Writ around the guitar parts, just trying to figure out how in a basic sense, i want to do the drum parts.

Trying to Learn It, Or, Thirty-Five.

Not happy with all of what is there, and the back half gets a bit err... loose, even for my own tastes, but like, whatev.

I dig this, and pretty fucked up meter-wise in some spots. I like that little lick where the drums drop out from the the first section.

love it! it's like somebody's poking dave grubbs with a sharp stick.

are you thinking of adding some thickeners? i could see some mean big bass grindy goin down, and then all means of drum bombast just to rod it up over the top. oh the squall i can imagine

Yarr, i am putting off figuring out basstuff until i know exactly what i want to play the drums as.

I like the beginning as drummed, but think i want to do something slightly different with the quiet bit(like maybe just add a second hand on the hi-hats), and am not sure if i like the start of the last section(i.e.e the one immediately following the quiet part) much at all. The last parts,(the one that is kind of basically a snare roll(even though it isn't done right here really), and the very last bit which is sort of a revisit of the very beginning) i like those ones okay, but wish i had played them in time. I might shorten the end too, so that it doesn't just repeat that whole cycle twice.

By the time i finally got around to pressing record, i had been playing this thing looping for about an hour, and i think i actually ran out of gas on this take. I should have recorded probably two takes earlier when i wasn't beat up yet. Probably try it all again in a couple days after i get some time to think about how i want to change things.

Also, i will have to do a proper recording of the guitars which i think will help with the thinness. This is just a Shredmaster clone into my tiny Crate practice amp, and one thin i definitely find with it, is that while it sounds fine to me when i play, it seems to record with some weird-ass mids shit going on that i am not sure i am into.

It might be a case of just needing to be re-played to tighten it up a bit. I like how it's written; the drums fit with the guitar riffs well enough. I was going to work the word "flows" in there, but it's more "jerks and staggers along" than "flows" (in a good way). I'm fond of the bits in the beginning section where the toms accent the guitars and then stop for a bit. Also, the third section where it heavies up, where the snare rolls start kicking in.

I remember a while back you said something about wanting your writing to be more dissonant and violent... Is this the sort of violence you're aiming for?

Also, you're adding the drums after without a click? Nice.

Yarr. I will probably try some silly alternate angles on a lot of the parts, but more for curiosity than total need. At the very least, i could wind up just doing like proper in-time recoardings of the parts that are there, and be decently happy with it.

I don't know for sure about the part like at 1:13ish though. My first thought is that there is too much going on and too little getting done, there. Meaning: i seem to be trying very hard to fuck up the flow of that guitar part(and playing an awful lot of different bits of stuff crammed in it, which is why it is drifting out of time so badly in my tired state at this recoarding), and i am not sure that i have a very good reason to do so, or rather, if it is a very good idea.



I don't remember the specific context, but probably not. I was talking about making some Proper Abrasive noise a bit back. To me, this thing is more similar to some other almostmathrockish stuff i have done, which i may not have ever poasted, because of my general inability to drum to them to my liking. Kind of just things that are based around guitarstuff that i like the physical act of playing. Interlocking bits, comfortable-to-me-but-offnormal patterns, counting games, and things that just feel neat to play.

Usually i have a lot of trouble playing drums to them, because the guitar parts i like playing the most, seem to tend to be in slightlywonky time, with pauses and holds and accents in stupid places. Usually because of the trouble i have playing along with them, i wind up changing the guitars so that i can play them. I hate that though, because it almost always produces something that sounds so different from what i originally meant that it actually kind of becomes pointless to me and i abandon things that i started out liking.

One new resolution i have made is not to do that shit anymore. In theory, i will simply have to learn to play the drums better. Or worse. I still am a little unclear on what, precisely, constitutes the stumbling blocks that tend to trip me up with these things.



This is how i have been doing/have to do, everything. I may indeed not be able to play with a click at all. I very consistently hate the things where i have tried to do so. I can't record guitars to a click, and i definitely can't record drums to one. Maybe if i was playing more four on the floor stuff, or if i understood what the fuck i was doing to the timing and could program a click to do it precisely for me... i don't know.

Much of what i like about my drums and guitars is that they are very loose with time. I like things to speed up and slow down whenever i want them to speed up or slow down. It probably doesn't make for "good" results, or songs that anyone besides me is likely to really enjoy the way that i do(because i would guess that the shit might just sound sloppyaccidental to moast foalks even where i am doing it on purpose) but it is what it is.

I really like the part at 1:13, though (as I'd mentioned prior). The rhythmic feel of that section is so odd and anti-rock; more something I'd expect from an orchestra than a rock band.

Re: the fitting the drums to the guitars thing, the thought strikes me that might be a place where programming something might actually do some good. Not, like, to a grid and quantizing it or anything, but just to sort out where the notes are; writing the drum part that way, or a skeleton of a beat, at least, and going and learning that on the real kit and fleshing it out from there. Given your playing style it may be more trouble than it's worth though, especially with the rolls. (Maybe make your own samples, including snare rolls, and use those?) Just an idea. It would give you the luxury of building the part around the guitar with all its quirks without having to commit some fucked-up rhythm to muscle memory right away.

Re: the feel of your playing in general, I always took it to be intentional. It reads to me as someone who has plenty of chops- your parts tend toward the busy and intricate- intentionally fucking with time vs. something that's loose because the band for whatever reason lacks the ability to really play it. I can see where it would throw off a normal rock listener though 'cause it's definitely coming from somewhere else.

...and you are so the opposite of my drummer it's actually kinda funny; he's all about mechanical precision and economical understated playing.

Hmm. Maybe i will just learn to play it better. I just found myself a little bit suspicious of my own motives. What is there is probably the tenth different thing i tried. And in that sort of case, i just have to ask myself if maybe i am looking too hard for a solution. It may also be a matter of me hearing how i keep missing the accents and rushing the snare flam/roll bit to the point where it no longer matches up to the guitar part though.

It is interesting as i think of it. Back in the days of badmetal bands, i used to do that all of the time, overthink a drumpart to avoid what i considered an "obvious solution", get overbusy, then rush the execution so that the original guitar part no longer fit. I didn't even realize that i was doing it until years later. It was just a matter of how the arms swing, and how gravity works, and i was more concerned with what i was doing than with how(another familiar note there). At the time, the guitarists used to just alter the riffs to fit. Which is, in the end, fine by me, because if it had not gotten fucked up accidentally by my own drumclumsy, it probably would have wound up being some very familiar chugmetal instead of what it was, which was a bit more wrong than all that. We could have, with a different drummer, been a straight up groove moshmetal band. As it was, we were like an antagonistic and undanceable misfit toy of a band that only people who were strange like us, seemed to like much at all.

I wonder what would have happened to the guitar parts here, if they had magically altered to fit what i actually played for drums, rather than remain as they are, what i had intended to.

Also, that is, as i understand it, generally the point of drums/drummers, and indeed what one would look for in such a beast. What i do is hardly even drumming. I am not looking so much for rhythm and order, but simply for solutions that strike me(key there is it is just how i see them, not that they are even really necessarily novel) as offnormal.

Actually, that statement kind of also applies to how i generally do everything else too. Kind of a go weird or don't go sort of thing. Except, i have been doing the latter more than i would care to. I need better solutions.

Even given the almost Teutonic affection for compound nouns around here, this stands out as a Real Quality Word.



Or better problems?