Self-doubt - oh, that old chestnut...

Being out of my comfort zone brings back reminders of insecurities growing up. I was always a perfectionist, which is a problem because you waste a lot of time on the last 20% of something, when everyone else already thinks it's fine. I recognise that trait today and attempt to reign it in, so as not to debilitate my efforts.

Reassurance

Then there was the constant need for reassurance, that what I've done is good enough. I still get that today. Strongly connected to being a perfectionist, I worry about publishing something to find out later that it had a major flaw.

Well history has shown me that, that bad and good stuff always happens when you go public with something. With my old band Oblique Visions, we spent a year releasing a self-funded CD back in the mid 90's and I listen to it today, and although I am very proud of what we achieved, it is full of issues. Mixing was terrible. the volume levels are bad, constant panning of my guitar drives me nuts. The music was fantastic, but the sound quality of the mix - at least when you compare it to other stuff - wasn't crash hot. But if I was to be realistic, there are many commercial releases I've listened to since then, that were also pretty bad and realistically I should worry about it in the scheme of things.

Mistakes are Fine

So I think I'm turning a new corner. I've recognised, even now with my impending release of a song, that I'm going to have to start trusting myself and my judgement a bit more. Because quite frankly, as long as it isn't atrocious, it's probably fine. If I can compare it with a commercial release and say "Well that doesn't sound too far off", I think I should start letting go.

Dynamics and My Walls of Sound

So I'm coming close to releasing my first single. I've given a copy to some people, whose experience in mixing and mastering exceeds my own by magnitudes. One of the comments that came back was in regard to the dynamics of the song. And it struck a chord (oh the puns!) because I had had a similar thought a day or two before.

Consider coming up for air every once in a while!

 The Reunion Gig

The 20 year reunion gig!

You see I've been practising for an Oblique Visions reunion gig in July this year, and I've had to re-learn all my own riffs and solos from 20 years back. This in itself was painful - not being able to play something you wrote 20 years earlier. I just spent almost an entire day learning one song this weekend. And these were riffs and solos that I wrote and played! A little frustrating to say the least.

Complementary Personalities

But the other thing I've noticed learning all our old songs is, the dynamics. Our songs go from loud to quiet and back to loud again, quick to slow, natural build ups and drops. And if I really think about it, it would have been the collaboration of us as a band that made that happen. We complemented each other and evened everything out when it came to ideas, which meant no ideas were over-powering and lead to well rounded songs.

My Walls of Sound

You see, looking at the handful of songs I've written completely on my own - especially when compared to those from the band, I will almost always create walls of sound. Left to my own devices, it will be thick fast riffs over fast bass lines and drums, with a lead riff over the top. No room to breathe here - it's end to end metal.

So where to from here? Well, I've acknowledged it's something I need to consider. As I posted in another blog post, I'm writing songs in a different sequence now, revisiting the stuff I've already drafted, starting with drums and ambience first. I'm hoping this will prevent me from filling every last conceivable gap with distorted guitars because if I can't hear the ambience, I'll hopefully make room for it. Well that's the theory anyway.

Debut Release - Thumbscrews - Coming Soon

Hello Metal Heads! So here is the taster of my first single, hopefully to be released real soon! Everyone knows someone who likes metal, so please share and help me get some exposure!

Thanking you!

Reigniting my Creative Embers

At first I was worried I wouldn't be inspired. At twenty years old, I was an angry, frustrated, cynical young man (boy?) who needed to vent all the injustices of everyday life, no matter how blown out of proportion I saw them. (Apparently) I'm still angry and cynical, just more tired.

Now at 43, father of four - WTF was I going to write about? Projectile vomit? Toddler induced sleep deprivation? Four kids chipping away at my wife's sanity? The challenges of long term marriage? Seriously, who wants to listen to relationship problems? Join the queue buddy, we've all got them!

Any which way it went, this was metal and you can do anything in metal. First rule of metal - there are no rules in metal. To quote Joliet Jake Blues, "Yes! Yes! Jesus H. Tap-dancing Christ... I have seen the light!"

Inspiration

So it took me a while to get back into the rhythm (pun?) again of writing music and songs. I recall in my twenties being obsessed with musical ideas, riffs, melodies, occasionally lyrics, and having them repeat in my head over the duration of the day. Not making music full-time has the advantage that stuff gets to stew in your head, you get to validate it away from being able to change it immediately in front of your computer. It's way too easy to jump in and change stuff when it's all at your finger tips, but if you're at work or school, and you're humming a riff or listening to the latest song version from last night's work - you are forced to just listen. And that I find, is a good thing. Helps alleviate unnecessary impulsive changes that make things worse.

Unnecessary impulsive changes...

Home Recording

It wasn't until as recently as Christmas 2015 that I became committed to learn this home recording stuff. My old band Oblique Visions asked me to get involved again, but now I was on the other side of the world. So we recorded. They recorded, I recorded and so with a real need to learn home recording burning brightly inside of me, I started Googling. I was anti-YouTube initially but that was just me being an old man. Now I can't get enough of YouTube tutorials.

The Workflow

Again, you'll find across the wide open plains of the Internet, artists from all corners of the artosphere will talk about workflow. You need to be organised. You need to have stuff at your fingertips so that it is ready to go when you are. And if I wanted consistency, I'd need to keep track of what I was doing so I can do it again and again.

New Creative Process

So as I re-learn the music making process, in addition to all this new stuff like home recording, amplifier simulators, the mixing process, sound effects, plugins, etc., etc. I've had to create a new workflow, a new creative process. And that's still being developed more everyday. It might be wrong today but hey, that's the journey, right? And I can always come back and change it.

This is what I have so far that I think about when I'm writing a song.

The Skeleton

What is the basic song structure, the skeleton, the framework - Song length? How many parts and themes? Which parts are light, dark, quiet, loud, complex, simple, etc? Any repeats? Where are the build ups and drops? What is the theme that ties it altogether?

Timing and Key

For each part, I pick (usually randomly as a starting point) the time signature, tempo, any poly-rhythms, key, scale mode and a basic chord sequence. I try them, I scrap whatever sounds terrible, I tweak, arrange and so on.

Using a Random Number Generator for finding the key in semitones

My Sound

In parallel, I try to get the sound and tone for each of the instruments. Some of these I'll reuse, making them "my sound". Others I might change depending on the song and its theme. I then try to come up with ideas for drum beats (see My Virtual Drum Kit), bass lines and guitar riffs. On the odd occasion I might even have a melody I want to use, but this is rare.

One of my amp simulator plugins

Build on the Foundation

What I've started doing recently is working on drums and sound effects / synths first. This sets the ambiance for the rest of the song. Then complete the song foundation - bass and guitars. Finally add melodies. Then level each track to a pink noise reference (see My Love Affair with Pink Noise).

Leveling to pink noise

And at this point I'm ready for mixing.

Sample song layout before mixing

Anything in this post caught your interest? Hit me up with questions or comments here or on Facebook.

The Build Up and The Drop

So when I first started looking into using my Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), I watched a lot (I mean a lot) of YouTube videos. There are hundreds of dozens of video tutorials out there about almost anything you'd want to do with your DAW. But one thing I noticed, was that a lot (not all) were for Electronic Dance Music (EDM). I watched them anyway, they always had something in there to learn from.

The Secret Ingredient

So recently I was mixing one of my songs, and it sounded good - but it was not something that you'd hear on Spotify or from a professional commercial metal band. It was missing stuff, a lot of stuff - and the big question for me was - what was that stuff.

The Build Up

I had a quick search yesterday on YouTube, as I had heard EDM audio guys talk about "The Drop" all the time. And at first I thought it was an EDM thing, nothing that I should worry myself about. But when I realised that my own music was missing something, "The Build Up" and "The Drop" sprang to mind.

Tool, The Grudge

I was just listening to Tool's "The Grudge" - I wanted to see if and how they use these kind of effects. For the first 40 seconds, nothing stands out. But then you hear it coming from the background and it peaks at around 1:00 just as the vocals start. It's very subtle.

Tool, Vicarious

Another Tool song, "Vicarious". Again, you hear an alarm clock slightly come in at 1:14, very short, very quick - a bit of a taster. But it comes nice and strong second time around at 1:36.

Common Methods

There seems to be a wide variety of ways you can do this background build up. Having a quick look around on YouTube a few common methods seem to stick out. The Ultimate Guide to Build-ups was a good read, and these videos by Tom Cosm are excellent.

Tom Cosm Creating 3 Whooshing Build Up Noises in Ableton Live

Tom Cosm Walk-thru of breakdowns and build ups

Types of Build Ups

This is by no means a definitive list, but some that I've heard, or combinations of, so far.

• The Whoosh
• White Noise
• Sawtooth Low Frequency Oscillator (LFO)
• Light to heavy reverb
• Silence / Minimalism
• High Pass/Low Pass Filtering
• Pitch delay
• Alternative Rhythms
• Everyday objects (e.g. alarm clock)
• Reverse reverb
• Guitar Feedback

And ...

So what have I done with this new found knowledge? Well, I've been playing around with a few bits. This is the work in progress song I've been working on. The mixing isn't the greatest (I'm still learning) and it's definitely not mastered, so it won't blow your mind.

This is the intro to the song.

One build up using a reversed snare hit reverb.

The is a sweeping filter (low to high) with a square wave left/right LFO towards the end.

I hope you enjoyed this post. As usual, any questions, comments or suggestions - let me know via the blog or Facebook.