, so we ended up doing about seven of them. He pretty much nailed all of them, but it just gave me a bunch of different options for my “best of” mix that I did for the final vocal line.

Over the next few days, Pat recorded the trombone and trumpet lines, we assembled a MIDI drum track, I recorded the bass and guitar parts, and Brittany recorded the harmonies she wrote. It was that simple! Ha, if only. It took quite a bit of work to get all those parts recorded and mixed. The final count is 40 different instrument tracks, not including the takes we didn’t use. One night I stayed up til 2:30am recording the guitar, then woke up with an idea at 5:30am and recorded until I had to go into work. Totally worth it though.

Check back this week – my roommate Jeff Schwinghammer shot some behind the scenes footage, and is editing it as I type this post!

This past week I worked with filmmaker Jason P. Schumacher to record his debut solo song, “Secret Selves”:

Secret Selves
by Jason Schumacher

I’m so lonely
You’re the only one I’ve known
The only one I’ve shown
The way I am on the off days

No one knows the ways
No one knows those days
Our secret selves, on shelves
Tucked away

Time with you
Nothing to do get it back
And your lack of regret
has it just not surfaced yet

I’m so lonely
You’re the only one I’ve known
The only one I’ve shown
The way I am on the off days

Behind the Scenes

When I first asked Jason what his song would sound like, he was prepared to answer; he gave me a backing beat, a synth line, and a 14-song playlist for inspiration. His mix was filled with Tom Waits, Lykke Li, David Bowie, Primitive Radio Gods…actually a lot of music I hadn’t heard. I’m glad he also introduced me to Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne”. What a beautiful song.

Jason and his funky (as in strange-looking) bass

So with the overall idea of the song in mind, we recorded everything in one day, and I spent a bunch of time mixing it afterwards. Electronic songs are great fun for me though. If this wasn’t limited to a week, I could’ve toyed around forever just trying out different synth sounds.

I don’t want to bore you non-audio-nerds with details about all the effects I cooked up, but I thought I would share one cool thing Jason and I did that makes a huge difference in the song. I’m not even sure what to call it, but something like “the reverse tail method” is the best thing I can think of. First, Jason recorded individual chords on electric guitar. Then I reversed each one of them to make it sound like a series of waves that crest at the first beat of each measure. This effect is great for creating suspense and momentum into the next measure.

Reversing the electric guitar in Ableton Live. The top two tracks are the normal electric guitar chords (stereo panned), and the bottom two tracks are the reversed chords.

Take a listen to the guitar by itself:

Then the guitar in context with everything else:

I had a great time producing Jason’s first ever solo song. I believe this is actually the start to an EP that he will be putting out at some point in the future. Until then, if you need a Jason fix, check out some of his videos.

I kicked off my challenge to record a new artist each week with Tom Holmes, my friend from Valley Access Channels, and his friend Pete Eisenberg. Without further ado, here’s the song we recorded.

A Penny Around My Neck
by Pete Eisenberg

A penny around my neck, a place for you in my heart
Time and Life proceeded to try to tear us apart
Life’s funny like that, it will never cease to be.
I will always be there for you, you’ll always do the same for me

What if we never met? How much different would we be?
Sometimes I think about that and laugh, it helps me to believe
That we were brought together, a family to the core
It reminds me of this penny from 1964

Chorus:
It was the year we met the Beatles and surrounded by candles
Dylan taught them all how to turn on
He said “The national bank at a profit sold roadmaps for your soul”
Everybody was diggin’ that rock and roll

We convicted old Jack Ruby for killing a patsy
Malcolm left the nation of Islam
Mandela he was sentenced to serve his life inside
And Martin Luther King he won a Nobel peace prize

To Kill a Mockingbird won an academy award
And three Civil Rights Workers brought tears to our eyes

Have we come any further since that year?
A lot has changed between us but keep this one thing clear
I want you to know what this penny means to me
Hanging around my neck constantly

Chorus

A penny around my neck, a place for you near my heart
Time and Life proceeded to try to tear us apart
Life’s funny like that it will never cease to be
I will always be there for you, you’ll always be my lucky penny

I will always be there for you, and you’ll always be my lucky Penny!

Behind the Scenes

Here’s a short video that explains the story behind this song.

We recorded in a music room down in Pete’s basement. After turning the A/C off, it was actually a pretty good-sounding room. Between the carpet, the couch, and things on the walls there was very little echo.

My portable recording setup.

We started the song off by recording Pete’s guitar, the driving force of the song. His rhythm was really on, so against my usual instincts I decided to not force a metronome on him. I used two identical mics (Audio Technica 4040s), one over the sound hole and one over the fretboard. That way, I could later pan the two tracks left and right to give the guitar a fuller, stereo sound.

Pete recording guitar

For Pete’s vocals, I used the same mic as the guitar, but with a pop filter. I didn’t do any EQing to Pete’s voice, it’s just naturally super rich and awesome sounding.

Pete steps up to the mic

Looking back, it would have made much more sense to use a metronome from the beginning, because next I had Tom record the drum track. He could have easily looped his drum machine had we used a metronome.

But in the end his drum machine worked out great. I recorded both analog and MIDI signals, and I ended up scrapping the MIDI track in favor of the drum machine’s sounds. Tom recorded three separate drum tracks. First was a shaker, which I panned to the right in the final mix. Second was a ride cymbal, which I panned to the left. And third was the kick and snare drum track, which I kept in the center.

Tom and his drum machine

Next we recorded Tom’s bass line. To even out the bass volume from note to note, I used a lot of compression, much more than any other instrument in the song.

Tom getting into "serious bass player" mode

Next, we recorded two mandolin parts, mostly just because Pete has two of them! One was a standard mandolin, and the other was an octave mandolin. I swear, all you have to do to make an acoustic guitar song sound more sparkling and professional is put a mandolin part on top of it.

Pete and his octave mandolin

After I left Pete’s place and went to my producer’s cave in Minneapolis, I recorded a couple more tracks – the acoustic guitar solo and the vocal harmonies for the second chorus. It’s funny, my vocal track by itself sounds kind of flat and wussy, but blended with Pete’s voice it morphs to take on his inflection.

I had a lot of fun recording with these guys, and hopefully one of these days I’ll make it back out to Pete’s house to jam with them!