T Minus 30 freaking days

Tensions are definitely up as we started work on the last song today, "The Quest for the Latke Oil." This is the 9th and final proper song on the record.

There will not be another full rehearsal for a week and a half. In that time we will break into smaller groups, work out the rhythms as two guitars and bass, and work with our drummer to make sure tempos are ok and that all his kicks match.

I confessed to Doug our bassist today that I am petrified about being the mix engineer. I know I can do this but I do become the only member of the band whose primary responsibilities start once everything is recorded. Stress is good for the soul though. For the body? Well I have a physical tomorrow. I will let my doctor tell me how anticipating the mix is treating my digestive tract.

Despite the brief venting above I definitely think this band is going to be ready. Many records have been written and recorded much quicker and under much more adversity. I am so proud of how much we have been able to do in the few short months since deciding this would be the next project. It took us five years to write five songs since recording Wrath of the Gods and suddenly we have 9 songs ready to go in less than six months. We can really step up to the plate when we need to and I can't wait for you guys to hear this. Even if you don't care about holiday music this is going to be a really interesting album........

TMinus......OH FUCK!

In 31 days Gods of Fire will be entering Emandee studios in Williamsburg to record basic tracks for Hannukah Gone Metal, a full length album of classic Hannukah songs and new material we wrote for the holiday. It will be released in October in time for the holiday season.

The plan is to record 9 conventional songs plus three "bonus tracks" in the most elegant but cost effective way possible. Plans are made to be shattered but this is the current roadmap-

6/11-6/15 basics at Emandee. My goal is to record all drums and bass, and as much of the rhythm guitars as possible. Also we are going to have strings and horns on the album. I would love to get as much of that recorded in a "proper" studio as well. Marc, the engineer at Emandee, has great mics and a beautiful live room I would like to take advantage of. He also passes everything he records through 1" tape before it hits the computer to add some analog warmth.

6/16-6/30 overdubs at the Orange Room (my home studio). This is going to be vocals, guitar solos, keyboards, and any of the acoustic instruments we did not get an opportunity to record at Emandee. My goal is to have this album fully recorded by the end of June.

July - the mix. This is the part I am most worried about. The limitless freedom of home mixing can also encouarge nit-picking by band members and too much time spent worrying about the little details. I want to take my time and make this album sound phenomenal, but I do not want to release Chinese Democracy. The biggest challenge for me as a mixer is to know when to allow flaws to reveal themselves in the recording. It is so easy to make everything PERFECT that the challenge is no longer to make something sound as good as possible, but to know when to make the choice to allow imperfection to reveal the humanity in the music.

8/22- Mastering at STERLING FUCKING SOUND! This makes me giddy. I can't help it. I only have great things to say about the mighty Alan Douches who mastered my last two records but it is impossible to pass up this great of an opportunity.

So there it is. And as of this writing the band hasn't even LEARNED all of the material yet, let alone perfected it. But this has been an ambitious project from the start and everyone has been working their ass off to make sure their parts are learned and are grooving. This is going to be a busy summer but a fun one.

Frequent updates will continue......

LATENCY ISSUES IS BACK!!!!!!

Welcome to Latency Issues 2.0.

This is not just a fresh coat of paint. I am officially bringing this blog back to its roots as a recording blog. If you are not interested in the process of writing recording and mixing an album you can stop reading here.

My Facebook status updates and postings on Baroque Bleak Brutal will keep you connected to my personal life.

For everyone else, I am embarking on a pretty awesome journey. This blog will be updated regularly and frequently to chronicle the recording process for Hannukah Gone Metal. Come along with me for the ride.

Vacation part 1 - the roomate is gone

So my vacation is starting to take shape. For the first leg of complete freedom my roomate is away in California. I wanted to create some activities that would take advantage of the silence.

Activity #1: "A food borne illness grows in Brooklyn." Kristin received a frozen turkey as a Thanksgiving gift and a black truffle as an Xmas gift from her work. So we are going to have a full on Xmas dinner this weekend. Turkey is defrosting and by tomorrow night it is getting a brine. Neither of us have cooked a turkey so this is going to be pretty interesting. Definitely going to make a truffled mashed potatoes, and may even baste the turkey in truffle butter. Any other suggestions for truffle oriented sides? I imagine by the time the truffle has run its course I'm going to drop it in olive oil and have an awesome truffle oil for a while.

Activity #2: Demolish what is left of my hearing. I will be recording. A lot. LOUDLY. I want to experiment with both recording live guitars in the studio and using some new mic techniques. Expect some noise up soon.

Feud Live at Sin-e July 2003

As most people who read this blog know, I played in a pretty decent instrumental band called the Feud for about 8 years. We were loud, young, occasionally pretentious, and often straddled the line between indie and progressive. In the summer of 2003 we played a brief tour to support our second album Language is Technology. We ended at Sine-e in NYC. As the band broke up shortly after this may be our last show, or very close to it. Update: Lee confirmed this was in fact the last Feud show ever.

At this point we were a four piece band, having been at 7 members at our most bloated. The core of the band was Larry, Bone and myself. Our drummer was a talented but ludicrously insane guy named Jay. He bailed on the tour less than a week before we were supposed to get in the van. Our friend, and a much better drummer than Jay, Lee Diamond joined up at the last minute to learn the set and save our asses. He learned the entire set in less than 72 hours and hit the road with us. Lee is a diligent archivist and records just about everything he is involved in. Shows, rehearsals, everything. He had a small cassette recorder with him he used for recording our shows.

Tonight Lee sent me mp3s of the Sin-e show. While listening to it I am remembering how much I loved this lineup of the band. This is the tightest the Feud ever was, period. At best we were an inconsistent live act. We improvised a lot, we were very temperamental, and we all got way too drunk for our own good. Sometimes you would get a world class show, sometimes you would get awesome chaotic noise, and sometimes you would get amateur hour. For the two weeks we were on the road in 2003 we were a sick well oiled machine.

The sound is incredibly raw as it is from a cassette but I made an attempt to improve it. Briefly for the nerds I did an analysis of the tape noise/distortion and ran a noise reduction program to kill most of it. I then used some EQ to bring out more guitars and kill some of the muddy tape frequencies. Lastly I used a touch of compression to bring back some of the energy that was lost by the noise reduction.

Download the zip file of the remastered show here via a yousendit link.

The Feud Live at Sin-e July 27th 2003

1 Intro
2 Citizen Beautiful Alien (Larry Bass, Bone and Seth Guitar, Lee Drums)
3 XYR Fingers for the Young Ghost Allegiance (Larry Bass, Bone and Seth Guitar, Lee Drums)
4 N'finite Rug (Larry Bass, Bone Guitar, Seth Keys, Lee Drums)
5 Don't Be Such a Fucking Harness Joyce (Larry Bass, Bone and Seth Guitar, Lee Drums)
6 Le Passion de Noam Jamski (Seth Bass, Larry and Bone Guitars, Lee Drums)
7 Desized (Larry Bass, Seth Guitars, Bone Keys and Guitars, Lee Drums)

Your New Home

New song can be downloaded in high quality mp3 here.

To be fair this is actually something that I worked on and had up on the Myspace in a different form a few months ago.

The song has gotten a remix and a 100% brand new vocal track. This time I replaced the dopey vocal effects with proper enunciation so you can hear the whole story.

What hasn't changed is the song is still a silly stream of consciousness homage to late 80s Touch and Go records bands.

Enjoy. The picture is unrelated. It is from a goat farm I was on last week before seeing Alice Cooper and Heaven & Hell. I threw the goats at the goat and it just kept staring back at me, trying to suck my soul out through my mouth as I breathed. Goats are freaking Metal. I see why people associate them with the devil. Weird freaky gorgeous lovable creatures. Click on the picture for the full size version where you can really see the F'ed up eyes. There was also a newfie on the farm which is the most ginormous puppy I have ever crossed paths with. Although still technically a puppy the dog weighed over 130 pounds. And was wet and stinky. My friend Vince in order to try to not get dog slobber all over him raised his hand up when the dog came running. Apparently this is the command for "hug" so he got a lot more than he bargained for with a face full of newfie. Pretty rad dog anyway, even with the stinkiness and all.

Yes, this was the third time I saw H&H in the last six months. What can I say? I never thought I would ever get the chance to see Sabbath with Dio so I took every opportunity that presented itself. No, there were no surprises, in fact they cut four songs from the set. But who cares? Alice and Dio in the same night? Freaking awesome.

Also unrelated- went to the LI Roller Derby championships yesterday. It was a fun night because of the company but the game wasn't particularly notable except they kept the music going the whole time, not just in between periods. Watching girls beat the crap out of each other to "The Trooper" was freakin' sick. Even though the announcer tried to ruin it by singing along to the guitar harmonies. Actually no, that just made it all the more Metal. We were also coincidentally super close to where my parents live. We passed their house a couple of times and I took everyone in the car to the old diner hang out Shyer and I used to go in high school, On Parade Diner. It is all fancy now. WTF? It was also empty on a Saturday at Midnight. Where do the kids hang out now? Are they all at Syosset House?

New Song- "Under the Wires"

Also up on the Myspace.

High quality mp3 HERE

Right click to download or left click to stream. If you are on a Mac, God willing you know what to do with a link.

While wrestling with a very ambitious song "Exposed" that is far from ready for public consumption, I kinda crapped this out very quickly. That is not to say that there wasn't any sweat or tears over the arrangement or the mix, but the basic structure and lyrics came in a flash. As people who have worked with me know, I love simple arrangements with dense sound layers. This song started as just acoustic guitar and vocals, and I added all the orchestral parts one by one. There are high strings, brass, stringed bass, and some synth pads. The "tropical" guitar is electric, although in context it sounds almost like a very bright acoustic guitar.

Should I add percussion? I am inclined to say no, but I was experimenting with a few hits that I thought sounded pretty good, but also made the song sound a bit Flaming Lips-y. Anyways, give it a spin. New Scream Bloody Virgin on a lazy Sunday.

In case you didn't know tonight is the season premiere of Curb Your Enthusiasm!!! I am so psyched. Hopefully divorce has given him some great material.

Also if you live in the UK you are probably already watching the IT crowd. If you live in America you probably don't know what it is. Find a way to watch it. Season two is already three episodes in and they are the funniest things I have seen all year. Find them as torrents, or if you know how to spoof your IP, they stream on the BBC website for UK IPs.

I hung out with some goats yesterday, and the most ginormous puppy I have ever personally had the pleasure of petting. Stories forthcoming..........

Space

I haven't done a good music philosophy post in a while, so here goes.

Walking around the city today my iPod switched over from Clipse ("Chinese New Year) to Dream Theater ("The Silent Man"). Now I was really enjoying the Clipse song. Ben turned me onto him a little while ago, and I think it is one of the more interesting commercial hip hop albums I have heard in a very long time. Granted I am not an expert on the subject, but I like the blend between the abstract and the booty shaking. The Dream Theater song starts as simple as can be, with a strummed acoustic guitar. Which sounded beautiful. Absolute beauty. Hot puppy sleeping in the grass on a lazy summer afternoon kinda of beautiful. You could hear the care that went into the room and mic placements. Then the voice comes in on top and everything is in a beautiful space. It sounded like Petrucci and LeBrie were sitting on 14th street performing for me in a cavernous yet acoustically precise theater.

Clipse had no space. Clipse has no instruments. Everything is completely virtual and compressed up the wazoo. Clipse doesn't want to be the quietest mp3 on the iPod. Listen to any recent metal album from the last 2 years. Hell, listen to a lot of recent indie releases like that Arcade Fire abomination. Can you envision where it was recorded? Can you see the room? The downside of freely available high quality recording solutions is we have lost our sense of space. I am 100% as guilty of it as anyone else. Listen to my music. It sounds like it was recorded somewhere in the Matrix. You can't envision my environment. There isn't an environment. My music is made somewhere between lines of code in emulation software. The most my music breathes is when I use drum samples that were blatantly recorded in a real drum room.

No wonder a higher quality music format was never accepted by the public and we all collectively took a step back with mp3s. What would you even want to listen to in high definition audio? All my favorite DVD Audio discs are 20-30 year old albums. People have started working very hard to make albums sound louder and bigger and heavier and more epic. But who is striving to make music sound *better*? Who is the next George Martin? Glyn Johns? Tom Dowd?

Shit the Gods of Fire aren't even using real DRUMS on the next album. And we were seen as relics for using a real kit on the first record. There are a lot of problems with Wrath of the Gods, but you can hear where it was recorded. You hear imperfections in my amp. You can hear the natural inconsistencies in the drumming. Unfortunately it is a losing war. I have shamefully stepped back from all of my analog ideals in favor of louder bigger and heavier.

How are you supposed to get kids to go to rock concerts if they don't even know what a rock room is supposed to sound like? I was pretty shocked the first time I saw a band called Death by Stereo use severe vocal and full mix compression during their set opening for Mastodon. The Bowery Ballroom no longer sounded like a concert venue. There were just pretty dudes sounding like the iPod. I'm sure I wouldn't survive a Linkin Park or Good Charlotte show, or any of those people. Trying to make your music "sound like the records" now means to do as much as possible to remove the live environment as possible. So when you are in a space, you are still in a virtual world.

As I plunge deeper and deeper into the matrix and forget everything I originally loved about recorded sound I hear a beautifully played acoustic guitar reminding me that we all feel relaxed with a little bit of space.

High Quality Scream Bloody Virgin mp3s

Ok, thanks to Ben Lebo, I have a simple working solution to distribute high quality music.

Find the new songs not destroyed by the cruel algorithms of myspace HERE

Or individually:

Cast off your Virgin Thorns

Basements of Xanadu

There are a couple more track on the main page.

New song up on the MySpace

It is called "Cast off your Virgin Thorns" and can be heard here.

Lyrically, and you can probably hear this in the performance, the song was very cathartic. It is about someone I know, but not someone confirmed to read this blog, whom I care for very much who can't seem to get their life together. In the never ending quest to find the easy path this person makes their life much more difficult than it needs to be, and often this affects my life adversely. At a certain point if you can't find the angle, you need to stop making excuses and just get out there and do what you need to do. No one likes to work. No one likes to feel like a sheep. But we do what we have to do in order to support ourselves and keep our lives moving forward. Life is all about trade offs. Do I love performing advertising operations all day? Hells no. But I found something I am good at that pays me enough to do all the things I love and doesn't erode away at my soul. What more can you ask for? Well, some people don't want to put in their time........

It is not reasonable for me to be this judgmental or to be confrontational about how someone lives their life. This is why despite the recommendations of people around us I do not. How can I say to someone "I have trouble looking you in the eye because the way you live infuriates me and causes me undue stress and frustration?" But as a song? Gold, Jerry! Gold! An open letter written in bile.......

Two cans and some string

Reeling from the wall to wall akwardness that was yesterday, I remembered as I was leaving the office that today is payday. What better reason to swing by Guitar Center and check out their cans?

They were very cool about letting me try everything out. I grabbed a Seinnheiser pair (can't remember the model number), Ben's trusty AKG K240's and the Beyerdyamic DT 770 pro.

The Seinn's went out first. They were too bright and felt like an improper reference. At first I thought the AKG's were too dark, but then quickly realized I was hearing limitations in my own recording for the first time! The Beyer's were so accurate that at first I was completely taken aback. I started thinking they were TOO accurate, that maybe I need to hear with the hoi polloi. Maybe I really should be mixing with earbuds? Just kidding folks. I am a nerd.

I spent a LOT of time A/B'ing the AKG and the Beyer. I listened to my song "Dysgrace", and "The Dark Eternal Night" from the new Dream Theater. In addition to being very well recorded the new DT is the only album I had on my iPod that is encoded lossless and almost completely uncompressed.

At first I was having trouble noticing the differences between the two pairs of cans, but my patience was rewarded and I decided the Beyers are more accurate and have a subtle extra sense of space and definition.

One pair of headphones, a pop filter, and a free 2 year replacement warranty later (I can't go into GC without the jew in me coming out and wanting to haggle. I always gotta get SOME kinda deal) I was out the door, cans on my HEAD. The nerd equivalent of wearing your new shoes out of the store.

Yes, that picture is me on 2nd Place in Brooklyn happily walking around with huge freaking clompers on my head. My sweet shit lord they sound good. I put on Pink Floyd and "Welcome to the Machine" sounds very close to what I always assumed the true voice of God sounds like.

OK, enough talk, I'm firing up Sonar!

Never say Never: New Pedals!

Bought a Fulltone Wah today and ordered the Blue Box. Got a nice discount. Despite all the virtual modeling of cabinets and amps, it does feel good to stomp shit.

Inside The Studio

A couple of people have asked to see some pics of the Studio, which I have now come to think of as "Oblivion Research." Well, more like my new Blackberry demanded I give them a company name for my personal email accounts and I had to think on my feet and that is the first thing that came out. In high school and college I used the pseudonym Hello Oblivion when I made 4 track recordings. I have always liked the word Oblivion. But anyway here are the first pics, taken with the Blackberry camera of Oblivion Research. Like all good porn it is a little blurry and a little grainy.

Eddication Friday!

My new books arrived today!!

The Barbecue Bible!

and

Mastering Audio: The art and the science

If you are interested in compression or Kofte kebabs, I'm your man!

Thanks Harry for the tip off for the BBQ book. Now I have something to do with all those spices I just got.

Faux Faust

Graham came over last night to create yet more music for his first feature film. He had cut an entire scene to a Faust song of dubious copyright, so like any industrious director decided we should sorta "re-create" the song for the scene.

At home using Fruity Loops, Graham built the entire drum groove and brought it over to the studio. First thing we did was upload the scene into Sonar. After the video thumbnails set themselves up we matched the loop to the timing of the scene. Then we found a nice analog keyboard sound to match the bass of the original track.

Then we went into our own thing. I'm a huge fan of DI'ing string instruments and building all of the sounds in post. Graham really wanted me to be insipired laying down the guitar parts by recording dirty. And he used dirty tricks to get what he wanted. He brought out of his bag the BUZZ BOX, a pedal he owns and knows I lust after. It is a pretty nasty sounding distortion which also has an octaver that goes two octaves below POORLY. I thought it would be fun to shred so fast that the pedal couldn't keep up and sadly it wasn't very hard. The octaver would chug along behind me at its own pace, sometimes hitting the right notes, sometimes not.

So this is how the guitar parts went. I did two tracks of Kraut Rock noodles completely DI'ed with the Buzz Box. Played back straight back through the monitors without any additional effects the sound was very reminiscent of early Butthole Surfers. I'm pretty psyched with it. As we speak Graham is adding vox, an e-bow track, and editing the whole thing together in his studio on a Pro-tools setup.

Between this, our doo-wop tune Spray it On, and the general noise weirdness we recorded, I think the soundtrack for this movie is going to kick tons of ass!

dysgrace

New song up on the myspace. Check it out here.

I'm pretty proud of where I took this one. I didn't expect it to turn out this guitar heavy. A lot of the vocals were recorded before guitars were added to the mix. Discipline has never been one of my finer traits and shit, I can add layers indefinitely. Knowing what to take away or never put in was as important as what to add.

I think I'm getting the hang of the new gear. We'll see where the next one goes.

This was unexpected....

The singer of Gods of Fire wants to adapt Burn, a song I wrote about being angry at Sebadoh, into a full on Metal tune. If you haven't heard the song yet you can find it here.

I am down to try it, but there are some interesting concerns. Jason said if it stays as a Scream Bloody Virgin track (my solo nom de plume) then the song is a "waste."

Is it? Just because I don't see myself "pushing" my solo music in the same way we "push" the band am I wasting a good song by keeping it for myself? Do I owe the Gods of Fire first crack at my "A" material? Although I am very proud of my latest GoF contribution The Dying Wizard, Burn is probably one of the more interesting things I have come up with lately, especially lyrically.

Really I just want people to hear my music I guess. Being precious about my songs has never particularly helped me. I am a bit nervous by what kind of changes would be made to make the song ready for Power Metal, but it is also exciting to think of a song entering the Gods of Fire repertoire that is actually about a subject that doesn't involve dragons or monsters or villagers.

At the very least I guess this is permission to try to write a little more "maturely" for the band. Stay tuned, things can get interesting.

Unlistenable in Headphones Pt. 1

In the age of the iPod I find that I, for better or worse, do about 80% of my music listening in headphones only. Occasionally I notice a record, usually from the 60s or 70s, that commits so many crimes against stereo that it deserves to be called out. This series will be called Unlistenable in Headphones.

First up: Black Sabbath - Paranoid

Top 2 crimes against stereo-

#1 Hard Panning bass and guitar away from each other- I think the idea at a certain point in the mid to late 70s was that the stereo field should be an accurate re-creation of stage positions. This could explain why the engineer on this record decided to always keep Iommi and Butler separated, as if they were fighting fish.

HOWEVER.........

#2 Inconsistencies in instrument placements from song to song. On Iron Man, Butler's bass is hard left while Iommi's guitar is hard right. This is difficult and distracting enough to listen to as it is, especially when the two instruments start playing different parts. It makes my ears feel very unbalanced, and makes my head hurt. Then we get to Electric Funeral where Iommi is playing two guitar parts panned away from each other (perfect!) but Butler is now HARD PANNED RIGHT?? Wha??? I noticed my head tilting to the right as I was waking up 7th avenue.

If you want to make radical shifts in instrument placement on every song that is fine, but your band better have the words Stereo and Lab in your name.

The first collaborative session!

My spiritually advanced friend Matt approached me recently with the idea of doing a collaboration under the name Sky Burial. His idea of trying to do some somber ambient noise was very appealing to me and I readily accepted. However I was a bit nervous as this would mark the first time I used the studio with someone else.

Generally up to this point if there is something I wanted to do and didn't know how I would either stop working and learn, or decide it wasn't really that important anyway ;-)

How would I handle fielding these same types of requests from an outside person? What if I have major gear failure? What if I just show myself for the hack I am?

Despite my crisis of faith I am happy to report the session went very well. We spent about 8 hours or so working on one 3 minute song we are calling "Exhaust the Sun." The process was fresh and collaborative, and most importantly creative. Most ideas that we wanted to try I was able to program. Never did we have to really stop what we were doing to worry about process. Our imaginations ran wild and we recorded a heavy, dense, at times terrifying piece of music. The drums are a mess and it doesn't sound very good outside of studio monitors, but I am working on it.

Once I re-program and remix the sketchy parts I am going to put it up on the MySpace and send out direct copies to the usual suspects. I was really happy with what we were able to do, and how the technology worked for us. It may not seem like it from some of these posts, but I am not as into the process and the tech, as much as I am into having the tech just WORK so I can be creative.

On a gear note, however, this was the first time I got to use the AKG condenser mic. It sounded absolutely amazing. The one time Matt started screaming and wasn't thinking about line levels the mic peaked in the most amazing way. The vocals sound like they have a nice tube overdrive on them, rather than a muddy crap out. It saved me the time of having to apply distortion.

Also, Amplitube2 completely kicks Guitar Rig's ass, and is far less CPU intensive. I recommend everyone check it out. I am blown out of the water.

New Additions to the Family!!!

Please help me in welcoming my new 250 gig Firewire800 G-drive and PCI Firewire800 card to the studio.

I have decided there is only one way to solve these wacky firewire problems, and that is with dedicated hardware.