Zephyr Device

No Space is Wasted, Every Trace of Them is Erased

2006-01-07T10:53:00.000-08:00

It's DONE!

We changed the name to Zephyr Device. The CD itself is done and available, and all the details are at the new site, with lyrics, commentary, a preview player thinger, and pictures and other goodness.

Check it all out here:

http://www.zephyrdevice.com

Watch Your Lessons Flow Through Me

2005-10-20T18:50:00.000-07:00

There are a number of other acts out there right now releasing music under the band name "Departure". At first we only knew of The Departure, but I didn't do enough homework, as there are a few more plain old "Departure" bands who have released music under that name.

So as a concession to ourselves, we're going to call this record Departure, and we spent a whole lot of time in e-mail exchanges trying to kinda post-humously rename this band. We have a new one, to be revealed shortly.

Currently an actual domain name for the band name so that we can link to a site about the record from the record's jacket. More neat news to follow really soon, probably from Adam.

The Poetry that rings out through the Energy of a slap.

2005-09-30T12:56:00.000-07:00

With the mixes of "Fugitive Plastic" and "Call" nearing completion (just awaiting feedback from the others), it finally occurred to me what kind of mini-album we made here: a hip-hop album.

It's a lot of words (many more than your typical "rock" album) put to music. Andrew speaks the words (read, "the M.C.") Billy and I acted as the production team (read, "on the 1's and 2's").

However, this particular hip-hop album has a lot more guitar gymnastics (courtesy Billy) than is typical, more straight-forward drums (4/4 the whole time, an uncharacteristic decision on our part considering some of the weird time signature shit we pull off as Meltdowns), has instrumental intros, bridges, and outros, has a light sprinkling of humor and chatter, E-bow, chorus on the bass, hell, we literally recorded The Kitchen Sink.

Bearing that in mind, it's pretty eclectic. I don't entertain the notion becoming wildly popular or wealthy because of it. I don't even think most people will appreciate it, but I'm damn proud of it. I feel like it's the perfect document of our time together and the perfect synthesis of all our disparate influences and styles, and the very very best we could have possibly done given our time limitation together. My only hope is that our planning, our work, and our happy accidents plant the seeds of creativity in the heads of others. That's it.

I expect to have "Response" mixed sometime this weekend. At least by Wednesday, next week. Then, a little more mastering, and the album is in the can, and we could officially give it a title. I know I had mentioned labeling it with the date range it took to complete the album, from the day we started working on it to the final master. That would make it "05/24/05 - 10/05/05". Just over four months from concept creation to full completion. I'm still open to other suggestions, "Vini Vidi Vicious" not withstanding.

Cheers

It's All About How You Got There

2005-09-25T13:02:00.000-07:00

So for the four hundredth or so time (but not as many as Adam, I think) I listened through the five songs for the record, and really focused no the last one. I was planning to "finish" guitar parts for "Response" this afternoon, and so I was trying to marry the ideas floating in my brain to the piece itself, especially as the finisher of the record.

The end result: just stop. It's full, it's there already, it doesn't need anymore. It needs to be mixed, sure, but the piece is full, matches the rest of the record really well, and is a great closer. Where I had suspected the piece to be lacking in guitar, I now find it to be strong listening back after leaving it alone for a while.

Which is good, because Adam already knacked a copy of the session to start post production ^_~

Also, after listening back to "Fugitive Plastic", I'm beginning to suspect that the very organic ending we had put on the song ought to stay there. Adam and I were originally following our pop-sense of chopping off the extra, but really the movement ought not languish in obscurity since it sounds great, serves as a nice buffer before "Call" and "Response", and most importantly was part of the process of the song's inception. We spent quite a bit of time developing that movement and the one preceding it so that they would go together but create a particular aural stimulation that we were looking for.

Some now I'm going to head off to a coffee house to sip even more coffee, eat cookies, and think about how we are going to get this record out. Did I mention that the Tank Crash! website is up? That's our label. Self-produced, but we aren't fucking around here, people.

Even If You Forget and Have to be Taught Again

2005-09-12T18:58:00.000-07:00

So here are some ideas I was playing with tonight for guitar parts for Departure's Response.

They are meant to be on the disturbing/disquieting side. I have only recorded them out of my amp's XLR Line Out and no reverb, so as to get a dryer signal (as dry as one can get with my boss delay pedal, anyway). Yes, there is much delay.

I learned a special little trick with the delay pedal to make a note sound like it is "growing," which I used heavily. Also a lot of fun with the e-bow, delay, and changing the delay speed on the delayed ebow.

Lots of changing delay speed and then cutting the waves up in GarageBand, or using volume envelopes for really drastic openers and closers.

And there's some actual honkin' tonkin' 'lectrik geetar near the end of the piece.

Tip - Don't skip through the intro.

Response-betafreak

The Change From Slave to Master Happens Faster

2005-09-08T19:38:00.000-07:00

Tonite I went ape shit making a bass part for Response. The song is about forcing you to feel things, and because the beat is electronic, I'm going to force you to really feel it anyway with a big bottle of violent bass. Played through The Rat, direct into the preamp, and after maybe six or seven takes, I think I've got it.

It has order which intentionally breaks into chaos, and I really forced myself to write something that is sonically interesting, and then go buckwild and play it so hard that I could barely control it.

And tomorrow comes violent guitar part with shrieking feedback and e-bow. Oh yes. Nothing like a bit of the old ultra violence to make you feel it in the pants.

Gotta Keep Up Gotta Stay Up

2005-09-08T08:47:00.000-07:00

More work on "Slave to Fashion" last night, as far as mixing the "bridge" section of the tune, adding new bass parts, etc. I also re-recorded my bass part for the last third of the song. I may have to do that one over again, though as it was getting really late when I made the attempt last night.

I did more mixing work to "White Collar Nomads", based on some suggestions that Billy gave me after an initial mix, and I think that it came out a little better, but there is always room for improvement! (Am I going to have to burn the Masters when we're done with this?)

So as the time stretched to 2am last night, I reminded myself of Hank Rollins and all those before me who worked three jobs and played in two bands and we just flat-out hardcore enough to keep going. Heard on WNYC's Soundcheck yesterday that the lead singer from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah commutes regularly from Philadelphia to Brooklyn to practice with his bandmates, burns, packages, and mails all their CDs himself, and was largely involved in the production of the album. It's this kind of dogged determination that is truly inspiring!

More to Come

2005-09-07T13:51:00.000-07:00

Last night I worked on re-recording some of the bass on "Slave to Fashion" and some of the mixing of the drum parts. I think I may in fact need to go back into Reason and re-export them to get a proper mix. However, I'm making slow progress. This week, I'll go back to "White Collar Nomads" and make some changes where Bill had suggestions. It's just been a real dog finding free time lately to work on this stuff and I've just got to be hardcore and force myself. I'll keep you all posted.

Make It Funky

2005-08-24T15:49:00.000-07:00

Working on the drum beats for Response tonight. I think I'm almost there, at this point.

Response is literally a response to the narrator in Call, both pieces being descendent of a writing exercise in which Adam, Andrew and I all did some free writing on sexual experiences, and then Andrew wrote Call and Response using ideas and even lines borrowed from all three of our free writes.

Of the two pieces, the former is a live AND improvised live performance (our only LIVE performance on tape...er disk!) and the latter is to be all electronically instrumented, save for Andrew's voice. Originally we wanted to improvise the expression of the electronic loops in performance with Andrew but signal to noise ratios and evil computers thwarted us, so now I'm using some of those beats I prepared to compose the electronic accompaniement.

But it turned out that they didn't offer enough variety, which you will see here:

first stab at it

So then I went back to the Drum Machines of Doom, beat my chest and complained, and they bequeethed unto me more hot beats, this time dropping the ump-tiss ump-tiss club flava for something a little more syncopated, and a little more hip hop, which you can listen to here:

second stab at it

Now that that's sorta settled, I'm going to fiddle with the beats some more. I'm wondering if this piece should stay percussion oriented? Or should we be busting out our USB keyboard, jacking it into DUB LAZER and getting serious?

One last thing: Adam and I are going to try and get this baby completed, AND mastered, by September 15th, at which point we'll send it off to press while making it available on TEH INTARNETs. This is the strategy, anyway. We figure we'll go with mperia.com to sell our music online as mp3s, and we'll handle mail orders probably through a paypal button on this very site. And sometime in October or November, actual CDs should come back to us from whatever pressing plant we go with. We'll probably put together a limited run of them with our own bare hands, printing, folding, cutting, etc, so that we actually have some physical copies when we release the record.

One down...

2005-08-12T15:41:00.000-07:00

Today Adam and I finished the last of the recording that needed to be done for departure 1 - Target Market. The third movement was lacking in fullness and didn't live up to the rest of the piece, but now it's straight-up Hotlanta Nights(tm). It was really fun to throw in the pimpin' handclaps and beat boxing. I really love how the human voice as a percussive kind of instrument adds to this movement, it has become really "full" sounding. Ride till I die motherfuckers.

Adam has a bass part to crank out for White Collar Nomads, but at this point 1, 2 and 3 are done, and we'll begin work on 4a and 4b (Call and Response, respectively). Call is basically a live recording with an overdub near the end by Andrew for the vocal part. I don't think any more recording will take place on that baby, I don't want to mar our only live performance ;-)

Response is a little trickier. With Response I'm going to be writing way more beats to accompany this, and probably scrap the original ones I wrought because now I have Andrew's excellent performance to work off of (whereas before we were going to improvise it and take it live, but technical difficulties ended up giving us more room to work).

So I feel like we're really on schedule here. One more to go!

Mixing has been on-going, Adam has really been cracking away at it.

New Look

2005-08-10T14:37:00.000-07:00

A New look for this site, coming soon. So expect some weirdness for a little bit while I iron things out.

Edit:
The transition actually went a lot smoother than I thought, thanks to Blogger's excellent Preview feature!

PUSH THE (record) BUTTON, IGOR!!!

2005-08-09T22:18:00.000-07:00

Monday night I spent a good four or five hours recording slide guitar and then space guitar parts for White Collar Nomads.

Both instruments are actually my acoustic tuned to an open F chord. Took me something like a bazillion takes to make the slide guitar not-hideous. Space guitar was plugging the acoustic into the Boss DD-3 delay pedal, the Mutron Bi-Phase, and my fender amp, being played with the e-bow. When you listen to that guitar, you'll hear the e-bow switch from normal mode to freaky harmonic mode while playing a repeating melody.

Recording a slide guitar ambiently is a pain in the ass. None of my microphones are really up to the task, but we made due and Adam was able to EQ the recording to have a really awesome tin-can sound. It's very stark and Flaming Lips when you hit that bridge.

So Tuesday night (last night, tonite? i dunno its freaking late!) we hammered away at the rest of the parts that needed to be recorded for WCN. Most of the work was with the end of the song, the third movement, which we decided to approach as though Adam and I were some kind of comic theatre pit crew accompanying a Japanese Noh play. We mapped out Andrew's vocal part and came up with things to try at different spots and we ended up with a really engaging and bizarre thing.

For one set of lines, for instance, I thought it would be fun to have a very complex and organic pattern of "everyday" noises from around a kitchen looping together to create a rhythm. I think we've all seen some film at some point where mechanical noises are layered together on repetition to form mezmerizing patterns. Well we actually performed the parts out - water running and stopping, running and stopping, chopping on a block, scissors cutting, microwave door opening and shutting, a pan sizzling. It came out so cool that we giggle every time we hear it.

Earlier in WCN, there is a particular line in which rhythmic spaces were left on purpose for later embellishment. The part describes an after-work martini hour party at some chainbar with novelty junk on the wall (think Friday's or Applebee's) where the coworkers are celebrating John's promotion. The coworkers aren't really paying attention and gosspping and they almost miss the toast, but join in chaotically and cheer afterwards. There are now four awesome simultaneous takes of myself, Adam and Bob doing bar gossip, toasting to john, clinking our glasses, and woo-hooing after wards!

"Here's to John!"
CLINKS!
"Our new southern mid atlantic regional manager of sales and marketing!"
WOOOO HOOOOOOO

It comes off damn funny, and really well placed in the tune itself, not campy. I'd give you a clip to listen to, but I've spent the last half hour trying to figure out why Logic keeps exporting a blank mp3 and I give up, it's almost 2am. Samples and such soon, I promise!

Still to do: Adam wants to record a blood-curdling scream after "there's a region in trouble that NEEDS YOUR HELP!"
By cruel fate our fun synth bassline for the first movement got deleted, so I think Adam wants to record actual bass there now. Or he might put the synth bass back in, who knows.
He sounds like he wants to do more work on the drums to this tune.

But ostensibly, basically, this one is almost finished.

Quick Update for a Lot of Work

2005-08-05T15:13:00.000-07:00

Adam and I are recording aminals. That's right, aminals. like amino acids.

We got some really fantastic recording done on departure 3 - and we need to run this by andrew, but we were thinking maybe "Fugitive Plastic" would be a good title for that one?

Today I cranked out more accompanying guitar parts for "White Collar Nomads" and now that tune sounds even more awesome.

And as soon as I clean up my filthy house and my filthy self I'm going to try and record some acoustic, open-tuned slide guitar for the little bridge between parts 1 and 2 of that song.

Our filthy jobs made recording today difficult, as Adam and I kept getting calls to do stuff to server computers that are freaking out because some jerk killed the power somewhere. Who needs these job things?

Album Artwork

2005-07-30T06:08:00.000-07:00

Over at flickr, I've got some pictures of some of the art for the album.

Final version of the cover art is on the right, on the left is a concept for page four of the insert. Pages 2 and 3 will be packed to the brim with lyrics, and aren't typset just yet. Page four has thanks, mission statement, legal junk to be worked out before it's finished. The blue line represents a fold.

This is a concept for the jewel case back, completion is awaiting "official" song titles, album title, running times, label and price information, legal junk, etc. The green lines are where the folds should be.

More Recording Took Place for dep - 3

2005-07-29T21:13:00.000-07:00

Apple's GarageBand is a piece of turd and hideously destroyed a few of our sessions. However, we were able to end up recovering all missing files and put together a Logic Express session.

We were trying to record more guitar and bass for departure-3 on Wednesday night, 7/27, and we ended up spending the first two hours untangling this mess and making sure we still had all of Andrew's vocal recordings.

From there, things were on the up and up. I recorded takes of the parts I've been practicing for the prior week for this song. I wanted to do the whole tune in one take for a feel of greater continuity, but all the channel and effect switching, and the desire to use different microphones for different parts, had me end up doing each take by part.

Somewhere around 10pm we finished all the main guitar stuff, and Adam started recording bass parts. We collapsed around 11:30.

I still want to put one more bit of guitar on the fourth part, a salsa-styled finger-picked acousitc guitar.

The other instrumentation on part four that I thought I didn't like because it's a bit messy (shaker, hand drums, hand claps) grew on me during that session, but I still think that it could all be tighter.

Just so we don't go crazy, I think next session we'll probably lay down more tracks for White Collar Nomads.

more guitar part notes

2005-07-25T07:09:00.000-07:00

White Collar Nomands -

Either I don't know how to tune a guitar, or the guitar on the first movement is sharp. That needs to be redone.

Spent some time last night working on guitar overlays for the first movement of that song, which is how I got to that conclusion. I have this one figure I like, but nothing that I really think is superb, and so that needs more playing with.

The first instrumental break though - I have a neat part brewing for that. I have some melodies and a mode that sound really nice over the main figure on my telecaster, and I'm playing around with slide guitar on this part. I think that I'll be tuning the Blue Destiny (Adam's old Danelectro with Onboard Effects!) toan open F chord for this part. I tried it last night, but the strings are nasty old, and too close to the fret board, and it was just too late at night to go about fixing that. But it sounds promising, it really does.

Tuning (1 to 6):
F
C
F (maybe this should be A again? play with it, I suppose.)
C
A
F

When is the record coming out?

2005-07-24T10:42:00.000-07:00

Well, as you can see below, we still have a lot to do. Adam does have a cover design done, and Colleen took some great pictures of us. The portrait of the three of us standing shoulder to shoulder will probably be the back cover image.

We have a printer in mind to get the cds and booklet printed for a decent rate. probably for a run of 300 at first.

So I figure another month or so of recording if Adam and I stay on top of it, and then a few more weeks of mastering. Then we send it away and probably don't get the copies for another few weeks. So I'm hoping we'll have this record by the end of September, but October is probably more realistic.

Where to now?

2005-07-24T10:19:00.000-07:00

Andrew has sent word that he has safely made it to Japan. Congratulations, Andrew, and good luck!

Adam and I have quite a bit of work left to do for this record. We've done some post-Andrew recording, and we have plenty more to do.

This is just a run-thru of what we still have to do (by song):

Target Market:
This is the most complete track. However, it's pretty clear that the third movement requires more creative instrumentation in order to live up to the rest of the song. An afternoon of brain storming and recording should get us there.

White Collar Nomads:
The first movement of this song is just a little too straightforward in the music. The bass isn't really recorded, it's just a looper. The guitar doesn't stray from the main riff much (I just can't help myself), because I didn't want to throw Andrew off. I do want to go back and record a lot of the fun guitar figures I had written for this part. I need to practice them, now that I think about it.

We had Andrew re-record the third movement to this tune, and we've decided that the hand drumming that Adam and I did was just not good nor on beat. So we're going to take another angle at this part - more hand drums and things, hand held percussion, but an emphasis on propelling the song, on spareness, and making the kinds of percussive accompaniement one can hear in Japanese Noh theatre.

departure3 - slave to fashion:
This one needs a lot of work. Andrew's recorded vocal parts are brilliant. The guitar parts I've recorded for movements two, three and four are lackluster and need to be redone. In addition, I'm still figuring out my guitar part for the first movement. I think I have it now, and I'd like to try and record all four movements in one sitting, straight through the song. I've also changed my part for the fourth movement.

The fourth movement needs more going on in the melody area of things, and so that's what I'm trying to do with the guitar. I think I've gotten there, just need to record it. With the Mutron Phase Shifter, of course.

Adam has put together some brilliant drum parts for this tune, making some great improvements to the first and second movements, including a blistering drum fill to rival M83 during The Ascencion of the second movement.

More about the fourth movement - Adam and I recorded hand drum tracks, a shaker, hand claps, and other things to go along with the beat and to make it feel very organic. All of it needs to be done again. The hand drum parts - I think we need to spend some serious time practicing those if we want to pull it off. The drums come across as thump-thump-thump, with little distinguishable variation in tone.

Call:
Call was pretty much a live recording, with the exception that Andrew went back and dubbed over the ending to clean things up a bit. I'm not sure how much I want to do to this piece personally. At least guitar wise. I do want to experiment with hand drums and actual call and response vocal parts with Adam during the breaks.

Response:
Well, right now this is still just Andrew and the beat. And it sounds really fucking amazing. I just need to take some time to listen back to it, and figure out where I might add in the other beat layers. Having heard it with Andrew's voice, and seeing the piece better, I think I'd be crazy to just use what I wrote before hand, and should try to do some more pattern composition based on what he tracked down.

Catching Up

2005-07-16T21:58:00.000-07:00

On Thursday night, the 14th of July, Depature had its last recording session with the main vocalist and lyricist, Andrew Morgan.

It was an incredibly intense session.

Before I go on, I should first mention that at the end of the session we came up with some names for the songs! So I can call some of them by name, rather than number and movement:

departure1 (dealin): Target Market
departure2 (white collar nomads): White Collar Nomads
departure3 (slave): still untitled
departure4a (erotic1): Call
departure4b (erotic2): Response

So on Thursday night, we jumped right into recording Call. Adam and I had performed this together three times before, but not once with Andrew! In addition, my guitar part was intentionally entirely improvised. So we had a very loose structure to work with.

Eventually we decided that the best way to record this song would be to take it live, with all of us performing together. Thus, this is the only recording of a performance by Depature. It came out really well, but I still want to go back and add in some additional layers - although maybe I ought not to, and to let it stand as is?

For Response, our approach couldn't have been more different. Originally intending to live mix beats over the main drum loop while Andrew performed his vocal part, we found that there were all sorts of problems in sound quality when running from my powerbook's headphone outjack into the mixing board. We didn't have this problem before because we were running from a usb interface, out the monitor outs, into the mixing board.

So without a second usb/firewire interface to provide us with better connectors, we couldn't really run with our original idea. Instead, we had Andrew record his vocal part with the basic drum beat itself on loop.

The end result is really a superb performance, though stark without any other instrumentation. It actually is somewhat fitting to the piece, and when adding in other drum beats and synthesizer zappies (DUB LAZER!), we are going to try and preserve the unique moments where space seems to collide with Andrew's performance to breathtaking effect.

Finally, we ran through all of the things we had recorded with Andrew so far, to give him a chance to re-record anything that needed more work. This ended up pretty well - as Andrew redid the intro to Target Market, and redid the entire third movement of White Collar Nomads. That last one presented itself as quite a challenge. It's almost midnight, we're all bugged out, stressed, needing sleep, and wanting to stop. And we listen to this third movement and realize that both hand drums and the vocal delivery are totally off beat with the drum machine. Do we do it again? Hell yes.

Not only that, but Andrew changed his delivery, we worked with a different beat, and decided that when re-recording hand drum parts for this movement, that Adam and I will approach the drumming in a completely different matter - again emphasizing space, and trying to give the feel of the taikos and expressive percussive tones and phrases found in Japanese Noh theatre.

Today (actually yesterday, Saturday), Adam and I went back to start the long recording process we still face of plugging in our own parts, that we left out to get Andrew's vocals recorded before he had to leave. After some initial dastardly problems encountered in GarageBand, we got the guitar and bass takes for the buildup/crescendo/sonicyouth/samba sections of departure3(slave) recorded. Hearing how the parts are coming together musically is just a spine-tingling experience, although I have a feeling my take is suspect because I was still a tad hungover from the Saki Bombs. They may need to be redone.

And on Friday, the three of us met up with Colleen around 6pm ("magic hour" for photographers and directors), to do an outdoor photoshoot on black and white to get some decent group and individual portraits of us. I'll be taking that role to be developed on monday. On matte paper. yes.

Magic Hour consisted of us running around like maniacs, jumping off of things, Colleen and Adam rather cleverly distracting me to get good photos because I am The Worst Actor Ever, generally a lot of damn work. It should pay off well, I think. We've been learning a whole lot about thinking on our feet and composing things on the spot during this project, and I think that was to our advantage as we tried to dream up decent photo compositions.

Talking more about personalizing the record, Adam and I were thinking of printing an insert on card stock that we could include in each CD, signed by one of the three of us (which means we should try to make Andrew sign a pile of them before he leaves ). From the few CDs I've ever ordered where I received a personalized message, I've always been touched. So this could be a cool way to get close to that. The message on the card stock would basically be a show of grattitude, and a piece of encouragement to share the record with others, and to remix it and cut it up (will be released under Creative Commons, with GarageBand files on net for free download).

INSANITY! Recording hysteria hit sometime on Tues, I still have it

2005-07-13T21:08:00.000-07:00

Right now I'm trying to kick out the jams. Tomorrow night, well, actually tonight, we three are recording departure4.1 and departure4.2. They are basically two separate, but quite coupled tunes. Both are the amalgamated product of Andrew's creativity and freewriting that all three of us did based on an erotic writing assignment.

We have a couple of concerns with this session: it's our last recording session with Andrew before he leaves for Japan. Which means we need to get all his vocals for these two parts tonite. 4.1 is a kind of evolution in our creative process with this experiment. Whereas departure3 took the longest to write the music, and it's compositionally the most calculated, in 4.1 Adam and Reason lay down a funk beat while the guitar part is entirely improvised. Actually, Adam's based part features a lot of improvisation as well.

That may not seem like a big deal, except that Adam and I don't really ever kick out a tune as an improvised piece. Ever. And despite our collective aversion to Phish-style American Jam music, this ended up being a really hot fucking number (or a hot fucking number) the first few times we kicked out.

4.2 is a twist on the idea of improvisation. It's also lyrically and thematically a twist on 4.1. The perspective of the narrator switches, the tone changes from sexy-funky to sexual-dangerous-dirty. In this piece, we have a intentionally nintendo/electro sounding drumbeat. Heavy on the bleep and the blorp and distrubing spaces. It's spanking. And Adam and I have been writing other loops to drop on top of that beat. The idea is that we will be mixing them in and out over the main beat, DJ-style. Not only that, but there will be an improvisationally played software instrument, controlled using a usb/midi keyboard with reason and one of the sampling programs. Or with one of GarageBand's software instruments. Perhaps more than one. So the improvisation goes from rock band to totally digital with the exception of Andrew's voice.

I've got some beat banks in a Reason file over here. Dead tired, been at it for a good three hours now. Somewhere along the way I tried to copy paste banks a1-4 into b1-4 and work on them over there, to develop bigger and better ideas based on the originals... but reason (actually, me) didn't do it write and my new things erased the simpler things they developed from, and that set me back about an hour trying to make up for the missing material.

I'm curious as to how the beat-machine/reason as a live instrument will get recorded. I have a feeling that a lappy will be the reason instrument, and that lappy's output will be routed via usb interface into another computer where the recording will actually be done.

I did spend a good half hour trying to do it all on one computer, but I could not get the audio routed in that strange loopback-esque way that I envisioned, and doing it with separate machines greatly frees up processor power for both machines, improving the audio quality.

recording departure3 - slave

2005-07-12T23:13:00.000-07:00

Tonight (or, last night? it's late!) we spent the whole evening recording vocal tracks for departure3 along with drum beats and looped bass (thanks to GarageBand which made doing so ridiculously easy).

The goal is to just get Andrew's vocals recorded, and any overdubs, and we can add in the heavy instrumentation later, re-record the bass tracks, etc. Same for Thursday night, our last recording session with Andrew.

departure3 gave Adam and I the hardest time as far as song-writing goes. We spent the most time on this one, and it ended up being the most cohesive one so far. Each part is in the same tempo, too, and the thematic musical links between movements are really strong and I think complementary.

I can't wait to record the guitar parts for this, it ends up being very Sonic Youth at one point. Okay I need the sleep now. More later.

Blasto! a status update

2005-07-11T11:35:00.000-07:00

Currently we have departure1 (dealin) in the hole and ready for the mixing and perhaps some dub lazer. departure2 (nomads) has had the basic tracks all recorded. we'll come back to this later to add additional instrumentation and overdubs, but the basics are all there, most importantly Andrew's vocal parts.

We begin work tomorrow night on departure3 (slave) and possibly even departure4 (erotic) [parts 1 and 2]. We have two recording sessions left with Andrew: tomorrow night, and thursday night, and that's it. So we're hell bent on making sure that we get Andrew's vocals recorded first, where ever it is possible.

Early mix of departure1 is sounding really freaking good, and recording departure2 was much easier than the first, as predicted. So all things are going according to plan so far, and the music is actually coming out really good.

Lyrics for "Dealin'"

2005-07-07T20:41:00.000-07:00

Adam has created a rough mix of Dealin', which reminds me that Andrew has provided the lyrics:

Boys and girls step up
To the doctor’s stage
Take a Dixie cup
A few purple pills
Of pharmaceutical love
To help you rise above
Your peers. Let me clear up
Any doubts you have
And steer you in the right direction.
Intelligence is now packaged and resting
On your drug store shelves, dust collecting,
Waiting for the young boys and girls
Who care about impressing a world
That likes impressors, impersonating bright others,
Inflating egos and ability like flat tires filled with holes
When the pill wears out, out floats the know,
The knowledge, the genius that flows from all those
College learned. You too can have what you yearn—
Brilliance! Wits and smarts that will lift you from the pits
Of shitty twits that cart around kids in cars that act as shopping carts
Holding together whiny lives that ache their slowing hearts.
Rise above it all with these tiny pills!
Sad? Tired? Let me cure your ills
And fill soul sores with glowing warmth
And energy and happiness, self create sunshine
Happy all the time! But as you know money can buy
This type of happiness, and pricey pills gives twice the thrill
So empty your wallet right into my pocket
I’ll lock your soul away so you yourself can’t stop this
Reaction, just sit back and relax as the pills start slicing through
Dead thoughts and old facts, and watch as your focus grows
And becomes erect like a big sex organ you never knew you had.
Watch for side effects, loopy love drives, days and nights
Blend like puddles of soupy cum on a slutty bed,
Dreams and thoughts collide, you’ll catch fake landslides
In the corners of your eyes. But don’t worry, click your heels three times
And tell yourself it’ll be alright.

In 10 years time, our smart kids will walk straight lines
A zombie nation, low and slow from highs
Synthetically created, related only by their jaded statements.
Degraded to simple “Foundation” status,
Maleable human rocks to be knocked around
And built upon by men with silk socks
And white labcoat smocks that keep dirty work
From staining imported suit frocks.
Pill creators are the new clergy class
Slinking around under pretty glass
With a lab for a church and no time for mass
Parishoners are hopped up little leaguers
Speedy high school cheerleaders
Eager to jump as high as they feel
Church leaders with meager reserves of moral ideals
The blind leading those with dilated eyes,
A slow moving medicated mass with hands at their sides

A rowdy kid is simply a rowdy kid
Who shouldn’t be doped up for what his parents did:
They raise babies like Chia pets, give em food and watch em grow
Don’t they know that children are roses, delicate flowers unfolding in phases
Fragile wonders that can wither away if play, love, sun, and warmth don’t fill their days?
Evil parents raise children in the shadows—
In the shadows of a towering career
In the shadows of a dark house lit by the flashing glow of TV sitcom cheer,
In the shadows of internet babysitters, computers that steer
Young minds to any page that glitters, babysitters that transmit clips of pop culture
Right to the soul like intravenous drips of brain-rot causing, clot creating thought blocking, brain wave stopping potent poision medicine.
We fuck up our children and then get mad when they act fucked up.
We suck up to professional pill slingers, well-dressed drug flingers who sing and whistle all the way to bank and sip sweet wines……………………………………………UNFINISHED CONTINUE HERE who sit like judges, deciding case after case

We have to fight these pills as a community,
A joint effort to preserve our creativity,
We must annoint our young ones with love
And smoothly rub tolerance and respect into their pores
Wash their hair with awareness and drown them in self-confidence.
Cloak them in guidance and advice and watch as they ignore it,
And then follow up flops and mistakes with lessons and support.

Recording continued, Tues July 5th

2005-07-05T21:34:00.000-07:00

Tonight I worked with Adam to put some more instrumentation and touches on the first Departure tune. Andrew's vocals for this are mostly done (there is one do-over left!), the parts are coming together nicely in the mix, and I'm insanely happy with the guitar bits I've tracked out tonight. Adam has had some time to mix what we've already started with, and I couldn't believe how well the piece was shaping up before my eyes/ears as we worked today.

Basically with this tune we are going for a feel of disorientation, the kind of sonic disorientation you get when your ears "pop", when there is a sudden air pressure change. It's the perfect aesthetic for the material of Andrew's original piece, and for the way in which we mapped musical accompaniement to the piece. Studio gimmicks are being used to mighty good effect here, panning and volume envelopes as though this were 1969, and a good dose of dub reverb at some choice moments!

I also made a giant Death Ray cannon using my Telecaster, an E-bow, the Mutron Biphase, a Boss delay pedal (d-3 or something?), and my Fender Stage 100 amp. The Death Ray does neat things in this tune. The first time I've ever really used The Death Ray on any recording of significance.

We did not get to begin recording the second Departure tune because Andrew had an unexpected hold up earlier on in the evening, but the time was well spent, as we are pretty much done tracking for the first song (although Adam is faced with a monumental mixing/mastering challenge with this one).

However, all got to check out Adam's nifty four page layout for the record's booklet/insert. Adam has managed to find a nifty duplication/print shop that accepts eps files made with their templates and prints orders of cd's or dvd's at a fairly decent rate (which gets better by volume, not that I see us ordering a thousand ever, but hey, who knows?). So it looks like we'll definitely be able to afford to produce this record. I'll provide a linky when I get it from him.

The Recording Began on Saturday, July 2nd

2005-07-05T07:26:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, Andrew , Adam and I got together to begin the recording of the tunes. At this point we only have enough time to record the 4.5 songs we've written, we don't have time to write any more.

That said, as we go through the recording process, we're probably going to do a lot more writing. I ended up writing guitar parts on the fly for the first song, since I've only ever played the djembe on it when we rehearsed it together. It was actually really rather fun to come up with parts on the spot, and I really like what I ended up tracking out. We're recording the songs in the order they were written (at least for now), and this seems to be a good strategy.

Adam and I are getting together after work to see if we can record some additional trackage/sound effects for the first song. At some point Andrew will be coming over, and I think we might just jump right into working on the second song, since our time together is fairly limited.

In other news, Adam has concept art for the cover that is nearing completion. It is in fact the Eagle Rock monument's hideous eagle with some rather interesting things done to it. The cover will simply be this piece, and the project/band name "Departure" will be on the back, and on the side if it ends up in a jewel case. Probably not. I totally want to rip-off the cut/glue/fold packaging used by Zelda Pinwheel on their latest record (which is a really good record, btw).

Lastly, I would like to give a shout-out to Brian Cirelli and his soon-to-be noise band "Dude Man Bro".

Thursday June 23

2005-06-27T11:40:00.000-07:00

All three of us got together again over at Billy's new place ( actually, my former apartment ) to discuss the four song ideas that we have nearly finished. We started off with the "Writing the Erotic" idea. Andrew read us his piece and we collectively decided that there should be two separate pieces of music to accompany the two very distinct moods that Andrew's writing seemed to touch upon.

For the first part, Billy and I worked up a hot jam over a few beats and Andrew read the material he had. We sweated and threw our arms about in jubilation. It seemed solid, but the beats need a bit more randomness and so forth. I figure that is something we can actually work out once we have finished recording that bit. The idea, I suppose is to simply put one of our beats on, mic us and Andrew, and hit the record button. This way we can get the timing of the material down pat. Then we can go back and insert drum sequences that are more appropriate for maximum awesomeness.

The second part for "Erotic" grew out of a concept that Billy had proposed. His idea was to concoct an entirely electronic piece of music - mostly beat oriented, with a few extra keyboard hits or melodies here and there. I had this thing in my head, and sat down at Reason for a few moments to make it live, and presto we've got a four-measure beat. Now the two of us are going to take the beat home, and come up with additional rhythmic sequences to go over it, that we can select "live" and do a little drum machine improvisation. Keen.

We then took a step back and looked at our music for "Slave to Fashion", whereas there are hot beats and a sweaty work up jammification. We showed Andrew all our new beats from the previous tuesday, and he seemed to concur that they were quite triumphant. We played through it a couple of times and it felt delightful. Andrew did some hand drumming over the last salsa beat bit that felt very in tune to what was happening, and we jammed out on it like THE DEAD or WIDESPREAD PANIC or some shit for a good five minutes. Joy all around. Beer and wine flowed like sunlight from our hearts.

Then I had to go back to work. Crap.

Andrew and Billy are both away for the week, so Departure is getting back together on July 5 to commence recording! In the meantime, Billy and I will both be working on beats for "Erotic", I'll be putting together something smokin' for "White Collar Nomads", and Billy will do a bit of saucy programming for "Dealin'". In the interim, I also plan on familiarizing myself with this interesting new thing called SLEEP and another thing called RELAXATION. The world is full of wonder.

Much Needed Update!

2005-06-22T18:41:00.000-07:00

I just never got around to posting what took place at our last rehearsals due to how busy I've become moving into a new apartment. At this point Departure has four tunes in the hole, and we are probably going to begin the recording process really soon. We still have no drummer, although we've had loads of fun with drummers who get in touch with us and then fall off the planet. Scum!

After the "erotic" session, the following rehearsal was dedicated to finishing off the third tune (working title "slave"). We hustled through what we had so far for the tune, and really elaborated on the second movement in a very good and sonic-youth-esque way. We still needed music for the third movement. It ended up coming about just by plugging along at myriad ideas for sounds and texture. It's very salsa-meets-surf, the third part, which eventually shifts into a fourth part with a key change, an instrumental ending to the tune. The last two movements are really neat in that they feature a bass and guitar part that complement each other, rather than one running the hook and the other doing accompaniement.

So today Adam and I got together to work out the third and fourth songs a bit more. We have a series of beat loops for the fourth song ("erotic"), and a hot bass line, so we just set about jamming on it. It's been a long time since I've had a "jam" that good. I completely improvised going buck wild over that bassline, and I think that I'm going to keep my part that way - improvised. We don't know what Andrew has in store for the fourth piece lyrically, so we'll map a change in feel and mode to the different parts. We are hoping to start the tune off instrumentally. What made me really happy about our work on this today is that this tune is musically exactly what we were going for when we set about making music for the combined erotic piece that Andrew is still assembling. I figure we'll be working that tune out tomorrow with Andrew.

Then we got real busy tracking out drum loops for "slave". This really helped us make the piece more coherent, helped us work out the dramatic changes, the feel of our instruments on the various parts.

All in all, a very successful session, and done in my new apartment, just days after I've moved in. Feeling pretty good about all this.

Writing the Erotic

2005-06-13T20:41:00.000-07:00

A few days ago Morgan LeMaître, singer for our other band The Meltdowns, gave me an idea for Departure as far as trying different creative processes to write tunes on the spot. She has a number of books from creative writing classes that have short chapters on such-and-such a topic which then have exercises at the end of them. Morgan suggested that I pick an exercise in one of the books and have all three of us carry out the exercise to arrive at some basis for working on a new thing.

We've had this idea going for the last week that we'd like to make a piece that expresses sexuality without the usual angst-ridden repression, cyncism, and misogyny that is so common to the music in our area (the kids call it "the emo"). So I opened up Morgan's copy of Poet's Companion (by Addonizio and Laux) to the chapter "Writing the Erotic," made photocopies of the chapter for Adam and Andrew, and we took off from there. The chapter was full of interesting ideas about expressing and describing human sexuality, and one of the first exercises at the end seemed perfect:

Do a ten-minute, uncensored freewrite on incidents from your past (or someone else's) that relate to some erotic discovery you, or they, made earlier in life. Choose one from your list and use "First Sex" as a model for writing your own poem. Try for some displaced language.

Freewriting, as Andrew cleared up for me, is the practice of just writing without editing or going back, just going forward. So the three of us ended up free writing for about 20 minutes until we all stopped and just read back what we had. As Morgan predicted, we all had really diverse results for such a simple assignment. I hope to scan them in and post them here soon. I have to say that Adam and I went into this feeling somewhat inadequate and came out feeling like a million bucks. Once we got rolling with the writing, we had to stop ourselves to get back to focus.

We read our freewrites out loud to each other and commented, oohed, ahhhed, hemmed and hawed. Much discussion followed and we agreed that Andrew would pursue an idea he had for tying our freewritings into a bigger and more unified piece. He wants to put together a more complete work, but borrowing from our three individual pieces directly. There were a number of themes he was looking to pursue, but he's not done yet, so I'll go into it later when we have more to show. We should post lyrics for our first two pieces as well.

I digress. So Andrew spent a good two hours cracking away at this piece while Adam and I brainstormed like monkeys to come up with potential music for such a tune. We ended up with a rather sexy driving bass part and a number of simple and then elaborated funk drum beats (originally done by playing together with hand drums, and then tapped into the computer so we could play our instruments). I have some really great wah and delay parts to go over it, and it looks like we will have another completed work really soon.

We did not, unfortunately, have time to work on a third part for the Slave to Fashion piece, but hopefully we'll get to that soon. We're getting together again on Thur.

I will be trying my best to contact the few people I know about drummers (again) and to get the word out about our project to anybody who will listen and who's opinion is respected by others. We really want people to know about our project and why we are doing it, so we have to try and build some interest in our process since it will be over by the time we are done!

Come Together

2005-06-09T19:58:00.000-07:00

Tonight we were expecting a drummer to show up, but she never came. This always happens. We post an ad. Drummer writes back "I've been playing for 10 years, lots of experience, really interested." You talk on the phone and they say the same thing. And so you expect to meet them somewhere sometime and they don't show. But enough of this. We do not need such people ;-)

Tonight we set about working on more new material. This one was a grueling evening, especially working in the hottest room of a house that was already sweating. We took a quick snapshot of some silly japanoise thing that we threw together on the fly so we wouldn't forget it.

Then it was Choose Your Own Adventure time.

A) I had this set of kinda sultry guitar parts that really lent themselves to a tune with a lot of sexuality. And we really want to make a tune celebrating sexuality. This kind of thing is common to Prince, but not around here. So we had some music, but the general focus or soul of the tune was very broad and up in the air. (Turn to page 59.)

B) Adam randomly came up with this idea regarding the phrase "Slave to Fashion," and how it is used to describe the polar opposite of who is slave and who is master in modern society. Adam had a number of leads here, but we had no music. (Turn to page 4.)

We ended up taking option B. We split up, and then spent two hours working on it. Andrew cranked out lyrics in the front room, while Adam and I hammered away at this dance beat trying to come up with stuff that interested us. You know, because you've got to have DANCE music when someone is a slave to FASHION!

By the time we couldn't take anymore, we hadn't really arrived at anything that piqued our interest, so we took a listen to what Andrew had. We immediately jumped back into the head scratching to put some music to the beat.

And then the magic happened (we had to clean it out of the curtain later) - the moment of divine inspiration where something just clicks and no one knows why or how to get there, but it is glorious - Adam starts playing this great nifty hook bassline he's had laying around for months, and it completely gels with the piece.

We ended up writing a second part for the piece and called it quits while working on the third. The second part was another divine inspiration shocker, but the third was all elbow grease. It ended up with Adam playing his bass with distortion and a slide, and I was bending notes in time with his slide glissandos to make horrific harmonies. It ended up getting too CountryFried to fit the piece and had to be scrapped.

In review a productive evening, though it would have been a bummer to not hit those good moments of creativity. You just keep slugging away and trying to look at things differently until something comes to you.

Demo 2 - White Collar Nomads

2005-06-05T10:49:00.000-07:00

Here is a super rough mix down of demo number 2:

White Collar Nomads (The Transient Wealthy Are Packing the Hummer Again)

First Demo - working title: Dealin'

2005-06-04T10:54:00.000-07:00

Our first demo take for Dealin' is here.

This was basically quickly mic'd right after we put the song together and played through it a few times. Quality is a bit poor, there are some goofs, it's pretty obvious that we were still feeling our way around the song.

Andrew already had this spoken-word/slam piece written that became the lyrics and vocals for this tune. He read it to Adam and I, and really knocked us over. So I played the djembe to a suitable beat, Adam funked out a hot bass lick, and we started arranging the tune from there.

When we really record this tune, I would like to have a drummer playing along (if we get one), and some psychedelic guitar overdubs on it.

At some point I need to put together drum machine type parts for the first two movements of the song we are going to take a demo cut of tomorrow (for "The Transiet Wealthy...").

The Beat Goes On

2005-06-02T20:56:00.000-07:00

I have this idea in my head for a piece with finger picked percussive guitar in what I call "dick dale mode", which is the kinda of scale formed used in his "Missirlou", if you know what I mean. But I digress. I have a drum loop that works really well for it, and not being able to help myself, I tacked on a hip hop beat at the end in the same tempo as a suggestion for another part.

Reason loop file here, and mp3 loop here. Guitar part not recorded yet, falling asleep at keyboard as I type, and I'm a little too tired to play it right and creatively. But I have a part. Possibly two. And a melody. I'm feeling this one. It's "sexy! sexy! sexy!" like Ol' Dirty.

Downloads! Recording?

2005-06-02T18:47:00.000-07:00

This first one is actually not our first demo, (which I hope to post soon if everyone is okay with it), but a drum loop plus bass guitar recording I did. Just working out some ideas for a tune for the group. It goes the thru twice, the first time thru I'm going for very minimalist bass parts, bordering on sonic youthishness (which is what I would have a guitar doing over it, I was thinking), and the second time thru I approached it more pop-esque, with two parts that really lend themselves to things like hooks.

Click linky to download.

Adam and I talked a little today about how we should record the tunes for the actual record. I suggested taking two days to do them all. Adam suggests that this might be a physically impractical, and that maybe we should try to lay down the basis of the tunes (say as "live" and simultaneously as we can) and then layer on the dubs and such.

I figure we'll give that approach a shot on Sunday when we attempt to demo the tune we put together yesterday (the one about re-lo's).

Picking Up Steam

2005-06-02T09:07:00.000-07:00

Last night we got together again. Our goal this time through was to take a different creative process than we'd ever really tried before: write a song, on the spot, from scratch.

We first sat down and discussed what we were interested in lately, what we'd like to make songs about. We were talking very vaguely about the concept of the group, ideas for the record cover, themes and such and it triggered Andrew to discuss an article had been reading an article about "Re-los" (relocaters), which we started discussing at length and decided we wanted to do a piece on the topic. The subject matter fits very much in with the aesthetic of our outfit and what we are trying to do and say with this project.

The topic lent itself easily to some musical ideas that we talked about - types of sounds, tone, part changes. Some gimmickry, some experimentation. I don't want to go to far into it and let the cat out of the bag, so I'll leave it at that. Then we split up - Adam and I went into The Melterium with the instruments and began cranking out ideas, while Andrew set to work in our front room writing for the piece.

We had no idea what we would develop separately, or whether the things would work together when we got back together, but we decided we'd try to do it in a couple of hours. Two hours later, Andrew had an amazing piece of writing, with multiple movements. Adam and I had three movements of music written at that point also, the third of which is all hand drumming!

Amazingly, the things we had come up with separately went together really really well, and we have a new song now, which is, I think, even better than the first one we put together last week.

We will be getting together on Sunday at 4pm for an hour (or two if needed) to take a quick demo of the tune. We also have a quick demo of last week's piece. Funny suggested title by Adam: "The Transient Wealthy Are Packing the Hummer ... Again"

We took a demo last week of our first tune just to keep from forgetting the parts. It's fairly sloppy, and incomplete in that I haven't overdubbed the guitar parts (since we took it live and I was playing the djembe). Still, part of this project is not only to show what can be done in a few weeks time, but also to expose the creative process of it. So, should I post mp3's of our demos? Even if they make us cringe? Or should I hold off posting anything until we have the actual recordings in the works? I think that if the demo's don't make us cringe too much, that we should post them.

Still looking for a fourth collaborator - a percussionist. No takers yet. If you're interested, e-mail me at billy.zophar AT gmail.com.

No Time To Lose

2005-05-31T20:08:00.000-07:00

Departure got started on Tuesday, May 24th, 2005. It will likely end sometime before July 23rd, 2005. Once the deadline hits, that's it and no more Departure, just a record of what we were able to accomplish and how.

Departure is a three-piece:
Andrew Morgan
Adam Copeland
Billy Gray

We are looking for a fourth collaborator to be our drummer/percussionist.

Because Andrew is leaving for Japan, the band is intentionally created as a unit that will be short-lived. We are going to spend the next month and a half trying to write good music that's different from anything we've done before in our other groups, to press a record, and possibly to play one gig.

Andrew is a gifted writer and slam poet. Adam is a bassist, a drummer, a singer, and a lover. I am a guitarist, a hand drummer, a singer, and a fighter. Andrew is from the band SeaCactus, and Adam and I are from The Meltdowns.

In this project we are looking to try our hand in areas and genres that we are not so familiar with, and pursue some ideas that we can't seem to shake. We are going to try new approaches to collaborating on material. In addition, rock music in our humble northern New Jersey neighborhood is pretty stagnant and awful. We feel that if we can make a good record with only weeks to do it, we are upping the ante, posing a good challenge to the other capable musicians and artists around us. It's a challenge we hope they'll accept!

Read this blog or follow the ATOM XML feed in order to keep up with us. It will serve as a record of our progress once the project has ended. We will be posting updates, scraps of demos and works in progress, and a description of our creative process as we develop one. And once we get near the end, we'll let you know how to get the finished tunes and the details on the performance.

Stay tuned.

Welcome to Departure Music

2005-05-31T19:28:00.000-07:00

Departure is Andrew Morgan, Adam Copeland, and Billy Gray. It began on Tuesday May 24th, and will not be possible to continue after Friday, July 22nd. Stay tuned.