It’s been 2.5 months since I released “Go On” and “It Feels Familiar”. I’d hoped to have more music done by now, but this year hasn’t been great for me, health wise.
As the title of this post indicates, I am working on two new songs for upcoming release. One of them is a rocker and one of them a friend of mine said he was referring to as “Crashing Pumpkins” because it’s a “sleepy one”. He meant it in a good way.
Without any further ado, let’s get into the meat of it.
Man, 2022 is turning out to be a challenging year. Every time I seem to get some kind of momentum going, something creeps up to knock me back down.
In April, I had the fortune of coming down with what I believe to be salmonella poisoning. This resulted in three trips to the ER, with one of those trips resulting into a readmission to the ICU for being back in DKA. Fortunately, they got on top of things and I was out the next day.
That salmonella poisoning resulted in an h.pylori infection that followed me until June. I had to have a colonoscopy and endoscopy. I was put on antibiotics, went on vacation to Colorado, came home, and released “Go On” and “It Feels Familiar”. Things were looking up.
At the end of July, I followed up with my new GI doc and got the all clear. I then scheduled hernia repair surgery (because a 7-day ICU stay at the start of the year will take care of your out of pocket expenses), recovered from that and caught COVID-19 for the first time.
COVID-19 cleared up, I’m completely recovered from surgery, but I’m exhibiting the symptoms of the h.pylori infection again.
Like I said…2022 is turning out to be a challenging year.
The first song I began working on is a song that I wrote during my hiatus in 2021 and recorded after releasing “It Feels Familiar”. I will generally record a song and then listen to it multiple times, make adjustments, and then when I’m happy with what I hear, I tweak it for release. In listening to this song, I realized two things:
I rushed the heck out of the guitar parts
When it comes to writing guitar parts, I generally stick to a fairly straightforward strumming pattern. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, right? Right. Except for this song, I came up with something that’s not straightforward.
Ok, we’re wading into the shallow end of music nerd stuff, and I might be talking out of my ass here, so anyone who knows better, feel free to correct me.
When you count music, you generally count “One, two, three, four” for the beats. Now, instead of that, count “One and two and three and four and” like you’re counting 1/8th notes. I wrote this staccato part where I play a quick chord on the 2nd and 3rd beat, and then on the “and” of four. Oh yeah, I also rushed the heck out of it.
So, of course, as I write subsequent guitar parts based on the rhythm guitar, and the rhythm guitar was written differently and rushed, the other guitar parts were rushed. It wasn’t pretty.
There was a significant phasing issue
You might be, “KC, what’s a phasing issue?” and that’s a very fair question. Of course, you know sound waves are like, well, waves. When you record something using a single mic, there’s a single sound wave to line up, but if you record the same thing using multiple sources, sound reaches those sources are different times…milliseconds.
The further away the sources are, the more out of alignment the sound waves get. When they don’t align, and especially when they’re running opposite one another, they start to cancel out each others frequencies. You end up with this weird, hollow effect. It’s INTERESTING, but it doesn’t often sound good.
There’s a setting in most recording software that allows you to invert the phase and bring the tracks back into alignment. It will still sound a little off, but this normally makes things sound better in a lot of situations.
My issue? I record two different amps with three different mics, two on one and one on the other. One of my cats knocked the amp that I dual-mic about 1/4 to 1/2 an inch off. The sound waves were not in alignment, but were not out of alignment enough for inverting the phase to work.
I could have spent time adjusting tracks by milliseconds…a lot of time, or I could just rerecord the song. I opted to record.
Then health got in the way.
It’s September 2nd and I’ve just now rerecorded that song. Fortunately, no phase issues this time. I just have to work on mixing issues and then tweak it for release. That’s a much easier solution and I hope to have it done by Labor Day.
No, that won’t be the title, but I think it’s pretty funny to hear my friend describe it as that.
After releasing Volume Three, I took a break from music and streaming in general. I’d still pick up my acoustic, write songs, and record them on my phone. I racked up about 14 total songs, including the drum tracks for what would become “Go On” and “It Feels Familiar”.
I find that writing drums to existing guitar parts is exhausting. I decided to abandon most of the songs I’d written on my acoustic and go back to putting together drum parts and then writing.
Things Come Together Quickly
I grabbed drum parts from the first MIDI collection in the list, put the drums together, and I had the rhythm guitar written and arranged in about 20 minutes. I mean, the chord progression is quite basic, but I normally have to fiddle around until I feel like I can move on.
This time, instead of potentially losing the idea for the song, I recorded a quick scratch track, just straight line out into my pedal board (RIP), and through my Strymon Iridium pedal. I added a tough of overdrive just for shiggles. I was also getting a lot of string noise, so I turned on a delay pedal to turn that bit of noise into a cool effect.
I then immediately turn around and start working on the second guitar part. The chord progression is E – B – A and the second guitar part I come up with is practically the vocal part of “Yellow Ledbetter”. Well, that won’t fly at all.
I changed my approach, came up with the framework for a part, and recorded a second scratch track in one take. It’s messy, but it captured the essence of the part.
And Then Things Come to a Halt
I chew on the song for a few days and then it’s time for surgery. Then I caught COVID. Then I had to recover and deal with the absolute fatigue and exhaustion from that.
I tested positive on August 14th and it really wasn’t until last week that I could actually sit, play guitar, and not feel wiped out. That was such a struggle for me, but at this point, I’m faced with another struggle.
My Brain is not Cooperating
For as quickly as I wrote the second guitar part, I cannot remember what I did. Even when I listen to the scratch track I recorded, it sounds foreign to me. It feels like I’m trying to copy another guitarist’s style, and that’s the oddest thing.
I mean, it SOUNDS like something I’d write, but I’m just at a complete loss to get the last 30%. People often talk about COVID-brain and I always thought people were exaggerating, at least part of me did in some dark, cynical corner of my mind, but now I know it’s quite real.
What’s Next?
My goal is to spend this Labor Day weekend getting that last 30% figured out and recorded.
As the name my friend gave it (and is not the permanent name) implies, this is a return to a more laid back track. The rhythm guitar is an acoustic guitar and the second guitar part is this distorted, atmospheric part that doesn’t move terribly fast.
Recording acoustic guitar is interesting. I tend to get a lot more string noise, and the original scratch track is full of string noise. When I rerecorded the acoustic with proper mics, I still got some of the string noise, but not as much.
I decided to bring that original scratch track back in and added a phaser effect to it, and now I have this slightly distorted, high pitch string noise repeating, and swirling guitar track in the middle to add to the cool, lazy atmosphere I’m going for.
I just have to make sure the second guitar lives up to and adds to that atmosphere without it becoming complete and utter noise.
I hope to release this song a week or two after that rocker goes live.
In a world of noise, be sound.
• KC