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.