The Queens Squirrel

Over this last fall I have had a young man staying in the studio. He is smart, ambitious and with a great ear. He writes songs and is into tinkering with sounds and making beats.

When he initially came to the studio we started talking about the creative process of doing things and what it means.

One of the first things I told him was the importance of finishing things. It really doesnt matter if it is good or bad or if the guitar needs tweaking. At the end of the day you want to have that stereofile so that you can sit in the car or at home and listen to it with a bit of distance. Things that seem incredibly important and the basis of the track might sound completely different when you step away from it. I trust my impulses when it comes to working in the studio. I follow them to the end. Do a roughmix of the track and then I leave it alone. If there is something good there I can go back and work on it some more but I need a roughmix so that I can listen to it with some distance and actually hear it as a whole and not just a collection of sounds running at the same time.

When you work fast and let all the ideas and impulses link into each other it creates a continous flow. You work within a line of reasoning. I hear the sounds in my head before I do them. This sounds incredibly naive and simple but its a lot harder than you might think.

There is also another aspect of working fast and that is that you sort of relax and lose you inhibitions. If you do a little weird track and its embarrassing and everything...you just move on and do another one...but you have widened your experience.

Also when finishing things you have to see a bigger arch going over the track. How you can build an arrangement in the mix by fading in and out. If you only have a handful of tracks you can create depth and dynamics with levels, panning and reverbs/delays. The more channels you have the easier it becomes to build a foundation in the arrangements. Its not very likely that you will be autopanning your floor toms in a wild erratic manner....and if you have vocals things have a tendency to become even more static.

One of the biggest autokomp organs ever made.

The track I posted yesterday...

https://soundcloud.com/rothhandlestudios/cthulu-cream

...was a intellectual trap if you want. A version of a Readymade. The autokomp is from a Yamaha synth I bought at a fleamarket in Sundbyberg. Nothing really happens except that it fades out into a very luxurious AKG reverb. But what I like about the track is that it makes you actually listen to this weird autokomp pattern and instead of turning it off. It just stays there and then sinks into a great lush reverb. Did "I" create it? Well not really but I presented it in a way so that people would actually sit down and listen to a Yamaha autokomp machine for two minutes. There is also tension in the fact that it is so simple and doesnt really change.

There is also that thing with listening to something very small and self-contained where your creative mind starts spinning "What would I add to this?". What could I hear on top? Where is this music coming from? And by forming these questions something actually happens. There is an exchange.
Even if its something as simple as turning on a synth and pressing play.

The track of the day was recorded a week two after we got back from the Necromonkey tour. After the last show Jon drove from Chicago to New York. We dropped off our gear at Toms place and then wehn to Queens to hang out with Faye. The morning after I went to the store and I saw this super cute squirrel running on a fence. When I got back home I started recording a lot and needed a song title.

https://soundcloud.com/rothhandlestudios/the-queens-squirrel

I think this track came from experimenting with triggering the Moogerfooger Murf with the Volcas sync out.

Anyways...so when the young man left the studio after spending almost three months there I asked him "so...how many songs did you finish?" He replied "One....I think. It needs just a bit more work"

We came from the ocean

The echo chamber at Abbey Road.

Yesterday was a good day. I did a mix on the second track "we came from the ocean" on Friday and felt very pleased with it. Than I came home and listened and realized it needed a lot of work. It wasnt a problem with the track itself but I listened to the first track I had mixed and when I listened to "we came from the ocean" I realized I needed to push everything a bit further.

I really like working that way. Trying to build every song differently so that when you hear the album its entirety it wont become boring or flat. Its very easy to resort to standard solutions...Doubletracked Mellotron 3 violins with the Chamberlin Cello playing bass sounds amazing. Its a sure thing. But if you do it on every track...it will become flat very quickly.

So on this new track I wanted to create different atmosphere in the choruses and used the Mk 1 mandolins as the driving chords with doubletracked Orchestron Celloes as the bass. To get a stronger percussive element I added M400 Timpani hits. The choruses fell into place verk quickly. A lot of atmosphere but the problem obviously meant that the verses needed some attention.

As all of the instruments are either Mellotron, chamberlin, optigan or Orchestron I feel a lot of affection for them. I have issues with messing with them too much which is a bit weird. I destroy drums on a daily basis but Mellotron....? Never!

One big thing that is great with these instruments is that they command attention. They move tempo and pitch wise. Your ear cant really trust them.

Its about creating a world where you as the listener is lured into the idea that everything is ok.

One way of creating such a world is by using reverbs to tie everything together. My main reverb is a big Akg spring reverb that has easily paid for it self. It is lush and silky. By using the same reverb on everything you create an artificial room where the sounds blend. On this album I will be experimenting with several reverb units to create specific rooms for all of the tracks.

My favorite reverb was at my old studio in Sundbyberg. Next to my studio there was an empty garage...and I got to use it as a echo chamber. A echo chamber is quite simply an empty room whe you place a speaker and a microphone and you record the echo. It was really amazing. If you are curious to hear it check out the tarantula waltz album.

Well anyway I have listened to the mix at home and it sounds....good which means that tomorrow Ill be starting the next mix. It actually feels great.

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.