Serious Symmetry
Thursday, October 20, 2005
With my disastrous excursion to Melbourne out of the way Ness and I have wasted no time making an official start on Hollows. It's been happening in the background for a while now. We actually started it long before Serpent was even finished with a couple of ideas - being Symmetry and House. We got together the other night at the studio to record (what we currently think is) the final version of Symmetry. And that's what this post is about.
For two people who rarely talk or see each other to be in a band would seem funny to most. Bands are about hard work, close friendships and spending lots of time in grotty motels getting pissed on cheap bourbon. The only bit true for us about that is the close friendship Ness and I share (and the cheap bourbon bit applies to me too). We generally don't like hard work, and as such take our time with everything. We've never been into playing live. No, that's a lie, we'd love to but it's just too hard. After the session the other night we decided to be a studio band, like they had in the 80's, and we think it suits us.
I recorded a demo of Symmetry in December 2003. I'd not done a lot of writing in the preceding months and forced myself to actually finish something new. That was in the West End Ugly World. It nearly prompted me to pull the pin on the majority of Serpent and rewrite it with our new found groove and chunk. Thankfully I couldn't be bothered. Symmetry went on to feature in the film One Night only a month after it was recorded. It's not the best film I've ever seen, but it was fun and director Peter Edwards liked the song. (When I get it from the studio I'll post a sample of the film version of Symmetry). The credits on One Night say "From the forthcoming album November" and that proves how old it is.
Anyway, nearly 2 years later we've finalised the song. At this stage it is going to be track one on Hollows, and what a suitable beast it is. It weighs in at 7:39 and is so very us. Listen to the sample and then I'll talk some more...
Symmetry Sample (verse 2 and chorus 1) 815kb
Vanessa has this ability to do pretty much anything. I suggested a Marianne Faithful style vocal. You know, old lady, lots of cigarettes and mature emotional pain. She put on her Numb voice and got it almost in one. We did a number of takes just to get the rhythm right (I have a habit of writing vocal lines with rhythms completely foreign to anyone but myself).
I'd worked on the track all afternoon so Ness could just come in put her vocals on. I didn't need to do much to bring it up to scratch though. I'd done separate comps from the original Acid session (synths, live drums, synth drums, heavy guitars, tremolo guitars, basses etc) that I'd forgotten I'd done. I quite enjoy working in Acid cause it means less thinking and then I can drag the comps into Pro Tools to make them sound all bright and shiny. I added minimal things, including the BOOM!!! sound I made years ago on the Korg which features just before the choruses (low rumble) and during the choruses (high but dark spacey in-a-big-mean-city-at-night sound) and the sound effects. I re-recorded my backing vocals at the end, which have come out more like co-lead vocals. I also extended the ending with one more time through the big chunky riff.
We maxed out the tracks on this one. Pro Tools LE has only 32, and damn it, that's not enough! A few things ended up in odd places, making the bulk of the mixing volume and effect automation, but very little EQ. I tried compressing and EQing the bass but it lost all it's guts. I usually like a tight punchy bass, but this time round it really damaged the song so I kept the super-low flabby bass. Vanessa's vocal effects were quite intricate also. During the verses each line has two vocals: one that is low and cold (which is then cut and manually put in place for the delay effect) and the other that is an octave above and totally saturated. The idea was that you would mainly hear the low vocal and the tail of the high vocal's reverb would be a bit disorientating. We also did a bit of literal-heavy-handedness. In the second verse, rather than the low vocal repeating the word 'eternity', it's the high and on the word 'emptiness' there are no delays or reverb tails. It's definitely a good headphone listen.
While the track was bouncing we got distracted taking silly photos of ourselves - which you can see one fruit of just up this post a little.
The Symmetry Perculiarity List:
(1) Those heavy guitars (there are two of them panned hard left and right) are tuned down to a power chord starting on a low A. My strings were very loose. (2) The synth drums were all done in Hammerhead. If you know what I'm talking about you're in one of two camps being 'Hammerhead is shit, get a real drum machine' or 'Hammerhead is cool cause it's simple and a shit'. (3) There are 7 guitar tracks in total, 2 bass tracks and 7 vocal tracks.
For two people who rarely talk or see each other to be in a band would seem funny to most. Bands are about hard work, close friendships and spending lots of time in grotty motels getting pissed on cheap bourbon. The only bit true for us about that is the close friendship Ness and I share (and the cheap bourbon bit applies to me too). We generally don't like hard work, and as such take our time with everything. We've never been into playing live. No, that's a lie, we'd love to but it's just too hard. After the session the other night we decided to be a studio band, like they had in the 80's, and we think it suits us.I recorded a demo of Symmetry in December 2003. I'd not done a lot of writing in the preceding months and forced myself to actually finish something new. That was in the West End Ugly World. It nearly prompted me to pull the pin on the majority of Serpent and rewrite it with our new found groove and chunk. Thankfully I couldn't be bothered. Symmetry went on to feature in the film One Night only a month after it was recorded. It's not the best film I've ever seen, but it was fun and director Peter Edwards liked the song. (When I get it from the studio I'll post a sample of the film version of Symmetry). The credits on One Night say "From the forthcoming album November" and that proves how old it is.
Anyway, nearly 2 years later we've finalised the song. At this stage it is going to be track one on Hollows, and what a suitable beast it is. It weighs in at 7:39 and is so very us. Listen to the sample and then I'll talk some more...
Symmetry Sample (verse 2 and chorus 1) 815kbVanessa has this ability to do pretty much anything. I suggested a Marianne Faithful style vocal. You know, old lady, lots of cigarettes and mature emotional pain. She put on her Numb voice and got it almost in one. We did a number of takes just to get the rhythm right (I have a habit of writing vocal lines with rhythms completely foreign to anyone but myself).
I'd worked on the track all afternoon so Ness could just come in put her vocals on. I didn't need to do much to bring it up to scratch though. I'd done separate comps from the original Acid session (synths, live drums, synth drums, heavy guitars, tremolo guitars, basses etc) that I'd forgotten I'd done. I quite enjoy working in Acid cause it means less thinking and then I can drag the comps into Pro Tools to make them sound all bright and shiny. I added minimal things, including the BOOM!!! sound I made years ago on the Korg which features just before the choruses (low rumble) and during the choruses (high but dark spacey in-a-big-mean-city-at-night sound) and the sound effects. I re-recorded my backing vocals at the end, which have come out more like co-lead vocals. I also extended the ending with one more time through the big chunky riff.
We maxed out the tracks on this one. Pro Tools LE has only 32, and damn it, that's not enough! A few things ended up in odd places, making the bulk of the mixing volume and effect automation, but very little EQ. I tried compressing and EQing the bass but it lost all it's guts. I usually like a tight punchy bass, but this time round it really damaged the song so I kept the super-low flabby bass. Vanessa's vocal effects were quite intricate also. During the verses each line has two vocals: one that is low and cold (which is then cut and manually put in place for the delay effect) and the other that is an octave above and totally saturated. The idea was that you would mainly hear the low vocal and the tail of the high vocal's reverb would be a bit disorientating. We also did a bit of literal-heavy-handedness. In the second verse, rather than the low vocal repeating the word 'eternity', it's the high and on the word 'emptiness' there are no delays or reverb tails. It's definitely a good headphone listen.
While the track was bouncing we got distracted taking silly photos of ourselves - which you can see one fruit of just up this post a little.
The Symmetry Perculiarity List:
(1) Those heavy guitars (there are two of them panned hard left and right) are tuned down to a power chord starting on a low A. My strings were very loose. (2) The synth drums were all done in Hammerhead. If you know what I'm talking about you're in one of two camps being 'Hammerhead is shit, get a real drum machine' or 'Hammerhead is cool cause it's simple and a shit'. (3) There are 7 guitar tracks in total, 2 bass tracks and 7 vocal tracks.
- posted by Tim at 11:31 AM -
Sounds interesting. By , at November 02, 2005 5:15 PM
hey tim, ronnie said you were interested in looking at my work. I have a deviant art with a bit of stuff on there. hope you're well!
xxox
http://libertyanne.deviantart.com/
By Liberty, at
May 01, 2006 5:41 PM
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