Cracked knees, naked regulars and the Green Automobile.

Ive never been good at moderation. I want things to be bigger, louder and beyond. 2013 has been no different than previous years in that way. Ive smashed my head into a bunch of walls, gotten up and built new ones. Did a bunch of new things this year.

Started running. A lot. Found something terribly meditative about running 25+ km with headphones. It wasnt really about running that far. I just thought if I can run 3 I can probably run 5. If I can run 10 I can probably run 12. Took a couple of runs to realize that I had to create a specific playlist for the purpose. Running to Allen Ginsberg reading the Green Automobile will get you nowhere. 

People talk about a runners high. I never really noticed it. On some runs I had endless conversations with myself about what I was doing in the studio. Came up with solutions. Came up with some new problems as well. On other runs there was just silence.

I started reading about running and watched documentaries. Marathons and ultra marathons. One day I watched a documentary about a ultra marathon runner. He was talking about running thru the pain.

Later that night I had been running for 20 km when my knee started hurting. So I thought. I should run thru the pain. Also...20 km is nothing, 21,5 is a half marathon, right? So I kept on running.

The next day I couldnt walk at all. The x-rays showed later that I cracked the bone in my left knee by running too far. Moderation, right?

Realized that I couldnt run like that anymore. Needed something else. So I started swimming. Became very weird very fast. There are some places you want to be a regular and then there are places where you want to be as anonymous as possible. Im not sure why but there is something slightly disturbing about a 38 year old man going to a place where he gets undressed and swims back and forth for two hours. I am now very familiar with a bunch of slightly overweight wrinkly people from Sollentuna.  I started building systems about laps. How I counted them. Lap 75 for instance is my birthday. I counted from 1 and upwards and backwards. Lap 58 made my think about Rickenbacker guitars. Lap 38 my father in laws birthday and our relationship. 62 The Beatles. Etc etc. Sometimes I would just space out and realize that I had counted without knowing it.   

Swimming made me think of Brian Eno a lot.

I started seeing the waves my body made as sound moving around the pool crashing into other peoples waves. Swimming became noisy when you viewed it like that.

Made videos. A bunch of them with Necromonkey. Did one with Staphan O Bell. Appeared in one with Page. I have never been as visual. Before. 

Here I am playing the Hihat...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0k1LPhLNws&feature=youtu.be

Went to New York. Met Mitch Mignano.

My main annoyances this year have been with Mobile phones and computers..they seem to cause more irritation and frustration than possibilities and joy.

Necromonkey started playing live which felt remarkable and terrifying and the same time. Played the Sweden prog fest with three fantastic musicians. Kristian Holmgren, Jesper Skarin and Åsa Carild. Kjahart did the lights. Martin filmed us..Anders helped us with the stagestuff. I love the idea of the group working together. Also this group is spectacular in that I wouldnt mind getting stuck in an elevator with anyone of them.

A little video from our first gig.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM8jJg-dhXA

We have our second album at the printers and we have just finished the first song on our third album that will probably be released in 2014 as well. The first picture at the start of the blog is the cover of our second album. 

Started reading a lot again. Read about food, wine and cooking. Read about Keith Richards and Neil Young. Douglas Coupland. Bill Buford. Nick Kent. Vaynerchuck. 

Started a bunch of new bands and album projects. 

Kaukasus is me Rhys Marsh and Ketil Einarsen. The album is a revoultion for me. The way of working with amazing musicians online and with constant communication and brainstorming has been a worldchanging thing. I have been involved in filesharing, filebouncing projects before but never as swift and easy. It also helps a lot when the music is vibrant, dynamic, dark and very much alive. 

Nacht is an album Im making with my wife. Its a conceptalbum about sleep and the music is (surprise! surprise!) very drowsy and twilighty.

ITMW...Ill keep this one under wraps. But its good. And different.

We have also started work on a new White Willow album. Me and Jacob have probably one of the longest working relationship that I still have. He has a remarkable sense of melody harmonics...my wife can always spot his stuff. Im a such a fan of him and now we have started the new album in a new way. Einar Baldursson talks often about how music is a conversation. With me and Jacob we have been mumbling for years.

When White Willow lost their drummer after the first album I wrote Jacob and said I was up for it. A while later I played on the second one.

2014 will be surprising, thats for sure. Thats how years work.

And with a bit of luck I might be able to start running again...in moderation.

Now Playing: Bibio - Silver Wilkinson One of my favorite albums of 2013.

(Drumming and) Manipulating time like the chunky kid in Harry Potter.

I have played drums for 30 years now and its still terribly fun to do but somewhere along the way (probably around 1998) I realized that I probably wasnt going to be "the drummer" or end up on the cover of Modern drummer. I was never really that great and I always preferred playing with bands and music I liked. Around that time I also bought my first keyboard and my awareness and focus started to moved beyond my battered old Sonor phonic plus kit.

When we recorded Make Believe with Pineforest Crunch at EMI studios in Skärmarbrink, Stockholm.
I was talking to the engineer, the legendary Pontus Olsson and told him.

"My dream is to be a studiomusician and play drums on recordings"

He promptly solo´d a very odd and slightly off fill and commented.

"So...you want to be a studiodrummer, eh? Well...that fill wont help"

At the end of this year I have been drumming on a bunch of different albums and I must say that it is really fun. I like combining drumkits, cymbals and different drumheads. Creating combinations. My focus has obviously changed a lot. I think a lot about how the drums will fit in the final production more than how to showcase my chops (which are few and far between) in the most flamboyant way possible.

Another thing I really enjoy is overdubbing percussion. There is so much to do when it comes to percussion on recordings. It is very similar to keyboards in a way. Just by adding one hit you can change the atmosphere and feel of a song. By adding 16th notes you can create an illusion of the track being faster and quarternotes will probably make it feel "heavy". Manipulating time. Like Magic. Like the chunky kid in Harry Potter. Or Gandalf. Or Doctor Who. Or Richard Dawkins. Like the smart guy in the wheelchair with the weird boxy voice. Manipulating time.  

Here is a little film of me adding some Rototoms to a Carl Hasselrot track. The idea is that Im playing a bunch of different phrases so that he can move them around as he likes. Just to give the track a bit of a push....when needed.

Rototoms are also really interesting is that they sound so much better when you back off from them and get a bit of room but sound horrible and flat while you are playing them. Also I was a big Miami Vice fan as a kid.

Have a great monday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t615AFnapEU

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

Ive always liked...stuff. Things that capture my eye. Things that can start an idea or push my thinking in another direction. It might be a toy, book, film or game, an instrument or even a coffee mug. For me its really important what I visually surround myself with. It can be something like a Star Wars postcard that will bring me back to the feeling I had when I saw the movies at the cinema when I was a kid. Little things that spark something. So just before christmas I decided to upgrade my coffee mug. It wasnt a big deal but considering the fact that I touch the thing every 15 minutes eight hours a day, six days a week it becomes a permanent fixture on my desk. And yes....I use the same one all the time. 2013 was the year of the moomin mug. 2014 will be my Nineteen eighty-four mug. Seems very suitable. 30 years later things are worse than George Orwell predicted. Some people even seem to think he was an optimist. 

But more interestingly it puts time in a different perspective. The future has a tendency of coming sooner than you think. Today we continued working on the Akaba album. We have been working on it for more than ten years. A couple of kids got born in the middle of the sessions. Moved the studio a couple of times, reformed a horrible band (please note band-horrible music- pretty darn cool) not once but twice, made some money, lost some money. But we are getting there...we are closer now than we have ever been. Its exciting and fun even though Im struggling with it from a visionary perspective.

When you start recording a track you usually start with something fairly grey and dull. Clicktrack, guide vocal, guide guitar/keyboard. But fairly early on in the process you will probably add something with more colour and attitude. Something perhaps....a bit cool. Something that will probably be there until the end. 

The problem is that the energized feeling you had from recording that "cool" overdub will soon fade as you hear it over and over again. And you will probably add more crap on top....stuff that you think is even "cooler" and before you know it your first impulse/overdub is hidden under a pile of of "pseudocool" overdubs that are probably all based on that first technicolour overdub (that you cant even hear anymore because of all that stuff you put on top). The problem is that first overdub was probably cool...for real. As it was your first impulse, that first idea, the first reaction.

And I see this tendency in a lot of projects Im working with. There is always one more overdub you can do. The problem is that they are really fun to do as well. But maybe one should always try to listen with those "first overdub" ears because that is exactly the way your audience will hear it. 

Maybe that should have been in Orwells book. In the future you will have unlimited recording possibilities. The horror!

On the track we are working on now...there are actually a couple of those early "cool" ideas. The verses have three Baritone guitars playing against each other with a Zvex lo-fi loop junky in the middle creating a weird tilted chorus effect.

The choruses on the other have next to nothing harmonically...A very ambient synth going thru a small stone phaser and the akg reverb and then the chords are played on a Yamaha SK-20

Here is a video from that first session.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf-XZheQrfA

It sounds very "open" and I felt very strongly that it should stay like that. So we focused on the bridges instead adding first a Chamberlin steel guitar that was augmented with doubletracked Burwood 9 stringed guitars. 

We also added a cluster of guitars at the end of the choruses playing almost harpsichord like patterns.

2 Dano Convertibles with Zvex seek-wah

1 Epihone les paul with Zvex Seek wah

2 Burwood nine strings Clean

1 Eko acoustic 12 string with builtin pickup.

To get more notes but avoiding the organs territory we recorded the Roland Vocoder plus using the original drum machine as the trigger. The roland went thru the Sonic alienator to give it an almost snare buzz feel. The end result is almost abba esque. (please note that this is my interpretation of Abba esque...Tobias and Åsa didnt agree)

To add bass but without real "personality" we recorded two takes of the Roland Juno-106 ...low bass....and....superlow bass.

Rhythmically we added some 808 BD and 909 SD from the modular and treated them with some delays. To finish the whole thing off I record a sort of "road to nowhere" rhythm using a floortom and a snaredrum. Together with the rest it became an almost train-like feel but very small and multidimensional....at the same time. To give the whole thing more depth I reamped (as in pulled them out thru a guitar amp and recorded them again) the acoustic drums and miked them far off to get the acoustics of the room.

We worked an entire day on the track and in the end we had amplified things but kept the sonic core intact. I feel very pleased about that. I could have have added 16th notes and cymbals to the choruses but it just felt unnecessary. 

Take care....and thanks for reading.

NP - Beethoven String quartet No. 15 in Aminor

There is a right and a wrong way and a right way.

Yesterday was my first day back in the studio after a couple of days off. I worked on the Akaba album as we have some mixdates booked with Alar Suurna and we are actually hoping to finish this album fairly soon. The song we were working on was a remake of an old track called Fake it.

The day started with me recording drums on the track. Everything was already miked and set up so it took maybe 30 - 40 minutes to get the right take. After that I did Three different treatments on the drums. I always record the AKG reverb as it sounds so luscious and then I did two treatments using the Boss digital delay to get more movement in the drumtrack. Also by panning both delay bounces you get some good headphone candy going on.

On the track we had just a very simple bass in the choruses. I couldnt actually pinpoint what sound it was. It could have been the bass or tuba sound from the Taurus pedals or possibly something very clean from the Yamaha DX-100.

The bass sound worked but it could use a bit more character so as Tobias Ljungkvist had arrived we used an old Hagström bass through a guitar amp to get more grit and attack into the sound. The sound was fairly thin but we didnt really need more bass just some framing eq-wise.

After we had recorded the bass we decided to try something different. In a previous blog I wrote about the ideas I have floating around...one of them was making an ep or an album completely based on the VCS3. Well I thought I could start by trying to record some bass on the Fake it track.

So as I dont have a keyboard for the VCS3 I decided to do it old school. First tune oscillator one, then oscillator two and then oscillator three....record the first note on the chorus and start retuning the synth for note number two and so forth. The sound was really huge and really organic.

But for me it had a completely different worth. It sort of connects to those first pioneers of Electronic Music who worked with tape and very few and primitive possibilities. So where other people might feel that it is archaic I get a certain kind of rush to do it like this. Also using the VCS3 as a tonal instrument and not just as an effect unit feels very cool.

So when I posted the picture on line I wasnt really prepared for the onslaught about how very very very important it is to have a keyboard for the VCS3. And how very very very bad it is to use it as a signal generator.

This sort of woke a question with me....is there actually people out there who seriously think there still is a right or a wrong way to record things? And how does that actually realate to this song and this bassline? Im very happy that people take the time to write....at all. But it surprised me that people were so opinionated about this.

Old rare equipment seems to stir up a lot of emotions in people. There seems to be a consensus that there is a right or a wrong way. I feel quite puzzled by this absolute way of thinking. I tend to think more about songs and lyrics and atmospheres. Thats my job. If other people want to view them as museuem pieces they are very welcome to do so...I have albums to record.

The rest of the day moved on fast and fun. For the verses we added a Cembalo ostinato pattern that pushed the track in a completely new direction. I did a treatment on it using the Zvex lofi loop junky which made it sound like a warped 78 rpm record but it was a bit too much so we used it on the outro instead. This will tie into the other tracks on the album that have more of a sample cut and paste feel.

The last thing we did was to work on the middle eight which had a very simple Fender Rhodes line...It needed a bit more atmosphere and colour so we treated that thru the RE-501 tape echo. Mine isnt feeling too great and is incredibly wobbly which gives the sound an almost Sigur ros haunting quality. Feedback heaven with ghosts making out around it.

After we were done with Fake it we started working on a track called Åsas sång (working title). We started by bouncing between sounds on the Mellotron M4000D but it just felt stale and boring. The Chamberlin Cello is a remarkable sound but it feels like its tooo nice and tooo great so we decided to turn it off and then Tobias had the idea of using the Roth Händle Pipe Organ instead.

And four takes later we had a remarkable very solemn sounding track. The basic background was a live take of Åsa singing and Tobias on the grand piano so very little was needed....and the pipe organ hit the spot.

Working with Tobias is always a pleasure. He is fast, positive and very sensitive to the music we are working on. Always great discussions (not only about the Music we are working on) which pushes Everything forward and gives everything more depth and understanding.

Tomorrow we will continue trying to finish some more tracks. Its gonna be fun fun fun.

Time off/Time on

I have realized that I have issue with having time off. I dont mind it....its not like that at all. Its great getting some serious sleep and having time off with wife and kids....My "problem" is that when I have had a couple of days off the ideas start coming...I start making lists and start to fomulate schedules and Ideas. I try to back off from everyday work in the studio and try to see the bigger Picture. What is important and what should I spend more time on. Weirder? Wider? and maybe most importantly When? It doesnt help when my wife bought me a Kindle (one of those bookpads) and I started reading Nick Kents The dark stuff (which is about rock musicians...first chapter was about Brian Wilson). Very inspiring stuff.

Another problem is that I have recorded an album which is about sleep. Ive read a couple of books on the subject....watched ted talks and seen documentaries, But this means that even my sleeptime is material for an album.I write down my dreams and discuss them with my wife. Last night (in my Dream) I went to Änglagårds rehearsalroom to pick something up. I found an album I had played on and they had released it without telling me. They had put their new drummer on the cover and wrote (live) after his name. Really annoying. I went out into a little coffeearea where I sat down and there I met Clint Eastwood. He was terribly nice and was very friendly. We sat and talked for a while and then Änglagård dropped by and I confronted them about the album. They were very embarrassed, they thought I would never find out.

This will not end up in a lyric....or will it?

I have five albums that are more or less finished and will be done probably by February. I had hoped to have them finished already but that apparently wasnt going to happen. I also have two or three dormant projects that I could revive but its always so much more alluring and sexy to start something new. One thing that I learnt this summer was to try and finish stuff more than bouncing around. I counted my projects and I think the total number was 24 which means that if I would work one day on every project in a revolving Schedule...Id never finish.

Anyways....here is the first film I made in 2013. Which rockets my mind....I should make a Mellotron frame set with the VCS3. Or maybe an ep of VCS3 Music. Vocalists....who should I ask? What should the title be? Should it be futuristic? Maybe Metropolis related.....and then Im off again.

Time is limited. Ideas are not.

Making a small boat sound with the VCS3

John Doyle with Kenny Håkansson

Had a remarkable night with my friend Per Styregård who is one of Swedens best food and wine journalists. Always great conversation, great drinks and food for thought.

I thought I could share with you a little clip from the Kenny Håkansson sessions. John Doyle from Magazine doing his thing....and a pacing Kenny in the kitchen.

John Doyle doing his thing on the toms...

A new beginning

So its apparently time...again. Back in the old days of the Roth Händle studio I had a webpage. It was voted the worst webpage online due the amounts of scrolling and windows you had to open. I have to agree. It was a mess...nowadays the webpage has been overtaken by some guy who seems to think cheap insurance is the way to go. But atleast it was something. Now there is no webpage just a fairly active facebookpage and a twitter account that sort of twitches and moves in a fairly random fashion.

The studio on the other hand is very much alive.

By a weird clash of calendars I ended up spending a lot of time in the Swedish countryside this summer. It was terribly nice being with my kids and all but what it meant was that I for the first time in a long while had the opportunity to think about what I am up to. And it forced to make some radical changes and decisions.

I decided to focus more on projects that I was directly involved in as a writer and not as an overdub musician. I wanted to have a bigger part in the artistic direction of the projects I was involved in...and I also decided to cut back on touring with other artists. By making my mind up things started to change. Im still an overdubpuppet by more on my terms and by that with more passion. I have forced myself to become more social musically and have started a lot of projects that will come into fruition next year.

This past year has been terribly active. And next year seems to go into overdrive.

These are some of the artists that have graced the studio in 2013.

Necromonkey, Akaba, Kenny Håkansson, Walrus, Kaukasus, Paul Sumner (UK), Velasco (Ita), Ingrannagi della valle, Nacht, In these murky waters, Paradox, Carl Hasselrot, Zorg, White Willow (Nor), Emma Nordenstam, Molesome, Kinski Pop, My god damn Territory, Staphan O Bell, Page, The Opium Cartel (Nor)....and more.

If you have ideas that you think belong at Roth Händle studios....drop me a line at

Rothhandlestudios@gmail.com

Have a great christmas and thanks for stopping by....