HEAVY MEDICINE

For those rare musicians infected with a desire to create true original music an understanding of the relationship between a composer and his work is beneficial. At the core of this relationship is the idea that music reflects a musician’s values. What are values and how are they expressed in music?

A value is something that is important to someone. It might be a cold beer on a hot day, the trust of a friend, or a state of mind: anger, peace, freedom. It might be crack-cocaine or a new bass guitar. A value can be defined as “that which one acts to gain or keep” and therefore it is the object of an action. ‘Something’ is of value to ’someone’ and that ’someone’ has to act in a certain way in order to acquire, achieve, or maintain that ’something’.

In order to create a particular type of work a composer must make those choices during the selection process that best allow him to realize that type of creation. If goals and values are related then goals should properly be based on values. The process of musical selection, of choosing which elements are important enough to include in the music, and which are not, is based on those values a musician holds in both music and daily life. What type of mood does he wish to manifest? What types of notes and sounds will he need to use in order to support this mood? What kind of groove is required for this expression? Will the nature of the expression be dramatic, or subtle? By answering these types of questions insight is gained into a musician’s values.

In some music, particularly pop music, there are different layers to these expressions. Pop music is an art form where collaboration is the norm rather than the exception. In other words, there is often more than one person involved in the music creation process. A composer might write only music while a lyricist writes words. A group of musicians may then perform selected songs with the guidance of a producer who provides direction based on an overall concept derived from the individual songs, the performances, and the expectations of the marketplace. At each stage specialists in their field are making value judgments. This brings us to the concepts of synergy and compromise.

The concepts of synergy and compromise are opposites when considering collaborations. If collaborators on a project have similar music values and each participating party has similar end goals then the resulting work is often a product of synergy. In such cases the parties choose to create a relationship whereby decisions are made according to an end concept mutually agreed upon by the collaborators. The resulting work created by this type of synergy may be more fully realized than it would be otherwise. Contrarily, if music values are not similar between collaborators and an end concept is not agreed upon at some point during the creative process the resulting work often deteriorates into a product of compromise and inferiority.

Understanding how the process of music creation and values are related can give those musicians who dare to be different the confidence to stand alone in the face of great opposition. By being aware of values and how they are being expressed in music an artist can be psychologically armed to protect himself from those who do not share his ideals and in fact, may resent them. He will be able to see how other’s criticisms arise directly from a comparison to a set of values which may have been compromised, or sold out, in favor of other values. It takes epic effort to create something truly unique and original. At every turn there are those who argue that it is impossible to create something new and that it is a waste of time to even try. They ask questions like, “How dare you try to be original?” and “What makes you so special?” Because of this, extreme confidence is a key ingredient for those musicians who crave to be original. This special breed of musician must have a deep-rooted belief that his work is strong and valid even in the absence of something obvious to compare it to. Non-conformity is not recommended for most but for some, it is the highest power. There is no right or wrong way to create music; the art simply reveals the artist.

My Friend Jerome started with the idea of writing a song about a clone who kills himself because everyone is picking on him for being a clone. I have a theory that power, the ability to affect our environment, is how we prove to ourselves that we are alive. We can create a piece of software, we can win the big game, or we can kill someone. The same goes for other animals too, including bugs and Martians.

I almost always write the lyrics first which is different from most songwriters I know. I believe in the idea that a decent song should be able to be played with an acoustic guitar and vocal and still sound good. In the case of My Friend Jerome I sat with an acoustic guitar and played around with chords and melodies and tried to fit the words in. In order to do this the words got changed quite a bit. Originally I had a whole different chorus but I found it only served to complicate the song.

After I had a song structure and outline together I set up a PZM room mic and recorded myself singing and playing the song into Pro Tools. The next step was to record a “fancy” click track so I could hire one of my drummer friends to come in and lay down some drums. Choosing the proper tempo before you get started is very important. Actually, in a way there is nothing more important!

After the tempo was decided on I laid down the basic chords on electric guitar and a scratch vocal and mixed those in with a click, everything panned to center. When performing live, sequences are generally panned to one ear and the click to the other so that the music channel can be routed to the front end without the click and the click can be routed to the drummer so he can sync the band to the sequence. The click in a studio situation where there is no band performing live is different. I put the music and the click together and panned everything to center. Sometimes I record bass in the fancy click but most times I don’t. I would rather play bass to the drummer than have the drummer play drums to the bass. I have no problem with the drummer playing to the vocal. I like to do 4 hour drum sessions and try to accomplish 3 songs and get 3 or 4 takes of each song. On this day we recorded drums for the songs Freak Magnet and Amazing as well as for My Friend Jerome.

In the case of My Friend Jerome I emailed a drummer friend of mine, Sean Reynolds, the click tracks a couple days ahead of the session date and he came in and played each song 3 or 4 times. We did one or two takes of basic grooves and one or two takes with many fills and spontaneity. I could always edit takes together later. For the session I brought my Pro Tools rig to an old church that my friend David Jones turned into a recording studio and we recorded drums in the big room, a beautiful sounding chapel in West Vancouver that has since been demolished. Unfortunately when I got the tracks home the ride cymbal track wasn’t there. It turns out we had a bum mic and didn’t notice it at the time so I flew in some ride samples from a Mick Fleetwood drum loops collection. When mixing drums I always use Drumagog, or as some call it Drumagod!

There are probably 16 tracks of guitars in My Friend Jerome. I generally mix amp sounds with plug-in sounds. I’ll run the guitar through a DI and then run one line to the amp and the other direct to Pro Tools. This way I can use my natural sound I use when performing live plus a DI line for…whatever. My favorite guitar plug-in is IK Multimedia’s Amplitube which to me is the most natural sounding of the many plugs on the market. For more effected or strange sounds though I prefer Native Instrument’s Guitar Rig. I also really like McDSP Chrome Amp. These are all very high quality guitar plug-ins.

I don’t worry too much about coming up with perfect sounds at the tracking stage although I probably should. It’s just more fun for me to play around with stuff in the box. I also don’t worry too much about performing things perfectly. I’d rather do 3 or 4 takes back to back and then edit stuff around and try different things. Although I accept the fact that audio is very hard work I try to change the process whenever it becomes boring to me.

My vocal chain is a Bluebird microphone through a Focusrite Vocalmaster Pro preamp into Pro Tools. I’ll sing the song 4 times from beginning to end into Pro Tools all on the same track but on different playlists. Playlists are something fairly unique to Pro Tools and is probably the number one reason I have chosen PT to be my main platform. Then I’ll edit together one good vocal track compiled from those takes. If I don’t get a good enough vocal from that I’ll do the same thing again but to a different track. That usually gives me enough material for a lead vocal and a double. If I use a double I almost always run it through a distortion pedal or something and set it back in the mix with a bit of the long reverb. All my sessions usually run 2 reverbs, a short verb about 500ms and a long verb about 1.5 seconds. Ideally I’d like to use 3 reverbs but it just bogs down the CPU too much. In reality though 2 is fine because ambient information tends to be one of the first things that gets sacrificed when you hit the filterbank of the MP3 encoder. I prefer the Fraunhaufer MP3 encoder. I use Adobe Audition to encode but there is a whole trick to making a good quality MP3. If you have loud mastered material it is not advisable to do a straight conversion. Inter-sample peaks and other weird distortions will occur.

If there is a guitar solo I always record it last. My Friend Jerome doesn’t really have a solo but there is a lead in behind a section of the bridge. I do solos similar to the way I do vocals only instead of doing 4 takes I’ll do 10 – 20 improvised takes and edit them together until it feels right. A lot of what I do is just playing around with editing and plug-ins. It’s like problem solving for your psyche. If something doesn’t feel right then do something until it does. In the old days I would compose solos but now I enjoy the discovery of editing improvised takes together.

At some point the song starts sounding like a song and then it’s a matter of listening. I admit I way over-indulge in listening. That’s the most pleasure I have as a human. I’ll listen 100 times in a row without touching a knob just thinking about the possibilities of the song and the production. Unfortunately, I have a bad habit of listening at very loud volumes. It’s just my way of becoming emotionally involved with the music. It will almost surely mean an early retirement though. At some point in the mix I’ll get my friend Robert Graves in to tweak things for a couple hours. As far as I’m concerned Rob is the best live sound mixer in Vancouver and his perspective on a mix is invaluable to me. Beyond that I tend to be an obsessive tweak monkey, especially when it comes to vocals.

I generally don’t do my own mastering because I don’t have an ideal listening environment or any fancy compressors like the Manley Vari-mu or a Crane Song. These units are still far superior to any of the software compressor/limiters in the plug-in world. This is mostly due to CPU restrictions. I usually get 2 or 3 versions of a master and often edit them together. I find that mastering compression acts on different parts of a song in different ways. The guy I use for mastering is Jeff Gudenrath at www.audiointegrity.com in Austin,Texas. I like him because he is a musician and he respects the mix. He doesn’t try to force a square peg into a round hole. When I was looking for a mastering engineer I sent out samples to about 30 guys and had them master the samples so I could choose who to go with. Honestly, he was the only guy that actually sent stuff back to me that sounded better than the original without changing the nature of the mix. Beware of bad mastering especially in these days of the loudness war. It’s not how loud you make it but how you make it loud. Anyway, that’s how I generally record a song but that’s just me. In the end it is most important to develop a process that you enjoy participating in.

The term ‘Generation X’ was used by novelist Douglas Coupland in 1991 to describe a generation of twenty-somethings who were “fanatically independent individuals, pathologically ambivalent about the future and brimming with unsatisfied longings for permanence, for love, and for their own home.” As front man for the Seattle-based music group Nirvana and one of the founding fathers of ‘grunge rock’, Kurt Cobain still remains, now fourteen years after his death, one of the most revered artists of that generation. By looking at his work we can better understand how certain values held by Cobain and expressed in his music led not only to his great accomplishments as an artist but also to his ultimate destruction.

His songs were like nursery rhymes. They were so simple that even a kid strumming an electric guitar for the first time could play them. It is this simplicity that is one of Cobain’s most notable achievements in music. Classical composer Frederic Chopin once said, “It is simplicity that emerges with all its charm as the final seal upon art.”

In the 1980’s virtuoso guitar players led by the likes of Edward Van Halen, Steve Vai and Joe Satriani dominated rock music. These guitarists became innovators in the fields of melody and harmony (the study of chords and chord movement) and were also technical masters of their instruments. Like all innovators though their ideas were soon gobbled up by those who continued to recycle them without ever contributing to them. It followed that pop music began to lack imagination as musicians started valuing technical ability more than musical content.

In the late 1980’s songs such as Nirvana’s ‘About a Girl’ and ‘Sliver’ went against the trend of popular music and would foreshadow the tremendous transformation pop music would make during the next 3 years. These songs consisted of three or four chords and simple, repetitious melodies that displayed Cobain’s talent of stripping down a song to its very essence. He inserted major chords into contexts traditionally reserved for minor chords. He created song structures that repeated segments three or six times rather than the traditional four or eight times. His guitar solos, when present, were usually tortured variations of a song’s melody.

When it came to writing music, Cobain was a perfectionist, relentlessly tweaking song structures and melodies until they became fully integrated with each other. Lyrically however, Cobain expressed a value system somewhat inconsistent with those values he presented in his music. By his own admission he attached a higher value to the music than to the words which, although fascinating, were often dim reflections of an unfocussed mind. While he worked diligently in crafting musical structures, his vague lyrics, amalgamations of disjointed images and unfinished thoughts, were frequently thrown together from journal entries in the moments prior to being recorded. He wrote lyrics using themes of drug use, co-dependency, and self-loathing. Not only did Cobain reject values expressed in many lyrics of the 1970’s and 80’s, but also more significantly he expressed apathy and indifference towards the whole idea of having goals and values in the first place.

Kurt Cobain was an outsider to both his peers and his family. While choosing values that supported his desire to be different from those around him he seems also to have rejected many values that are essentially human. It is clear that Cobain did not place a high value on human life and ultimately he expressed this by committing suicide in 1994. If it is true that a man realizes happiness by achieving and maintaining his highest values then by choosing to attach such high value to drug use and self-loathing Cobain was probably most happy when he was destroying himself. He consistently expressed values in his work that were not conducive to his survival but only to his destruction.

Question from captainajax posted at www.mix2r.com

Q) Hey Bugnut. I need help soundproofing a room? The room is about 10 x 15 feet and has 2 small windows. 1 wall is solid brick and the others are drywall. The floor is wood. What else do I need to know?

A) Get a book called Master Handbook of Acoustics by F. Alton Everest. It is the Bible of acoustics.

I’ll give you some ideas but there are 1,000,000 people who know way more about this stuff than I do.

The first and most important thing is to understand that soundproofing consists of 2 totally different issues. First, sound-blocking and second, sound treatment. Sound blocking can be costly and consists of things like building a room inside a room (floating room). Sound treatment is more about getting your room to represent the sound coming from your speakers as accurately as possible. I can really only give you ideas for sound treatment.

Make the 15 feet walls your length, front to back, and the 10 feet walls your width, side to side. Having the extra length gives the larger bass wavelengths extra room to complete their cycles before coming back on each other and creating phase issues. Place your speakers on stands, not on a table or desk, and have them placed at least 3 feet from each side wall, 3 feet from the front wall, and 3 feet from each other. Place them so that the tweeters are at ear level pointing at your ears, or a little behind your ears, and so that they form an equilateral triangle with your head.

Have a friend come over and move a mirror placed flat along the walls and ceiling. Put a piece of painter’s tape wherever you see your speakers in the mirror. This is where you will put your absorption and/or diffusion. Generally these spots will be on the front wall between the 2 speakers, on the side walls between the speakers and the listening position and on the ceiling between the listener and the speakers. As a general rule absorption is placed on the side walls and diffusion on the front and rear walls.

Study bass traps www.ethanwiner.com/basstrap.html but don’t go overboard on bass trapping in such a small room. Keep the wood floor but maybe scatter a couple strategically placed rugs.

One idea for the window would be to put a piece of plywood up, then some Basul Safe ‘n’ Sound insulation then some pegboard. This will do some sound blocking and might also act as a bass trap if located in a good place.

If you have to do extensive sound blocking you will be making your room substantially smaller because of the new set of walls you will probably want to add.

These are just some general, basic things that might help.

Sometimes I think there are 2 kinds of music. There is ‘private’ music, which is best when listened to while alone, and ’social’ music which is best experienced while in a social setting like a concert or party. If a song gets very personal I find it can be somewhat uncomfortable to listen to in a social situation. The same song though might be extremely powerful when listened to while alone. It might be that the difference between writing a song and performing that song live is similar to the difference between what is art and what is entertainment.

That being said I think there are ways to get personal in a song without making it uncomfortable for a listener in a social setting. You might tell a story using third person or you might use vague language, or humor. The process of writing is often cathartic for the writer but I don’t believe you have to expose all your fears and weaknesses in order for this process to be cathartic. I often go back to a song I have written and see parts of my personality that I don’t particularly like. At that point I usually justify it by saying it was cool to write the song in that manner at that time. Then I move on.

Unfortunately, I find my shadow. It is comprised of the things I dislike about myself. It is always lurking in the background and is largely responsible for motivating me to write. I believe that shaking hands with this shadow is important but I don’t feel obligated to introduce it to others. I like to consider how I wish to present myself while also maintaining the integrity of the emotion. The best songs are honest, but still cool. While I agree it is important for a writer to hold on to whatever is the source of his inspiration, I find it can be very self-destructive to let the beast run too wild without a few beat-downs from his cooler self.

On the other hand there is a law for writing fiction that says the more uncomfortably personal you get the more universal the work. I don’t really have an opinion on that yet.