ChurchHouse Productions Blog

July 2020 Grapevine

So we’re rolling in to the second half of the year. Other than being hotter, hard to tell one month from the other this year. Same shit different month. After this could you imagine the idea of surviving in your basement for years if ‘the bomb’ dropped (Pretty bad when you reminisce fondly about the Cold War – the good old days when we were all in it together). So what does this have to do with this month’s selections? Nothing. Except that ‘quarantining’ gives me a lot of time to listen to new music. Yes, yes, I’m straining to find a silver lining……

First Up: Stephen Malkmus – ‘Xian Man’

Stephen Malkmus has been around a while. Originally known for the band Pavement (if you haven’t heard their ‘Slanted And Enchanted’ album, you should give it a listen) then for solo work and Stephen Malkmus And The Jicks. He’s covered a lot of ground. I always liked the ‘garage’ looseness of many of the songs. This song has that type of feel. Most of the foundation is acoustic and that part of the arrangement holds down the flow and feel of the song. There’s a great psychedelic guitar rambling through the whole song as well as slide guitar. The guitar solo in the middle of the song uses these multiple guitars to good effect for a loose jam feel. Even the vocals carry the psychedelic, loose feel. Also hits my favorite mixing style – everything is audible but has it’s own place in the overall mix. Great ‘creates a mood’ song.

Next Up: Public Practice – ‘Cities’

A lot of things connected with me as I listened to this song. Let’s start with the recording. Great snare sound: crisp, snappy and it really cuts through the mix. You can pick out the actual snares in the sound. The hi hat also has a big presence. The bass sound has plenty of top end – if you listen to it in the beginning of the song you can hear the great tone they get. The guitars then drop in. If you listen through headphones you can hear the different guitar parts split in to the right and left side of the stereo field. The tight, top end capture of the recording provides a lot of separation for all of the instruments including the vocals. Definitely captures the post punk funk feel. I’ve been listening to a lot of Talking Heads recently and this tune has that type of feel. There’s several ways you can go with vocals in a song. You can bury them a bit in the mix to use them more as an instrument and make them more ‘mysterious’. Or you can make them tight and out front so you can really understand the lyrics. This song uses the latter. Finally, the little synth and vocal background additions add variety to keep the interest up.

Finally: Mayflower Madame – ‘Vultures’

So let’s go a little darker for the finale this month. If you wanted to categorize, could be under ‘Goth’ (a term I might use to describe a wide variety of styles) maybe an off-shoot of ‘Industrial Dance’. Could fit under ‘Post Punk’ eighties style. I like the dynamics of this recording. The instruments in the song don’t sound computer generated. If you listen and pull it apart you can listen to the guitar line, hear the bass line as a separate piece etc. And for me, they sound like people actually playing instruments. A real clear place to hear this is at 1:59 where the song breaks down and is built up piece by piece. You’ll hear each instrument come in. In a style that’s usually deep in programming, that’s a nice change. And it all gets dunked in a deep vat of reverb and delay. I admittedly like that sound, but it could turn a song in to mush if not handled correctly. An example here is the kick drum. They got the tuning, mics and EQ set up to really capture the top end ‘slap’ so the kick cuts through all the reverb and drives the song along. The video continues that feel. And……….would it go on the dance CD for ‘Blacklight Nite’? Absolutely.

Retro: Blind Faith – ‘Can’t Find My Way Home’

No need to over analyze this song. I imagine most people have heard it. In certain emotional moods I go back to classics that have always touched me. There are a lot of great songs out there and they’re great for different reasons. This song has so much emotion and it’s created by the vocal melody. That’s one of the rarest feats to pull off in song writing. And it gets multiplied by Steve Winwood’s amazing vocals and lyrics. There’s many ways to interpret the lyrics, literal and spiritual. For me it touches the despair and sadness I feel about what’s happening now. Life is too short for anger, hatred and the people who promote it. The older you get, the more you realize it.

But I’m near the end and I just ain’t got the time
And I’m wasted and I can’t find my way home.

Messin With The Music Part 10 – How Many More Times

Welcome to another entry in our Messin With The Music series. The recording of this song comes with an interesting history. ‘How Many More Times’ is a Led Zeppelin classic from their first album. It is also the first song we actually recorded for the series. Electrostatic Rhythm Pigs, like most bands, has gone through a number of band member changes. We had spent a lot of years always trying to have a full band together that was capable of playing live. Each time someone would leave or a new musician came in it’s practically like starting over. We had electronically released our ‘Celebrity Prostitution’ EP, staying with a garage rock, punk blues sound. This time we decided to just work on our own and concentrate on recording. The question became – what style of music should we do? On many sites or internet radio when you post a song you’re asked to pick a style of music it represents – usually from a drop down list. It’s difficult to categorize yourself. I’d much rather let someone else make that call. We’ve never stuck to a very specific style, although I guess you could put it generically under ‘rock’. So, just for fun, we decided to create a category and try to fit some music in to it. Thus was born Dark Americana Shoegaze. We wanted to work on figuring out instrumentation, arrangements and recording. We thought the best way to do this was to start by covering songs (although we do have a number of originals in various stages of completion). That way we could concentrate on aspects other than writing the song – and we’d get to play songs we already really liked.

We didn’t have any pre-conceived recording methods yet, other than keeping a ‘live’ feel – no autotune, no quantizing of drums or other instruments, no cut and paste of parts. With that in mind we got to work on ‘How Many More Times’. There was a lot of structural change to do. We certainly couldn’t copy Led Zeppelin’s eight minute and twenty eight second version. So we cut it down to a number of shortened verses, did a short piece to represent the long instrumental in the middle and another section for ‘The Hunter’. To keep the Dark Americana Shoegaze idea some verses are electric guitar based, some acoustic instrument based and some a combination. The vocal tracks tie all the different parts together. To get a big, full sound most of the instruments and vocals were multi tracked with multiple mics. If you listen you can hear a number of different electric guitar sounds, two bass lines and multiple banjo and mandolin tracks at different parts of the song. We stacked a lot of vocal tracks. When we finished recording we were looking at forty eight tracks. This was going to take a while to mix and master. We decided we wanted to get a song out quickly so we picked another song – ‘It’s Gonna Be A Long Night’ by Ween and moved to what became our more standard method to put it out quicker – one mic, one track for most instruments. That went well so we picked another song, then another, then another. ‘How Many More Times’ went on the back burner. When the pandemic put our recording on pause it seemed like a good time to finally put this song together. I will say that this is probably the ‘strangest’ cover we’ll ever put out, so it may be a ‘love/hate’ experience for listeners. Might do another Led Zeppelin tune in a bit more straight forward fashion in the future. It was certainly an interesting experience mixing it. So here it is. Hope you enjoy it. As always we encourage comments, feedback and suggestions.

In The Studio Ep 11 – ChurchHouse Studio Tour

It’s been a while since we did an In The Studio episode. We had some live performance ideas started, but as with much of our lives, that’s temporarily on hold. So I thought we might do some more episodes that simplify studio tech as we did with micing the snare drum. A good place to start would be with a quick overview of the studio. You’ll have to excuse some of the noise in the video – it’s literally live with me picking up the camera and moving around, no post recording editing. You know us – we love running it ‘live’. If you have any questions, comments or topics you’d like to see discussed in future episodes, let us know. So let’s get started……….

Below are some photos referenced in the video. This will give you an idea of how the main control room setup is changeable depending on the task. First two photos are of different mixing/mastering station setups.

A couple of photos of setups using the movable sound panels – Vocal booth and amp separation.

And finally a couple of photos of setups in the big room. All the mic signal goes back to the main control room in to the patch bay shown in the video.

June 2020 Grapevine

June has arrived. We’re in to the middle of the year 2020. And everything is still weird. I guess we’re all just trying to make the best of what is turning out to be one of the strangest years I can remember. Part of me just wants it to be over. Fast forward to January 2021. But there’s no way to tell if things will be any better by then. And I’m too old to be willing to give up six months of my time. So thank goodness we still have access to music and art. I miss the energy of seeing bands live, but I still have the ability to search out and find new (and sometimes old) music that can lift the spirits or make you think. With that in mind, let’s take a look at what’s cooking this month.

First Up: Six Organs Of Admittance – ‘The 101’

One of the main thoughts constantly going through my head right now is “I wish I was……..”. I wish I was hiking the edge of a cliff, going to view a glacier. I wish I was on a deep forest trail. This song is ‘I wish I were on a two lane road, cruising up the California coast’. Route 101 runs up the west coast from Los Angeles, California to northern Washington. The song captures that windows down, cruising feel. Nice mix of acoustic and electric sounds. The acoustic repeating riffs create that trance like repetition with bursts of electric jam noise rolling in and out of the mix. The vocals are buried in the mix and maintain the trance inducing effect, like singing words to a song when you don’t really know the lyrics (yup – do that all the time). I also like the video. The idea of hauling my guitar rig in to deserted woods and jamming away (yeah, I know, no electricity – remember, this is ‘I wish’). Great shots of the strange and beautiful sights you see on that road. Roll down your windows and smoke ’em if ya got ’em.

Next Up: Fire In The Radio – ‘Tulare’

Tulare is a great example of classic indie rock. The mix is exactly what I would want in a song. Instruments and vocals all hold their own clearly audible place in the mix. The guitars have a nice buzz but are crisp and sharp. Perfect snap on the snare drum, high enough in the mix to drive everything forward without over powering it. Changes in dynamics pull you in to the song. The band said they were trying to create a feel of nostalgia with the song and video and I think they absolutely achieved their goal. The video mix of band performance and old video scenes are a perfect background for the song, enhancing the feel of nostalgia the song is trying to deliver. There are many ways to enjoy a song. The movement and sound of each instrument, the sonic kick of a well placed chord or a change in dynamics. But one of the best is the emotion a song can make you feel. ‘Tulare’ certainly delivers that emotion.

Finally: Smoke Fairies – ‘Disconnect’

We’ll finish up with Smoke Fairies ‘Disconnect’ from their album ‘Darkness Brings The Wonders Home’. It seems that I’ve put in three songs this month that all carry some emotional weight. In this song the emotion really comes to the front in the vocals and lyrics. They are put out in front of the musical elements of the song. The main vocal has a sad minor key feel and is presented in a lower register. The harmonies drift behind the main vocal. The music is carried by a guitar riff in the verses that turns to a more distorted chord pattern in the chorus. The drum sound in the back is pretty dry without a lot of reverb that would usually make the snare sound bigger. The main vocals are also relatively dry, which puts them more ‘in your face’. It was a good choice for this song. Little mixing choices like that are really important in making a song ‘feel’ a certain way. I think they made all the right choices in ‘Disconnect’.

Retro: X – ‘The Have Nots’

X has to be one the most underappreciated bands to come out of the punk era. They put out a string of consistently amazing albums beginning with their debut album ‘Los Angeles’ (note – X just released a new album with the original line up). They mixed punk with rockabilly, indie rock, Americana and variety of other genres to create an amazing sound. On top was the always strange and interesting vocal mix of Exene and John Doe, with lyrics that ran more towards beat poetry than punk screaming. I’ve always felt that Billy Zoom’s guitar playing was far above what you would hear in most rock bands, especially for bands that were put in to the ‘punk’ category. If you’ve ever worked at a job that was just a ‘job’ and remember surviving the day so you could meet your friends at the local dive, this song was written for you. Truth in lyrics = “Dawn comes soon enough for the working class. It keeps getting sooner or later. This is the game that moves as you play”.

Messin With The Music Part 9 – Seven Nation Army

We’re back with another ‘messed’ song for your enjoyment. There’s a bit of a story with this one. ‘Seven Nation Army’ was actually recorded before most of the other songs that have been posted. Recording these covers did start with one idea we have maintained with all the songs – recording the tracks straight through to keep it having a more ‘live’ feel. With this song we did what we often do with our own studio songs – record multiple tracks of each instrument for a more ‘full’ sound. So most of the instruments on ‘Seven Nation Army’ were tracked several times (although each separate track is recorded straight through). We also used multiple mics on the acoustic instruments, adding even more tracks.

This tune has twelve string guitar, mandolin, banjo and six string guitar. The percussion is the floor tom from our drum kit and a shaker. Each instrument was tracked several times (except the percussion). Two more mandolin parts were added in the one instrumental section as a ‘lead’ instrument. When we finished recording I realized it would take a while to mix correctly so we decided to record another song without all the multi tracking and multiple mics. And when we finished that song we thought of another, then another……… So it took quite a while to get back to mixing ‘Seven Nation Army’.

As we continue messin’ with songs I’m sure more electric instrumentation while come in to play along with a bunch of other ideas. As always, hit us up with comments and questions if you have any. Hope you enjoy.

Electrostatic Rhythm Pigs play The White Stripes ‘Seven Nation Army’: