http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13184331/Seven_Days_demo.mp3

A demo of something in progress; I more or less BSed my way through everyone else's parts, hopefully not too badly. I am synthing and playing the chug-guitar on this live. No vocals on the demo at the moment (seeing as it's 4 AM at the time of its finishing), though we've been gigging it for a while so it's mostly complete with proper lyrics and arrangement and all. I'm more trying to sort synths, textures and production ideas out here than anything.

For what it's worth.

Nice.

A little heavier than our usual, but it works, I think. This is the track from The Next Batch Of Songs I'm planning on using a Les Paul on; this is all Tele through the Poulin Ecstasy and Recto sims. If I have my way, I'll just borrow the Rec and use the studio's Ecstasy on the Official Version. Easy enough.

I'm still getting the hang of NI Kontakt for the drums, but it's pretty respectable. Given time I can get riding on the crash to sound pretty passable, which is... Unusual.

Proper gnerly riff. I dig.

It's so bonehead-simple, but it works. It was basically Chris and Randy jamming on something before rehearsal that sorta sounded like Tool at first (the working title was Ken Is A Tool 'cause he wasn't there yet ) and my writing credit on this is just the keyboard intro and some production filigree; they made some sense of it. It is a plodding beatdown of a song though- and in plain old standard E. What Chris is actually playing in the last half is a bit more wall-of-sound than my fudging my way through the parts and the drums are a bit heftier as well IRL.

Despite everything, it still fits with the more stripped-down feel we've been going with lately as opposed to the sheer density of the earlier material. I think.

The magic is in the stupid. Caveman riffs are sometimes best, IMO. Whether it be big ol' chords rockin' or Slam chuggin'.

What works is what works. And the whole of Rawk (including metal in its modern forms here) would be a much lesser thing without the Big Dumb Riff.

I quite enjoy the mellotronesque intro soundz.

Also the ALARM bleeedo-bleeedo guitar bit that slides in and out. That is my kind of bleeedo-bleeedo.

Is the snare bitcrush'd?

Overall i do dig it. I might be inclined to try some different notes in the main chugriff, but i also do "get" the allure of its familiar/archetypal cavemannish qualities. Methinks it could still be cavemannish without involving that E-to-D-to-E-to-A, (what a guitarist friend of mine likes to refer to as "playing the dots"(in context, a thing he tries to avoid because of its familiarity)) arrangement there. Or maybe that is what it wants. Of course, you probably know enough theory to tell me that i merely find it less-than-ideal because it outlines a major key or something, and i simply am clearly bigoted against major keys. That could certainly be the case, as i listen to it again.

It's not really my riff; I did try and ugly it up a bit with the harmonics- doesn't come across as well with the map stimulator used on the demo though. (Which I otherwise quite like. 'S the Poulin stuff, XTC and Recto sims.) I probably would have used something nasty like F# or Bb versus the G. I do like the big open D chord with the fuzzbass two octaves below it though.

All the slidy chords and the siren-guitar are Chris's parts. I really like them myself and they need to be really prominent on the real version of this.

The snare- no, not bitcrush'd. There's some nasty stuff with Stylus RMX in the background there during the verse.

The intro Mellotron thing was a random idea. There's a sound on the Kurzweil I'm using live that sort-of-but-not-quite pulses in time with the Prophet, and between it's not-quite-ness and the Kurzweil acting up and changing patches on me when I was recording, I said "screw it" and re-did it at home with different stuff. Thus the Mellotron. I think it works.

If I were teaching a theory class and someone handed this one in as an assignment, they'd probably fail. It's pretty ugly in that it sorta wants to be not dissonant and vaguely pointed at, yes, major, regrettably. There's stuff here I wouldn't have done and found sorta awkward- the E-D-C#-C progression in the last half seems a little awkward to me, and I think some of it's clashing with my keyboard parts. I'm not sure if I care enough to change what I'm playing there though.

This morning I dreamt you guys made it onto the radio, and you had a music video. In the video you all wore hats on top of hats. Yours was a Toronto Blue Jays hat on top of something else.

I will keep this in mind, the bit about the hats. We're working on the other bits, but the hats, I wouldn't have thought of.

I once bought a Volkswagen from a man wearing a hat on top of a hat.

After we looked at the car and drove it around, when we went back into the house to sign the paperwork, he glanced at himself in the mirror, and in a thick Greek accent asked me:

"Why did you not tell me i was wearing two hats?!"

To which i could only reply, honestly:

"I thought you knew."


It was my favorite car transaction ever. He kept on pointing to the decal that had been affixed to the rear window, and reading/stating "1985 Car Of The Year. A good car, yes."



He was wearing like an oldman hat like a scally cap(the kind with earflaps) with a red and white sort of wintery knit cap rested jauntily on top.

A fucking fashion champion, indeed. And that is still my favorite car ever. A good car, yes.

That is excellent. I didn't think one could win an ostensibly on-topic thread, but Chris just did, methinks.

Proof also that Maplitonians can derail any thread, anywhere, any time.

Oh, also i recoarded moar drumms for that other jobber, but i don't know if there is anything useful in it. I actually recoarded too much over a couple days, and it will take me a while to listen through and see even if anything is even decent at all. Especially, as i will be trying to listen, around my mom's visit and the viewings of tall ships.

Just, so you know, i didn't like abandon the thing or anything like that.

Saul Goodman. I gathered you were going to be busy, what with the beard-trimmings and all. I still need to remap the guitars anyhow. And finish the lyrics. I'm reasonably certain the verse is going to contain an awful lot of yelling into that old ham radio mic I have.