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Twice the Usual - Technical Journal

by Ken Barker

GO TO: Songwriting Journal by Thom Barker

 Twice the Usual is my brother Thom’s fourth album. The first was Planet for Sale which we recorded in our parents’ basement on my Vesta Fire 4-track tape machine. It was all Thom on acoustic and vocals, with a few parts added by me. The second album, Regent Street, was recorded at the old Sound of One Hand studio in Ottawa. I had very little to do with that album, though I seem to remember adding a keyboard part or two. Thom had a few other guests on the album. The third album (the first CD) was The Forest for the Trees, also recorded at the old Sound of One Hand. Forest was almost entirely Thom and me, with a guest guitar here and there.

2x is by far the most ambitious recording and yet is a return to the “basement studio”. We started the recording in the spare bedroom of my apartment in Austin in the Spring of 2002. I recorded Thom’s Taylor acoustic to two tracks (microphone and direct from the Taylor’s pickups) through an M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 at 24-bits, 44.1 kHz. The earliest recordings used an AKG C535EB condensor, but we switched to the large-diaphragm AKG C3000. I don’t remember if any of the 535 tracks survived. I don’t think so. The early months were kind of experimental, recording Thom’s guitar and then adding a few throwaway bass and vocal tracks trying to get a feel for the setup.

In the Fall of 2002, Thom decided to leave Austin to move back to Ottawa. We had to cram all of the remaining acoustic and vocal recording in before he left. We ended up with twelve songs. Eleven survived. The Night Brings is the only one I dropped. I expect to arrange and produce it eventually. Probably for the Borders Bookstore special edition.

I continued recording the album in the attic studio at my new house in Austin: four years of arranging, recording, mixing, erasing, re-recording, listening, reading, purchasing, burning, cursing and starting over. There were some droughts: I completely abandoned the project for several months while I finished the even-longer-ignored soundtrack for Jean-Guy Brin’s short film Let’s Give Him a Big Hand.

The Album

All the songs on Twice the Usual (2x) were written for voice and acoustic guitar by Thom. But he left me free to arrange them however I wanted. I didn't want to deviate too far from the singer/songwriter thing, so I tried to arrange them for a small ensemble playing together. The "musicians" would trade tasks, pick up loose instruments, but the arrangements would not go beyond the available musicians in the ensemble.

This virtual ensemble consisted of five musicians:

A.V. -- acoustic guitar, lead vocals
B.B. -- electric basses
K.B. -- keyboards
D.P. -- drums and percussion
E.G. -- electric guitars

As many of the five could sing background vocals as needed. Most of the cases that seem to be violations of the ensemble can be accounted for by K.B. playing acoustic on songs without keyboards, E.G. playing bass, etc. The two exceptions are the song It Goes On (with three electric guitar parts) and Don't Try (where I completely abandoned trying to stick to the ensemble).

The Recording

As I mentioned earlier, we recorded the main acoustic guitar tracks and lead vocals for the album in my apartment in Austin. Christian Chénier recorded the electric guitar tracks in Ottawa and transfered them by ftp. I recorded everything else at Art Facts Studio, a.k.a. the attic of my house.


I recorded either direct or with the large-diaphragm AKG C3000B through a Mackie LM3204M-Audio Audiophile 2496 at 24 bits, 44.1kHz. I used n-Track Studio for both tracking and sequencing, and Tascam Gigastudio 3 Orchestra for most of the virtual instruments. My controllers were a Yamaha KX88 and an Evolution UC33e. I monitored through Yamaha NS-10 and Event ALP 5 nearfields.

Eventually I'll do a separate post for the full list of instruments and libraries.
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Track 1: Even After All This Time

Virtual Ensemble:

A.V. -- acoustic guitar, lead vocal
B.B. -- bass, background vocal
K.B. -- organ, background vocal
D.P. -- drums, background vocal

Actual Ensemble:

Thom Barker -- acoustic guitar, lead vocal
Ken Barker -- fretted bass (DEADGC), organ, drum programming, background vocals
Notes

I wanted to start the album with just Thom on acoustic and vocal (ok, there's hats in there too). The "band" comes in after the first verse.

I didn't plan on putting so much organ on the album, but I couldn't help myself.

I also didn't plan on using a delayed accent in the chorus of so many songs, but it just happened. And I think the syncopated chorus turns out to be a bit of a unifying theme on the album (though not really obvious, I guess). Here, the chorus is already unusual: 8 bars grouped 3+3+2. The big accents are delayed by the drums to beat three of the first bar of each group. They start with a toms fill around beat two of the preceding bar. The toms fill completely ignores beat one of the first bar of the chorus group, playing through beats one and two to land the accent (cymbals) on beat three.

And yes, the "blue" C-natural (flat 7) on the bass at 2:45 and 2:53 is intentional; how can you not like it? It's sour.

Track 2: We Cherish Our Scars

Virtual Ensemble:

A.V. -- acoustic guitar, lead vocal
B.B. -- bass, background vocal
K.B. -- organ
D.P. -- drums

Actual Ensemble:

Thom Barker -- acoustic guitar, lead vocal
Ken Barker -- fretted bass (DEADGC), organ, drum programming, background vocal

The organ on the post-chorus breaks is a new theme for this arrangement. The motion opposite the bass is straight out of the tertian harmony textbook, and it works like a charm.

The bass in the verses and chorus is much simplified in rhythm from older arrangements. The plain rhythms in the bass and organ are an attempt to reign in the busy acoustic rhythm. The drums are still probably too busy. Oh well. The bass rhythm in the verses also fore-echoes the accent delay in the choruses, with sustained high harmony notes accenting the "and" of beat two.

This arrangement also introduces a gimmick common to the up-tempo songs on the album. Drums and bass (and sometimes organ or guitar) come together to reinforce the rhythm on fills. It's almost overdone here, occurring at:
 The delayed chorus accent here is even more syncopated than in Even After All This Time. The chorus is 8 bars, grouped 2+2+2(+2). The drums are again responsible for the syncopation, this time delaying the accent to the "and" of beat two in the second bar of each of the first three groups. The first bar of each group houses snare and tom flailing but the drums mostly ignore beat one of the second bar. The accent (cymbals) is delayed until the and of beat two (right after the words "time" and "heart"). The fourth 2-bar group is a walk (bass and organ) up to the post-chorus section.


Track 3: It Goes On

Virtual Ensemble:
A.V. -- acoustic guitar, lead vocal
B.B. -- bass, background vocal
D.P. -- drums, background vocal
E.G. -- lead electric guitar, background vocal
K.B. -- rhythm electric guitar1, background vocal
guest -- rhythm electric guitar2, background vocal

Actual Ensemble:
Thom Barker -- acoustic guitar, lead vocal
Ken Barker -- fretted bass (CEADGC), drum programming, background vocals, acoustic guitar note
Christian Chénier -- electric guitars

This song has a simple, common verse form (I-VI-III-VII in A-minor) stated simply on the acoustic. Chris came up with a really nice melodic rhythm electric theme which, along with the walking bass, provides movement and interest over top of the acoustic ground.

The guitar solo in this song is one of my favorites. It overlaps the end of the bridge, climbing to the official start of the solo section where it just soars. Lots of classic Chénier double/triple-stops and varied articulations throughout. More opposite motion between the bass and solo at 02:22 (guitar down, bass up) and 02:38 (guitar up, bass bottoming out to low C). There's more subtle rhythmic interplay among the drums, bass and guitar throughout, as well (for example, at 2:19 the snare's eighth+sixteenths figure is echoed quickly in the solo and then bass). Finally, instead of ending the solo at the final reprise of the chorus, Chris just keeps noodling right through the end. Very artsy.

With all the mids in this arrangement, the acoustic has been eq'd out almost to the point of being a percussion instrument. This lets the acoustic speak (great example at 01:03) without it taking up space in the mix.

I always heard an A-minor-ninth instead of A-minor on the last chord, but we didn't think of it when we were recording the acoustic. Over time I decided I couldn't live without the ninth at the end. So long after all the other tracks were recorded, I finally mic'd up my own acoustic and added one note: the open B string.

Rhythmic gimmick:

01:25 (bass + drums + vox)
02:54 (bass + drums)
03:12 (bass + drums)
03:22 (bass + drums)

The delayed chorus accent is similar to We Cherish Our Scars: The chorus is again grouped 2+2+2(+2), with the delayed accent coming on the "and" of two in the second bar of the first three groups. The delay is itself delayed in the fourth group -- you expect it on the "and" of two after the eighth notes on 1, 1-and and 2, but the eighth notes keep chugging over 2-and right through to the one of the next bar. The 2-and accents are given by snare, bass octave and electric guitar.

Track 4: Life is a Circle

Time to slow things down a little...

Virtual Ensemble:

A.V.: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
B.B.: bass, background vocal
K.B.: organ, synthesizer, background vocal
D.P.: congas
E.G.: shaker

Actual Ensemble:

Thom Barker: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
Ken Barker: fretless bass (BEADGC), organ, synthesizer, cat toy, drum programming, background vocals

Listening to the transparent, finger-picked acoustic and the somewhat spastic congas, I decided this track needed some kind of constant ground rhythm. It needed shaker! Johanne had recently bought a new toy for the cats: two balls wrapped in and joined together with twine. I remember thinking how great they sounded. So I set up a mic at head-height, figured out how to hold the balls and move them to get an even recording, and hit the big red button. But I'd forgotten that this song is six minutes long, and by the end my arm was about ready to fall off. Of course I could have stopped at any time and just copied what I had to the rest of the track... but I had such a great take going!

This arrangement has another brand new theme on the organ. The first entry (1:17) is a simple legato statement, with one subtle grace note embellishment. The second statement (1:55) adds a harmony note or two, has some staccato and glisses up to a higher note toward the end. The third (final) statement (3:25) adds more harmony notes and embellishes the melody with more runs, including a nice parallel thirds run at 3:29.

This was the only song I was able to get a decent standalone recording of my Alembic fretless. On all the other songs the recording (not the playing, honestly) sounded like krep. Breaks my heart.

Did we really need that blues fill on the bass at 4:43? Probably not. Too bad, it's my recording.

Two organ parts appear right at the end. They're variations of the original organ theme, played in different octaves and offset in time. The time offset is intended to be suggestive of a Simple Canon (aka a Round, like Row-Row-Row-Your-Boat), but I made the repetitions imperfect in various ways. That is, "the ending is a round, but not very circular", a kind of bad musical pun on the lyrics.

The organ parts at the end also have their reverb sends pre-fader. So as the volume of the organs fades, their reverb doesn't (making it sound like they're moving farther away). I didn't actually intend to do this, but I ended up starting to like it before I got around to fixing it.

This track turned out to be one of my favorite recordings. The deep bass and electric piano give it a really dark mood for me.

Track 5: Body of Mine

Virtual Ensemble:

A.V.: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
B.B.: bass
K.B.: electric piano
D.P.: drums

Actual Ensemble:

Thom Barker: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
Ken Barker: fretted bass (BEADGC), electric piano, drum programming

This was probably the most difficult song to match the timing to the existing acoustic guitar and vocal tracks. There are 49 tempo changes in the sequencer file, and it's still not quite locked. But I'm not too bothered by the looseness -- it still seems to have some feel.

I'm really happy with the way the noodling on the piano turned out. Its movement, ornaments and chromatic passing notes here and there add real spice, I think.

There's a double quote of Take the A Train at 3:09 under the lyrics "Underneath my feet the rumble of the A Street Train"*. In the first quote the bass echoes the main A Train theme ("You... must take the A Train"), but in root position of the I-minor of this song, as opposed to the second inversion position of I-major in A Train. At the same time, the second quote has the piano playing the standard first bar comping chords of A Train (third inversion of the VIm7 in A Train, which is Im7 here) but with a rhythm that fits here. Sounds kind of like a train horn, too.
*Of course, after working on the album for five years, I finally realized that the real lyric is "the 8th Street train", not "A Street". Haha. Oh well. Extra clever to quote A Train under "8th Street Train", then.

The bass and drums are pretty much rhythmically locked throughout this track. But as they play the same rhythmic figures, the piano has most of its rhythmic interest in the spaces the bass and drums leave.

There's a twist on the "delayed chorus accent", here -- an "anticipated chorus accent". The main chorus accent comes on the "and" of four of the bar preceding the first chorus group bar (and other chorus bars, too, with lesser emphasis).

This is the one song where I completely abandoned the small virtual ensemble, adding many more parts than the five virtual musicians could produce. Maybe the ensemble was sitting around the living room and 16 people dropped by to say hello.

Track 6: Don't Try

Virtual Ensemble:

A.V.: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
B.B.: bass
K.B.: organ
E.G.: acoustic guitar
D.P.: drums
guest: acoustic guitar
guest: pipe organ
guest: choir

Actual Ensemble:

Thom Barker: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
Ken Barker: fretted bass (C#EADGC), organs, acoustic guitars (EADGBD# and EADG#CE), drum programming, background vocals

The organ intro explicitly acknowledges the influence of Jesus Christ Superstar on the lyrics: it's the main theme from The Last Supper. The B3 organ sound is also reminiscent of the B3 that pervades that song. I knew quite early on in the recording that I wanted to quote Last Supper, but it posed a bit of a problem: Last Supper is in 4/4, but this song is in 6/8. Matching the eighth-note tempo and then unambiguously stating the new time signature with the drums alone for two bars seemed to smooth the transition ok.

The organ melody following the chorus is again a brand new theme. It's only suggestive of the Last Supper theme, but the simple melody and the tonewheel sound remind us of the intro and keep it from feeling abandoned and irrelevant.

Of course the song needed a gospel choir for the chorus. I don't know a gospel choir, so I sang the parts myself. The main choir has eight voices singing standard four-part harmony. After the break I gradually bring in three more wordless parts (two voices each) moving among the main worded parts, giving a total of seven parts, fourteen voices. It would have been nice to have real singers.

This song is kind of unique in that it's in pure Strophic form: it has a single two-bar phrase (I-V-VI-IV) repeated over the entire length of the song. The lyrics break into verses and choruses, but the music repeats the same two-bar pattern in both. To distract from the repetition, the arrangement divides the song into three parts. It builds from the outset to the break, where it gets completely stripped down to acoustic and vocals. After the break it quickly builds up to where it left off and gets bigger and more complex through to the end. The instrumentation builds throughout the entire song. It starts with just organ, then one-at-a-time adds drums, acoustic guitar, bass, lead vocal, choir, two more acoustic guitars, three more choir parts and the pipe organ from the Notre Dame de Budapest Cathedral.

The bass arrangement includes a trick that breaks up the verses and keeps them from feeling too long. The bass theme progresses through successively lower inversions. But the change from one inversion to the next lower inversion occurs half-way through each verse, not between verses. This splits each verse into two shorter verses. After the break, the bass goes back to the highest inversion, but progresses quickly down to where it left off before the break. It then moves to its lowest variation, anchored on the low C#, where it hangs out, bouncing off fills with the drums to the end of the song.

In the verse after the break I needed to fill out the arrangement just a little. The organ comes in half way through the verse, and I really like it there, so I didn't want to bring it in at the beginning of the verse. Instead, I added two more acoustic guitar parts. The altered tunings allowed me to play different voicings of the chords in the same octave, filling things out. The guitars continue through to the end of the song, adding to the building arrangement.

The bass also reminds us of the album's delayed chorus accent thing by overshooting beat one on its downward fills (5:40, 5:51, etc.). The most obvious example is at 6:13, where instead of continuing down, the bass fill turns back upward at beat one, and the drums follow by ignoring the downbeat as well, cymbal-accenting the eighth note following beat one (6:15). This particular "deletion of the bar line" is one of my favorite time tricks on the album.

The plagal (IV-I) cadence at the end is a final nod to the religious theme of the lyrics. It's not an exact plagal cadence, because the bass (electric, organ and choir) hits V-I. I'm sure there's a name for a plagal cadence over a V-I bass, but I searched for it everywhere. Please, if you know the name of this cadence, speak up. It's killing me.

Track 7: The Quiet in Us

Virtual Ensemble


A.V.: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
B.B.: bass, background vocal
K.B.: piano, background vocal
D.P.: shaker, deerskin drum
Actual Ensemble

Thom Barker: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
Ken Barker: fretted (BEADGC) and fretless basses (EGADGC and BEADGC), piano, cat toy, deerskin drum, background vocals
Notes

This is probably the "pleasantest" song on the album, and many of the arrangement choices try to highlight that. In particular, the piano, fretless bass, cat toy shaker and deerskin drum contribute to the nice mood.

As with many of the songs on the album, I wanted fretless on this one, but couldn't get a decent recording of the Alembic. Unlike the others, though, I couldn't live without it here. So the bass track is a mix of fretted and fretless. I played the entire song on both fretted and fretless, EQing the fretless to remove most of its bottom end (which is where I've had the most trouble with the Alembic's recording). I then set a compressor+gate to bring in the fretless with a slow attack only when the high end is strong enough to trigger it. Unless you're listening closely, the result is that the song sounds like the bass is a single fretless track. In reality, the fundamental and low end is almost entirely fretted, with the fretless supplying mid-high frequency on sustained notes.

I've always heard piano in my head on this song. So I finally sat down and just played along with the guitar. What you hear is what came out. I think it fits nicely. I would have liked to play more piano on the album, but most of the songs just didn't seem to want it.

I've also always heard some big-ole drum on the low-G accents. I found an appropriate sample, but had to tune it to G and EQ the heck out of it so its boom didn't dominate the mix. Does it work? Dunno. I think I EQd it out of existence.

The background vocals really needed to blend smoothly to work here. I removed much of their attack (say 20-50ms) so that their entrance is smooth as can be.

The bass progresses from the beginning of the song to the end, as with other tracks on the album. The first verse plays roots, sitting on the G, moving up to C on accents:



The second verse drops down to the third of IV (C):



The third verse combines the two (one C, one E):



Near the end of the third verse, the bass FINALLY walks from the low E up to the G -- something we've been waiting for all song long:



We also have to wait until the final chorus for the bass to finally drop down to the low B. The E-F#-G walk reappears here too.

You have to listen carefully, but the bass plays the five notes preceding the final V7-I cadence as harmonics (C-D-F#-D-A). The harmonics are all natural, but some of them are pretty far up there.

Track 8: What Will You Do?

Virtual Ensemble:

A.V.: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
B.B.: bass, background vocal
K.B.: piano
D.P.: drums, pandiero

Actual Ensemble:

Thom Barker: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
Ken Barker: fretted bass (BEADGC), piano, drum programming, background vocals

This is another one of the "mood" songs. I find this to be one of the sadder songs on the album and I was going for a pretty dark sound.

The bass in the second and third verses may sound a little busy, hitting with the kick, somewhat portato. But it propels the song a little better in this somewhat dead position on the album. Or maybe I'm just hijacking the album for my own amusement.

Piano appears starting in the second chorus, but more as a percussion instrument to brighten things up. It just pongs out octaves (with a little 9-8 resolution at phrase ends).



During the repetition of the chorus at the end it adds a third/sixth to the resolution notes, making it almost overly sweet.



I thought about adding a ninth to the final chord (as in It Goes On). In a completely uncharacteristic exercise in constraint, I left it out. Once is just right.

Track 9: No Forever

Finally, cowbell

Virtual Ensemble:

A.V.: lead vocal
B.B.: bass, background vocal
E.G.: electric guitar
K.B.: organ
D.P.: drums

Actual Ensemble:

Thom Barker: lead vocal
Ken Barker: fretted bass (BEADGC), organ, drum programming, background vocal
Christian Chénier: electric guitars

No Forever almost didn't make it on to the album (along with Don't Try). Here is the actual email conversation (with minor edits to clean up the language):

TB: dude, do you remember why we're not doing No Forever on this CD?
KB: On your original list it was in the "maybe" section. When I created my list from your list you told me not to put it on. There was some question whether it fit musically with the rest of the songs. I don't really see why it wouldn't. But if we're going to add songs from the "maybe" section, I'm definitely going to have to vote for "Don't Try". That trak rawks! (Honestly, I think it's a mistake to leave it off).
TB: what was i thinking? why don't you tell me these things ... it's not like i know what i'm doing or anything!
KB: I think I would have mentioned them eventually. So do you want to add both No Forever and Don't Try?
TB: yeah, let's add 'em, it's not like we've got a big record company breathing down our necks or anything

This is really one of the few "radio-friendly" tracks on the album. It comes in at just under 3 minutes. That's because this version is much faster than we used to play it. We first recorded this song about ten years ago with the Thom Barker Band at Sound of One Hand Studio in Ottawa. That recording was way slower. I bet it was almost 4 minutes. I recently found a tape of it, and while the sound quality is way warmer and more professional (recorded through a vintage Neve desk to 2-inch tape), the new recording sports much better performances. Would I trade the new performances for the old sound quality? No. But I wish I could have both.

The cowbell at the beginning and near the end was a very late addition. The single hit cowbell-as-intro is stolen from the Rush song Superconductor.* Believe it or don't. The fast, one-beat intro is a lot more sudden than a four-beat count-in, which adds to the urgent feel of the song. But it's not as cold as no count-in at all. The cowbell intro also prevents the cowbell at the end from sounding isolated and out of context. The three-beat cowbell break at the end comes from a mid-life version of the song. About six years ago we were playing this song with a guitarist and drummer in Austin. We always left that bar empty at the end for the drummer to fill it with some snare/kick fill. One day at rehearsal our drummer threw in this three-beat cowbell, just wailing on the bell. We laughed and laughed until I thought I might pass out. I'm not sure why it was so funny to us, but it obviously affected me. Long after I finished recording the parts for this song, when I was almost ready to close the book on it, I remembered that cowbell and decided to replace whatever boring drum fill I had in its place. Then it was inevitable that I had to replace whatever intro I had (probably a four-beat hats count-in) with the Superconductor ripoff.

*The Superconductor count-in is a cowbell on beat 6 followed by a snare flam on beat 7. So I really only stole half of the intro.

The electric guitar solo is pure, undiluted Chénier at his funniest. I sent him the bed tracks with the instruction "make sure you play that funny solo you used to play." Of course, he didn't know what solo I was talking about. So I sent him a version with the solo (as closely as I could remember it) played on electric piano. Man, did it sound lame. But it was enough to remind him how he played the original. The variety of articulations is what kills me in this short solo: staccato, hammer-ons, bends, slurs, half-harmonics....
It's the whole rock-n-roll bag of tricks emptied out onto the floor and scarfed until our bellies ache.

Track 10: Not a Setting Sun

Virtual Ensemble:

A.V.: acoustic guitar, lead vocal

Actual Ensemble:

Thom Barker: acoustic guitar, lead vocal

There was no question that this track had to be a guitar/vocal solo. The recording is a single performance, with Thom doing vocals and guitar together. Careful microphone position allows some separation, but there is still plenty of guitar in the vocal track and vocal in the guitar track. That makes it very difficult to edit one without messing up the other. So I did almost no editing of the tracks... a little compression, a little bit of volume riding on the vocal track and plenty of eq and reverb. But really what you hear is the raw performance.

When we recorded the song, I left Thom alone in the studio with the system recording. After a few false starts, he nailed a good take end-to-end. I did a quick mix, and since there was so little editing and no other instruments, the track was finished pretty early in the project. I'd go back to it every once in a while and tweak the sound a little, and then leave it again. But I never listened to anything recorded in the room before that final take. Then one day very near the end of the project, I went back and listened to the rest of the recording from that day. That's when I found the "For Louis" that Thom speaks to open the song. He didn't say it before the final take, so I didn't know it was there. I don't know why I decided to go back and listen to the rest of the recording, but I'm glad I did.

Track 11: Say Goodnight

So here we are at the end already. Last song. So sad.

Virtual Ensemble:

A.V.: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
B.B.: bass, background vocal
K.B.: rhythm electric guitar
E.G.: lead electric guitar
D.P.: drums

Actual Ensemble:

Thom Barker: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
Ken Barker: fretted bass (BEADGC), drum programming, background vocal
Christian Chénier: electric guitars

It may be kind of obvious, but we always used to do "Say Goodnight" as the last song of the night when we were playing live, so that's how I always think of this song: live and last.

The Thom Barker Band, live at The Pit in Ottawa, 2006

Making it the last was easy: put it after all the other songs. Making it "live" required a few tricks. The biggest issue was trying to make it different from the other tracks but still fit with the sound of the album.

The most obvious "live" trick is the bar noises at the beginning and end. Even without any other tricks, this primes the listener into thinking "live".

Another fairly obvious trick is the extra effects on the lead vocal. I put a short echo and extra reverb to sound like a loud PA system in a closed space.

The drums are also quite different from the other tracks. I was out at Cedar Street one night listening to a great funk band, trying to put my finger on what made the drums sound so "live". The combination of mics, eq, amps, speakers and gobs of compression make them sound much more artificial. I tried reproducing that signal path virtually, but the Yellow Tools drums I used on the album are so acoustic sounding that it was a real struggle to color them enough. I needed to start from a more artificial source. If found some sampled drums on my Roland XP-50 keyboard that were just right. So I replaced the kick, snare and toms with the XP-50 samples. I kept the natural sounding hats, ride and cymbals from Yellow Tools -- the XP-50 metals were just too fake. I think the result sounds pretty close to a kit through a live PA.

There's a spot near the end where it sounds like the guitar feeds back for a second (around 5:14). I'm not sure what's causing this sonic effect, but it adds to the live sound, so I left it in.

The sparse applause at the end is reminiscent of some of the shows we did with... uh... "modest" attendance. I remember one show at The Pit in Ottawa during a snow storm in December. Beyond the barstaff and significant others, I'm not sure anyone else was there. Sure... we can laugh about it now.

Light dimmers and questionable electrical at bars is always causing something to buzz. I recorded the amp buzz at the end by running my bass amp through the system while holding the free end of the patch cord in my fingers. I had to record the amp shutting off separately because it's such a loud pop that everything downstream in the signal path has to be trimmed.

Another great electric part from Chénier here. At one point he emailed me to say he was having trouble coming up with ideas: "Say Goodnight is giving me fits. How do you add lead to a 'cowboy on a horse' country song? It can't be done I tell ya. So expect very low key stuff." I'm not sure that what he came up with could be called "very low key"... you be the judge! (And I'm not going to dignify the "cowboy on a horse" comment).

In many places on the album I already had ideas for electric parts. For those, I'd email Chris trying to "textify" my idea. Somehow, no matter how ridiculous my instructions, he'd always lay down exactly what I had in mind. Here were my instructions for Say Goodnight:
...
Chug...ga-Chug...ga-Chug...ga-Chug-gaga-
Chug...ga-Chugschwinnnngg..ga-Chug-gaga-
"I"
CHANNNNNNNNNNNNNG!
"Say"
CHANNNNNNNNNNNNNG!
"Goodnight"
buh-Changuk... buh-ChangGannnnnnnng

The yelling in the chorus was also something we used to do live. So for the album I recorded myself about ten times yelling "I" and "SAY". But when I mixed the yells in with the music, for some reason it sounded like "Oy... Soy". When I played back the yells in isolation they were fine. So some weird interaction, frequency masking, reverb artifact, or combination of these was messing with the harmonic content. I ended up having to put on a high-pass filter, remove all the reverb and replace half of the "I... Say" parts with "Ah-ee... Sah-ee". Strange but true.