My band,
Thirteen Muses will be releasing our first disc in about two months. We're finishing up mixing/mastering with the venerable Bob Oakman, who has been a pleasure to work with (Bob is the man!).
My drummer and I spent a few days at his house and had a damn good time.
We recorded all of this ourselves in our bandroom using two different units (only because my drummer, Chris, liked mine so much he ran out and bought one). The first seven tunes were recorded on a Roland VS2000CD, the last two (which aren't mixed/mastered at all and are going on the second disc) were recorded on his Roland VS2480.
Gear-wise, here's my rundown (it looks like a mess, but it's pretty basic really):
Microphone: Sure KMS32SL condensor; buy a nice condensor if you can, it's WELL worth it.
Guitars: EBMM JP7, stock, D'Addario XL-110-7's.
Amp: Rivera TBR-1SL (thank me for starting the Rivera trend here loooong ago lol
)
Processors: TC Electronics G-Force (used for continuous control; if you don't hear it, it's OFF) and M-One (for reverbs, high/low pass filters and compression on clean tones).
Cabinets: 2 x
Mesa Boogie Recto Traditional 4x12 bottoms (straight fronts; slants sound like crap to me) with V30's.
Controllers/Pedals/Etc: MIDI Controller: Older DMC Ground Control; 2 x EBMM Mono
Volume pedals for continous control; Morley Bad Horsie 1 (love the 1, hate the 2; actually I hate the 1 too because I keep destroying them, this one is 6mos old and I need a new one again, this makes #4); Little Alligator Volume (it's noisy and the sweep sucks, but it doesn't mess with my tone too much, plus I hardly use it save maybe one or two songs; Cables: all Monster cables and Rapco speaker cables with HD ends.
Recording Process: As usual, we did drums first. Then I went back and doubled
everything. Every song has at the very minimum one unique track hard left and one hard right. Most of the solos are doubled as well (I only didn't doubletrack parts in two songs; it just sounded funny). Some of the double-tracking I was really anal about, some I wasn't. I guess in some spots a little random ugliness from Left to Right gives it some character.
According to Chris (my drummer and also an audio engineer) and Bob, my guitar tone needed little to nothing. So as far as I know there is little to no EQ'ing, compression, etc. All of the effects you here were done in real-time by me at the time of recording.
Our MO for songwriting is simple: Write songs that are technically challenging for us to have fun, yet presented in a fashion that you don't have to be a musician to appreciate. We also try and give each song it's own voice. We don't want to be one of those band where you hear two songs and you've heard "everything".
So far it's working, we're doing really, really well in the San Antonio area. I even got voted Best Guitarst in San Antonio in The Edge Magazine's 2005 Reader's Poll (not that I deserve it, but it's still pretty cool!).
*WHEW!*
Okay, with that being said, here are the links to the MP3's with a brief synapsis of each. I'll also label the ones with solos since this is a
guitar forum, hehe.
Track 1: Peeling Skin: Pretty straightfoward somewhat syncopated metal tune. Fun to play, always goes over really well live. The middle section that's just music is just groups of 4's and 3's picked somewhat quickly (4, 4, 4, 4, 3, 3, etc).
Track 2: Salvation: This is another pretty straightforward tune with some gang-shouty chorus stuff. Oddly enough, I sort of wrote the solo before I wrote the song (if that makes any sense, it doesn't to me). Then I figured out a rythym to it, and well, there you have it. It's doubled, one track left, one right. I got it pretty tight so you can't really tell untill the wah-wah part, but I liked that ugly so I didn't even attempt to match it (that would've been horrible trying anyway lol). Props to Petrucci for the unison bend part.
Track 3: Victim: This song I actually brought into practice complete one day. This is the second thing I ever wrote with these guys so it's a good two years old (you'll notice some serious differences with the newer material). I actually wrote it on acoustic and I think it kind of shows. It's been getting regular radio airplay here in San Antonio on KISS 99.5.
Track 4: Breathe: This song is one that a lot of the people that come and see us seem to look forward to. It always goes over really well. It's pretty fun. The main groove is string-skipped double-picked octaves (trying saying that fast!) and was an asspain to double-track.
Track 5: No Halo: I have to say, I'm proud of myself for this song. It's simple, but I love it. I never get tired of playing it. And oddly enough it all came out of something the bass player wrote (the opening groove actually) that was just two chords (Em, FM). First part of the solo is one track (it sounded more intimate to me), second part is two.
Track 6: Holy Lies: What can I say? I love Black Sabbath and my singer loves old Soundgarden. That about sums up this song.
Oh as a side note, I switch the heavy/clean thing in real-time live, but not on this recording. I have one of those Axxess Amp switcher things, works like a charm.
Track 7: Falling Down: This song is particularly tiring for some reason. I think it's all the jumping around + screaming I have to do and the big sus2 chords everywhere (those kill my thumb). I'm not particularly happy with my guitar sound in the beginning parts, but we isolated it and Bob's house and it sounded great by itself. I thought I just played it like **** but apparently it just sits in the mix funny. We generally close our set with this one.
Track 8: Stand: What can I say (again)? I love Sabbath. This is a mix of Sabbath and just Southern-fried sludge metal (I should copyright that). I doubled the entire solo. This one is not completely mixed or mastered as it will be on our second disc which will be full-length.
Track 9: Venom of God: This is the last song I wrote. Overall, it's pretty brutal for me. The parts I'm playing are pretty much nonstop, I have to scream a lot and it's easily the most challenging solo I do live. I am an idiot for writing this song. This one is also un-mixed/mastered (it's just a unity gain dump basically). We still have to clean up some vocals on it (ie:re-do).
Well if any of you actually made it through all of this, I certainly appcreciate it and any comments you're willing to leave for me.
If you like it, please pass the MP3's around.
Thanks.
