Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Creative

Drum Engineering w/Filmstar

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As if the Philly Geek Awards weren’t enough excitement for one weekend, I woke up on Saturday morning to face the daunting task of setting up our dining room as a drumming room for recording Filmstar.

After shopping around to some fantastic local studios last fall we realized we weren’t quite ready to drop major cash on pro recording for our first EP. To make studio time worthwhile you need to be playing solid takes of songs, know what you want them to sound like, and understand what you want to add.

Our first pass at that preparation was the Live @ Rehearsal style recording sessions for The Desperate Times EP last winter. For that session we recorded the band live with scratch vocals, going back to recut lead and backing vocals (plus acoustic guitar) on top of our full band takes.

I outdid my prior bests in mixing the EP, but I was flummoxed by the limitations of our recording process. Particularly, it was impossible to stitch together the best parts of multiple takes because we hadn’t recorded to a click track.

Thus, the mission for our new double A-side single: record perfectly in-tempo, click-tracked drums, as many times as we could withstand. [Read more…] about Drum Engineering w/Filmstar

all points of the compass

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Yesterday I took one of those personality type assessments that you frequently take at work, and for once I thought it told me something useful.

The assessment suggested our personalities are divided between four predominant focuses – clearing obstacles in the present, having a vision of the future state, caring about people and their skills, and collecting and analyzing data.

Some people were clearly one thing. I was sitting next to a warrior, who only cared about crossing things off his list, and across from a nurturer, who only cared about the people around her.

Unsurprisingly, I do not have a singular focus.

However, I was the only person in a room of two dozen who was primarily focused on the next steps. I’m a planner. I want to know how present actions will be reflected in the future.

I wasn’t only that. Right behind it was my path-clearing tendency – I consider what we can do now to get to those next steps, as well as my analysis-OCD –  gathering information and data to get to those next steps.

You’ll notice a missing element: people. It turns out, in this particular rubric I’m supposedly not too concerned with others.

If there was any doubt in my mind about the validity of that assessment, you don’t have to look much farther than Arcati Crisis rehearsal. I’m always pushing to learn more songs so we can play longer sets, record video to add to our web content, add more harmony to make our songs more complex, or any number of other things that will transform us. I am fixated on the future state.

I want to get those things done, and I have my data to support why we’re doing them (in the form of song binders, spreadsheets, rehearsal videos, etc).

What I don’t do is ask, “Are you having fun?” It just doesn’t come into the equation for me. I’m having fun if the song sounded good. When the songs don’t sound good I’m not having fun. If that happened all the time I wouldn’t show up. I assume that about everyone else.  And – whether they share my dogmatic future-focus or not – it’s true.

This week, the songs sounded great. I think we were all pretty happy.

It’s not that I don’t care about others. It’s that I assume that being on a team indicates interest, and the best thing I can do to keep you interested is to always be moving towards the next step in our evolution – which means doing great work in the present.

For being a band-leader, I think my personality fits me to a tee.

the tyranny of the click

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I have never been good at playing to a click track.

[For non-musicians, a click track is a simple rhythm track that plays in your ear while you record to help you keep time. It can be as simple as a beats-per-minute setting that plays a little “beep” for every passing beat.]

For a long time that was a function of other, more major issues in my guitar playing. I was dropping beats left and right and my strums were like the thrashes of a dying man. Not lining up with clicks was the least of my problems.

I still cannot quite play to a click track, even with half a lifetime to refine my playing. Now my problem is syncopation – I so very rarely strum on all the downbeats the click usually slides away from me as I play.

Why is the click so important?

First, it satisfies the musical leanings of my internal OCD Godzilla, who needs things to be both perfect and perfectly aligned. He does not truck with deviations in speed or rhythm, and has put the nix on many fine solo recordings of mine because they ever-so-slightly sped up.

Second, for flexibility. Overdubbing, stealing riffs for other verses, patching biffed guitar solos, and dance remixes. They’re all easier when a song is recorded to a consistent click track.

Though I still can’t play to basic clicks, after a year of drumming with Zina I have no problems playing to a basic rhythm that sketches in a bit more than just the main beats in a measure. A simple rhythm on my Casio keyboard can now keep my songs in time.

That’s fine for me solo, but what about the entire band?

We’ll find out on Saturday: we have a drum engineering session scheduled with Zina. She’ll record her parts to two Filmstar songs with a metronome playing in-ear, and then we’ll all dub our parts on top of her.

In effect, we’re recording like a real band would record, which makes our house a real recording studio, and me a real recording engineer. Plus, the tracks will be a consistent speed.

OCD Godzilla is incredibly pleased.

Arcati Crisis @ All Fired Up

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Part of the fun of being in a small-time, mostly-acoustic, folk-tinged, dance-rock band is the unusual places we get to play.

I think Saturday’s gig at All Fired Up might be our new current title-holder. We were set up in the middle of a pottery shop, surrounded by shelves of plates, mugs, and the visages of Disney characters. On every side were arts and crafts tables filled with eager painters customizing their pieces.

All Fired Up is a paint-it-yourself pottery shop at 602 Haddon Ave in Collingswood, NJ 08108.

I can’t even think of a runner-up, really (Dorian’s Parlor doesn’t count, since we’d probably have been there anyway even if we weren’t playing).

This was our first outing with Jake on bass, as well as our first time using the new PA system for a show, and our first time playing our new cover, Erasure’s “Respect.”

Oh, and our first time playing a three hour gig in over a year.

Plenty for us to fuck up.

Except, Arcati Crisis has recently entered into a period of ineffable grace… or, at least, unfuck-upable zen. We played all three hours down to the minute, and we played them well.

See that table in the foreground? Imagine that replaced by a hurricane force amount of acoustic rock.

Out of the gate, our “Dumbest Thing I Could Do” finally felt like a real acoustic dance song with Jake’s creeping arpeggiated scale bass line. We reinvented “Real End” yet again, debuting its new upbeat pop take engineered by our drummer Zina. We debuted our Rock Band 3 style “Space Oddity” with each of us singing a different part of the story, and ended on a rather triumphant duo take on “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Afterwards we gave an impromptu encore supporting Jake when he medleyed into Weezer’s “Say It Ain’t So” from The Wood Brothers’ “Luckiest Man.”

The part I liked the best was our audience. Actually, the lack thereof. Unlike a bar or coffee shop, people don’t come to All Fired Up to spectate – they come to create! At no point were we playing to an attentive audience, because everyone was spread around the shop, busy decorating their various works of pottery.

I actually prefer a busy, captive audience to any other kind. It’s easier to convert strangers who are doing something they enjoy than to pit your sound against jaded ears at an open mic or who are waiting for the next band.

While I love getting our full-scale rock on at a big venue in Philly, I’ll be disappointed if our songs ever grow to the point that we can’t bring them to these unusual spaces.

i love it, it’s perfect, now change

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As I gave Gina and Jake my third “we only have to change this one thing” note on a song last night, I wondered if they were starting to hate me.

I’m always the one giving the most notes in rehearsal, whether it be with AC or Filmstar, so wondering if people hate me isn’t unique just to rehearsing with AC.

Why do I do it? It’s not that I have the best ears – Gina and E are much better than I am. It’s also not that I’m the one not making mistakes – I make plenty, sometimes the most! And, I love getting notes – I’d be happy to get some.

So why am I the one Simon Cowelling at the end of every song?

Mostly, because someone has to do it. That’s not to say that every song requires a critique, but they at least all require a moment of consideration before moving on or else rehearsal turns into going through the motions. If you hear things to tweak while rehearsing and don’t tweak them then you might hear the same thing against next time.

Tweaks aren’t always bad things. Jake plays a lot of high, melodic bass lines in counterpoint to my rhythm guitar work and my backing vocals. Last night I realized this was my “problem” on “Real End” – our parts totally matched, but after years of playing with Gina I wasn’t used to the new harmony they created. The fix is simply us both playing our parts with confidence so they’re distinct from each other.

However, I think the real reason for my litany of notes is that my musical super power doesn’t lie in melody or blend, but in being a fan. I make music that I love to hear. Just like you would know if someone singing your favorite song at karaoke sang the wrong melody, I notice when a song doesn’t sound like itself.

I might not be able to articulate what’s wrong (though I certainly do so better than Randy “Pitchy” Jackson), but that’s why I have bandmates to help me! I simply know when something’s up.

I’m pretty sure that Gina and Jake didn’t leave my house hating me last night, just like I know we managed to make improvements on almost every songs in our repertoire.

How many of those improvements came from my notes? Possibly none, but would we have improved without the notes?

I don’t know.