This week I had the treat of recording with a band I just met. I saw Head Eclectic at the 331 Club and asked if they had a CD. Nothing! What a travesty. So I asked them to be a part of this song a week challenge, and the results are in.

A Minor Monster
by Head Eclectic

She checks her balances
Update the deficits
Print more money quick
Blueprint the Mazes

And as for the kids let ’em sleep
All their problems mapped out in their dreams
He looks behind him in the street
His Hands are full of sand but empty
But empty

Put all your problems on the kids
Just to see how they handle it

She gazes at them sleeping in bed
Strangely they remind her of herself

All their problems mapped out in the trees
He looks into the street
He’s red from all the heat

Who’s got the big red shoes, he asks
Kid, here’s looking at you
With the look in his eye…
Meet me at the very bottom

Josiah Quick – Vocals, Guitar
Wyatt Simmer – Bass
Thomas Myhre – Synth, Rhodes Piano
Joshua Perez – Drums

First up, Joshua on drums.

“A Minor Monster” challenged my mixing skills right away; it’s the first song of this challenge to have live drums. I used all five of my microphones (see this post for the specs) and tried to find the best spots to place them. I put one mic over the hi-hat, one near the floor tom and ride cymbal, one right next to the snare and high tom, and one right underneath the crash cymbal. I stuck my kick drum mic right into the soundhole, about 4 inches behind the beater.

We were having some trouble getting the snare to sound good. It had a ton of ugly ringing tones. Luckily Joshua had a trick up his sleeve. He rolled up small pieces of (clean) toilet paper and taped them right on the snare head. They were perfect improvised mutes.

After the drums were tracked, everyone plugged into my mixer.

Because the whole rest of the band is electric (aside from Josiah’s vocals), I had them plug in directly to my mixer, and we recorded everything simultaneously. Then later on, I ran Josiah’s direct guitar recording through his amp and re-recorded it. For the final electric guitar track, I ended up using a mix of both the amped recording and the direct-in recording (with a number of Ableton effects).

It was great working with these guys. Check them out next time they’re playing around the Twin Cities. facebook.com/headeclectic

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.