May 2022 Grapevine

May has arrived and in our area we’re still waiting for spring to appear. Two weekends ago we went out to create some video footage and ended up being in a snow squall. The funny part is that it probably improved the feel of the video footage for the song we’re going to use it for. If life presents you with lemons, make lemonade. I think that a lot of what makes creating fun, whether it is music, photos, video or painting is the ‘happy accident’. It’s happened to us when writing songs or recording. You make a ‘mistake’ while playing and when you listen to the replay it sounds better than the original idea. People who enjoy photography know it’s all about the light. I’ve taken pictures with overcast, stormy skies where one break in the clouds allows a stream of light to illuminate the main focus of the photo. What were the odds of that happening? When I listen to my favorite songs and they get to a part that really hits home I often wonder: was that planned or was it a ‘happy accident’? I think anyone who creates will have those moments. Just keep creating.

First Up: The Nude Party – ‘Lonely Heather’

This song starts out blazing and never slows down. Great keyboard intro with a pounding, honky-tonk feel. One of the tricks in mixing a song like this is getting the volume of the intro just right as you’re going to have to pull it back in to the rest of the mix once the other instruments come in. The next thirty seconds of the song brings in the rest of the instruments. The pace is just right. The parts are kept pretty simple and they fit together perfectly. There’s a nice little guitar riff thrown in before we get to the vocals. You can hear all the instrumental pieces, but nothing is pushed too far to the front. Then a piano slide introduces the vocals. Nice touch. The vocals match the pace of the rest of the instruments. Straight forward and full speed ahead. Not a lot of stereo separation for the instruments. That works for this tune as you want the pace and feel to wash over the listener. In the middle of the song you get a drum break down in to the guitar solo. I like that they kept the sound of the guitar solo in line with the rest of the song. Not mixed too far out front, not too crisp so it sits in the pocket and not on top of the rest. The vocals come back in and the song races to a built up and sudden stop. Two minutes of pure fun.

I wanted to throw in a bonus cut from The Nude Party. It’s called ‘Chevrolet Van’ (my van when I was that age was a customized 1971 Ford Econoline). For anyone who’s ever played in a band and then ended up in a day job because, well, having food and shelter is kinda nice, this song’s for you. The video is also hilarious.

Next Up: Benchmarks – ‘Wolves Outside The Door’

One of the things you decide on when you’re writing a song is what part of the song you want to highlight. Sometimes it’s a great riff, or the interplay of the instruments. In a dance song it could be the rhythm. In some songs it’s the lyrics that take center stage. In ‘Wolves Outside The Door’ Benchmarks put the lyrical content front and center. It’s definitely the right choice. The song starts with a guitar playing chord arpeggios. It’s a very clean sound. Next an electric with some distortion comes in strumming the chords. These instruments are placed on opposite sides of the stereo field. A third guitar is brought in filling the middle of the stereo. Finally the drums and bass come in and the middle guitar plays a melody style line. This build up goes for the first minute of the song. It’s a great move as it develops the mood before the lyrics even begin. When the vocals come in the music drops down to just drums and bass. The vocals are clear and up front giving full attention to the lyrics. In the middle of the first verse the arpeggio guitar returns softly in the left channel. The rest of the instruments return for the chorus and a lead guitar part takes over after the vocals stop. Everything that is played maintains the song’s mood. In the second verse the vocals are accompanied by the more distorted guitar in the right channel. There’s backing vocals added towards the end of the verse. All the instruments come back in for the break which is matched with the payoff lines of the lyrics. The song outros with the chorus repeated with spare, then full instrumentation. The lyrics give you the feeling of sitting on a mountain watching the sunset and reviewing your life. Beautiful.

Finally: The Asteroid No. 4 – ‘Northern Song’

Let’s finish with a song that feels both retro and modern. ‘Northern Song’ has the feel of a song that could have been written back in the 1960’s. The highly reverbed guitar arpeggios have a throwback feel to them. There’s numerous parts of percussion and vocals in the background, but everything is tied together with a great wash of reverb. The sound in this song is achieved by blending most of the instruments together rather than separating them. How you mix a song can have just as much to do with the overall tone and feel as what instruments are used and what they are playing. The drums are layered back in the mix and if you listen you can a percussion instrument in the left side of the stereo mix. It could be a tambourine, or it could be electronic percussion and it adds to the jangle sound the song is putting across. There’s lots of vocals throughout the song, and the heavy use of reverb blends them together. A good example of this blend is heard at about 1:40. A lead guitar part comes in at 2:07 but even this is draped in reverb and is not put out front in the mix. The mixing strategy in this song was used to create a mood rather than to heighten each individual instrument. The way the parts of the song were written work with this strategy. When all the components of a song are pulling in the same direction you can achieve your sonic goal. The band has certainly achieved this with ‘Northern Song’.

Retro: Matthew Sweet – ‘Girlfriend’

This song is from Matthew Sweet’s 1991 album ‘Girlfriend’. There’s so much I like about this song. To me it epitomizes the ‘power pop’ genre at it’s finest. Let’s start with the guitars. The intro is a master class on how to record and mix guitars in this type of song. It starts with the rhythm guitar that has a great, crisp distorted sound. In the background you hear the sustain from the lead guitar. Drums come in. The rhythm guitar slides in to the right channel with the lead down the middle. Then a second rhythm guitar is added to the left channel and the bass appears. All this before any vocals even start. When the vocals start they have the rhythm guitars in opposite channels, with the left channel guitar only playing sporadically. The vocal is not overwhelmed by reverb. There’s multi tracks of background vocals in parts. When the first verse ends, the vocal starts the second before the music comes back in. The starts and stops give everything a real loose feel. Another cool feature – the music stops and there’s a vocal count in before the lead guitar part. The leads are played by Robert Quine. His style adds so much to the overall sound of the song. The lead guitar stops and starts are wonderfully ragged. The drop out at 3:00 is great: drums in first, scratchy leads and then vocal back in. It takes a whole lot of work to make a song sound so live and loose. Another interesting choice is that most of the video is taken from a 1982 anime movie. A song from the days before ‘pop’ became so computerized and auto tuned.

From The Vault 6 – ERP Plays ‘Life Goes On’

We’re back with another recording From The Vault. In our From The Vault series we’re posting songs we’ve found hiding in various hard drives in the studio. We also have older recordings on tape and we might blow the dust off those some day, but that’s a whole different level of searching through the caverns of the studio. Most bands that are doing original music probably have a lot of song ideas that are fragments: basic chord structures, melodies, lyrics, rhythm tracks. Sometimes these ideas get finished, sometimes they just fizzle out. When we would get a relatively complete song idea we would try to make a simple live recording that we could go back to. We’d record together in one room with a minimum amount of mics on the drums, the bass direct in to the board and the guitar amp in another room. The idea wasn’t to get a perfect copy of the song. We just wanted to capture as complete an idea of the song as we could. Some songs never moved forward beyond that for a variety of reasons. We decided if we come across one that is relatively complete, we’ll put them out on line. This song is titled ‘Life Goes On’. Since it’s spring I thought we’d put up some pictures of flowers from the studio gardens for the video.

April 2022 Grapevine

We’ve moved in to the second quarter of the year. It’s “April showers……” time. Of course we basically had March showers becoming April showers which will continue with May showers. I couldn’t imagine living in places like Alaska (although the state is absolutely stunning) where you go through periods of no daylight. I can barely deal with our constant cloud cover around here. For most people I do believe there’s a huge correlation between sunshine and happiness. So I’m definitely looking forward to some spring sunshine. On another note I watched a video discussing the vast amount of music created that no one other than the creator sees or hears. Why do we write songs? If you’re doing it for money or fame you’re most likely going to be disappointed. It would be interesting to know what percentage of songs written really become known to the general public. Obviously it’s a percentage measured by a decimal point. We like to at least throw our songs in to the public forum and are happy if some people outside the studio get to hear them. With equipment more affordable then in prior generations a lot more tunes at least get recorded. But most probably don’t go any further than that. So why do it? We do it for the fun and challenge of the act of creating. Seeing a song start as a kernel of an idea, working to discover what that kernel becomes. The joy you feel if that idea works out. That’s why we usually try to celebrate songs that get less attention in Grapevine. Hopefully that gets the creators to the final step – having a total stranger enjoy the music they created.

First Up: Water Tower – ‘Anthem’

This song has a great combination of styles thrown together. When I find a song I like I usually look at several different songs from the band to get an idea of the type of music they do. Water Tower has a lot of wonderful Americana style songs using double bass, fiddle, guitar and vocals. For this song they did some change by addition. The song starts with a distorted electric guitar and then Ron Reyes, who did some time with Black Flag, comes in on vocals. They also have some added sonic sound effects which you’ll hear come in and out throughout the entire song. The song then drops down to acoustic guitar and vocals. The double bass and fiddle drop in. It’s a really nice and different dynamic build up. When it drops to vocals and guitar again they have a (probably) keyboard generated sound effect in back. Again, I think this little added touch gives the song more character. They add in some kit drums, courtesy of another guest, Don Bolles, who played with The Germs. The drums don’t over power the other parts, acting as another effect that comes in and out to add some flavor. The combination of vocalist and fiddler Kenny Feinstein’s vocals and the vocals by Ron Reyes are mixed just right without one dominating the other. The playing is stellar and the mix allows you to hear all the pieces. The animated video is cool. In some ways the video is a very important part of the tune as many of the sound effects tie in to the action in the video. The video and the music enhance each other and create a great piece of art.

Next Up: This is the Kit – ‘This Is What You Did’

‘This Is What You Did’ is another song that uses an interesting combination of instruments to great effect. The banjo is an instrument that really lives in two worlds, rhythm and melody. The way it is often used in bluegrass is a chordal rhythm that also carries the melody line. It really is in part a rhythm instrument – the bridge for the strings does sit on top of a drum head. This song starts with a hint of keyboard and then the banjo comes in with what I’m guessing is a drum machine due to it’s sonics. In this song the banjo sticks to the chordal rhythms. These two instruments carry a very busy underlying rhythm throughout the song. The vocal line is really the focal point of the composition. It has a great melody and feel and the busy rhythm makes it sound like it is floating in the space on top. The vocal also has a lot of rhythm to it so the parts all fit together like a puzzle. After the first minute other instruments enter the mix. there are horns that have a jazz feel to them. There are also keyboards that hold notes and serve as a steady base for the rhythm parts. Whoever did the mix does some very nice subtle changes that you might not notice. The banjo and drums are slowly pulled down lower in to the mix to allow space for everything else. If the pull back had been done in a quick clumsy fashion it would have been jarring and halted the song’s flow. The middle break at 2:00 has the drums doing quick hits and the horns coming out front. The dreamy flow continues through the end of the song. A great example of how mix and production handled well can make a song beautiful.

Finally: Muck and the Mires – ‘I’m Your Man’

I thought we’d end with another musical turn and delve in to some punky power pop. There’s a number of things I like to hear in a song like this for it to work. Crispy, crunchy guitar sounds – check. Ability to hear all the instruments clearly in the mix – check. Clear, easy to understand vocals – check. Added credit for a nice flaming guitar solo – check. The well put together mix and recording production on the song really help the music come across. For me that’s the best part of this song. It has the key ingredient of a really catchy riff. But what allows the riff to work is the clarity of the recording and the way it is EQ’d in the mix. It seems that if you look around you’ll still be able to find bands that follow the best parts of the garage rock aesthetic. If you follow styles in rock music you’ll find some interesting facts. Some styles come and go. They’ll become ‘the new thing’ and then you won’t hear them anymore. It seems as if the style we call ‘garage rock’ has been around since the earliest days and never really disappears. It will occasionally come to the fore front and people will call it a ‘revival’. But I don’t see these times as revivals because the style has never left. When the ‘revival’ ends the bands head back to the garage and small clubs and eventually burst in to the mainstream again. I think this style is best seen in a sweaty, small club. Muck And The Mires would be a whole lot of fun to see in that type of setting.

Retro: Hole – ‘Violet’

We’ll end this month’s Grapevine with one of my favorite song’s from the early 1990’s. There’s not a lot of albums that hold their power and are great from start to finish. I think Hole’s 1994 album ‘Live Through This’ is one of those albums. Courtney Love is a pretty divisive figure in music. I think she is often judged more by her personal life than by her music. But I think it’s hard to deny that ‘Live Through This’ is one of the best albums of the early 90’s and of the style people refer to as ‘grunge’. ‘Violet’ is really propelled by the dynamics of the song. You have the quieter verses that are cleaner and moody. Then you’re hit in the face with the sonic blast of the chorus, distorted guitars and vocals that are a screaming howl. A lot of band’s used this style and it’s was actually around far before it became more ‘fashionable’ in the 90’s. But not many songs pull it off as well as ‘Violet’. For me one of the reasons it works so well here is underlying feel of the song. The dark mood and very personal feel of the music and lyrics push it to another level. None of that would have as much impact if the production and mix weren’t perfect for the song. Great snap to the snare drum. The vocals are placed out front without diminishing the power of the feedback laced guitar distortion. It’s tricky when you’re mixing a song with polar end dynamics to have the quiet and loud parts actually maintain a consistent overall volume for the recording. Great writing, recording and mix have made this song a classic for me.

Lather Scream Moment Cover ‘Pretty Vacant’ by The Sex Pistols

It’s always fun to buy a new guitar. The excitement of having a new instrument and the possibilities it gives you for creating new sounds. How are the sonics? How is the playability? The crew from Lather Scream Moment called and said they have a new guitar and wondered if they could check out the sound on our studio amps. We don’t have a huge collection, but we do have a good variety of old, new, solid state and tube to choose from. So they stopped by and plugged in. I, of course, decided we should see how it sounds for recording. If you’re going to test it out, let’s really test it. And if you’re going to test recording quality, you might as well do a song. So we decided on recording ‘Pretty Vacant’ by The Sex Pistols. We recorded everything in one evening and it was mixed and mastered the next day. The original song had a great thick guitar sound. That’s a result of them doing numerous guitar track overdubs. We followed the same pattern. It was a quick ‘let’s have fun and not over think it’ type of session. And if you’re going to record it, you might as well share it. Hope you have as much fun listening as we had recording.

The Vocal Instrument

Music is made with a wide variety of instruments. People constantly think of new ways to create unique sounds and tones. When you think about percussion instruments, you can create one out of almost anything. When you talk about the elements that make up music, you can find several different answers. The main elements you usually hear about in the definition of music are rhythm, melody, harmony, timbre, dynamics, texture and form. Some definitions will compress this to five unique elements or expand them to twelve. You can apply these elements to most instruments used in a song. For example you can you can find melody and harmony in percussion instruments if you use them that way. Drums in a standard kit can be tuned to specific musical tones if you want. Other percussive instruments can be tied to specific tones, although percussion is not used that way in most forms of popular music we usually discuss in our blog posts.

The one instrument that differs from the rest in most songs is vocals. Vocals add an ‘element’ to musical composition that other instruments don’t – lyrics. Although lyrics may not be considered a ‘musical element’ they can be the most important part of a musical composition. Today’s post is going to look at the vocal instrument using songs for examples. For our purposes we’re going to look at three general parts of a song vocal: melody, rhythm and lyrics. By viewing these three parts we’re really grouping some elements together. For instance harmony will incorporated in to melody, dynamics are incorporated in to rhythm, etc. The vocal examples we’re looking at have all the elements in them. What we’re looking at in this post is what single element the vocal adds to the examples that make them great songs. These songs are vocally amazing on all fronts, but for me a certain aspect really stands out. As always, since what makes something ‘great’ is subjective, the examples are really just my opinion of songs that I see fitting best for the categories.

We’ll start our song reviews by looking at songs that have great melody lines. There are songs that I’m drawn to due to the melody line. The melody alone brings out all sorts of emotions. Although these songs also have great lyrics, I feel that you could probably change out the lyrics and the melody line would still carry the vocals.

The first song we’re looking at is ‘Wichita Lineman’. It was written by Jimmy Webb in 1968. The version we have is the original recording made by Glen Campbell in 1968. To be honest I wasn’t the biggest fan of what became known as ‘the Nashville sound’ in country music. The lush orchestration just didn’t hit me as hard as the more stripped down and raw versions of country and bluegrass. For ‘Wichita Lineman’ none of that mattered. The song always felt so emotional to me every time I heard it, and it still hits me that way no matter how many times I hear it. For me, that melody line melts away everything else in the song and it would still sound amazing if it was sung acapella. As an aside the song also has some of the best lyric lines: “And I need you more than want you/ and I want you for all time”. What an amazing two line description of love!

Our next example for amazing vocal melody is ‘Can’t Find My Way Home’ by Blind Faith. It was released on their 1969 self titled album. We did cover this song before in a Grapevine post. But I think it is a great example of a melody line that really carries the song (which is why it was in a Grapevine post). The instrument tracks are pretty mellow and laid back. If you listen to the guitar parts before the vocal begins, you’ll hear some of the vocal melody mirrored in the lines the guitar is playing. Everything that is recorded in this song funnels you right to the vocal melody. It certainly doesn’t hurt to have someone with the vocal chops of Steve Winwood singing. While searching for the songs I felt have great melodies I did notice something that were common to the choices I was looking at. The melodies weren’t what could be called upbeat or happy. The melodies that stick with me the most seem to bring up more ‘moist eyes’ emotion. I think of all the aspects that we look at with vocals, melody is the one that most ties in to emotion.

Let’s look at songs where the vocal functions as a rhythm to pull you in to the tune.

First we’ll look at ‘Housequake’ from Prince’s 1987 album ‘Sign o’ The Times’. The song is really mostly made up of percussion. There are long stretches in the song where all we hear is drum percussion and vocals. The vocal line is heavily syncopated. In this song the syncopation of the vocal is more important than the melody line or the lyrics. You’ll see this a lot in dance songs. The timing of the instruments makes the song danceable. But what pulls you to the dance floor is the timing of the vocal line. Again, as with melody, I think you could change out the lyrics without the song losing any of it’s fun. The rhythm of the vocals also effects the dynamics of the song. For dance music you need a little variety so the beat doesn’t get boring. In ‘Housequake’ this is accomplished by bringing the vocals in and out of the song.

We can find a lot of examples where the vocals are a rhythmic center if we stick to dance music or funk music. If you’re looking more at rock music I think a band that often used the vocals as a rhythm instrument were the Psychedelic Furs. They fell in to the era of ‘post-punk’, but that term covers a lot of ground. Richard Butler’s vocals were often very narrow when it came to their melody lines. The vocals did, however, really add to the rhythm of the song. The guitars in the songs were usually pretty heavy on effects, almost having the feel of what later became ‘shoegaze’ music. On top of this wash of sound, the vocals locked in with the drum beats to propel the songs forward. I think this was especially true on their first albums. For our example I picked the song ‘Pulse’ from their self titled debut album. In this tune the vocals are up front in the mix, with the drums, especially the snare, being crisp and at almost the same level as the vocals. The guitars bass and sax maintain a wall of sound to place the lyrical beat on top of.

Finally, we’ll look at songs that are all about the lyrical content. The music is the background for the social, political or poetic content of the lyrics to take center stage.

First let’s take a look at Bob Dylan’s ‘Like A Rolling Stone’. It was released in 1965 from the album ‘Highway 61 Revisited’. This song is a pretty obvious choice when talking about the top end of lyrical content. You could just read the lyrics as poetry and still really get the feeling Dylan was trying to put across. I know some people aren’t Dylan fans – they often find his vocal delivery difficult to understand. This obviously takes something away if the lyrics are the main driving point of the song. The music in ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ are a great backdrop for the lyrics. It does put across the feel that the words are expressing. Most songs are lyrically pretty straight forward. Dylan’s lyrics and phrases are not always straight forward. I think that’s what makes them so good. In this song you have to pay some attention to the lyrics. And boy, is there some bite in them. A lot of songs at that time were love songs. This song is really a shot at someone who thought ‘they were all that’ and lost that standing, now having to try to fend for themselves. I’ve always liked the truth of the line, “when you ain’t got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose”. How true. I’d love to have written one phrase like that in a song. I’ve used a lyric video for this song to make it easier hear and catch all the lyrics.

For our second song about the lyrical end of vocals we’re going to look at ‘Clampdown’ by The Clash. It came out on their 1979 album ‘London Calling’. The Clash as part of the first generation of ‘punk’ bands used their lyrics to highlight the flaws in the government and business systems that were in place (and still are). I’ve always felt this song had some of their most pointed and true lyrics. I think most of us relate to the lyrical messages in songs best in our late teens and early twenties. That’s when you’re just trying to figure out the world and feel the most rebellious about fighting the system (if you’re so inclined). The song’s lyrics work on two planes. Joe Strummer was discussing how you can get sucked in to the identity destroying capitalist/corporate world where you become just a cog in the machine. It also describes falling in to the fascist world of power – “so you got someone to boss around, it makes you feel big now”. In songs you’re working with both lyrics and music. To make the lyrics hit home you need music with a good kick to it. ‘Clampdown’ achieves this with it’s fist in the air musical attack. Again, to get your lyrical point across the musical canvas has to attract attention. As an aside, if you’re wondering what the spoken word intro says before the actual lyrics start up, here you go:

The kingdom is ransacked, the jewels all taken back. And the chopper descends. They’re hidden in the back, with a message on a half-baked tape. With the spool going round, saying I’m back here in this place. And I could cry. And there’s smoke you could click on. What are we going to do now?