ChurchHouse Productions Blog

Messin With The Music Part 6 – Jeepster

Welcome to 2020. When this song was written that date was the realm of science fiction. We’d be living on other planets, have flying cars and could teleport. Yeah, well. T. Rex released Jeepster at the end of 1971. The song’s chords and structure are basically ‘blues’ oriented. But throw in a few pounds of ‘glam’ and the song turns more psychedelic. Songs from that era are just so much fun to mess with. I think it’s how ‘loose’ they are. If you listen to the original there’s a drum beat intro, which starts at about 88 bpm. By the time we’re rolling in the first verse, it’s at about 95 bpm and it fluctuates throughout the song. It gives the song personality and makes it feel alive.

We stuck with the Messin’ recording rules to keep the live feel. The overall idea was to have the instruments doing intersecting ‘riffs’ with the vocals sort of floating on top. So instrumentally we have: six string banjo to carry the main riff, played twice for the stereo effect; twelve string guitar; two mandolin parts; fretless bass; five string banjo for fills and acoustic slide guitar. We have two different tracks for the vocal. One vocal track was spawned by our discussion of working on a Prince song in the future (‘how would Prince sing Jeepster?’) So instead of one vocal track being the ‘main’ track, we blended two together. More tracks also allowed better options to pan the tracks for stereo which allows you to hear the separate parts easier (and it’s fun for headphones).

So here’s Electrostatic Rhythm Pigs covering T.Rex’s ‘Jeepster’.

Wave Goodbye 2019

So we’re at the end of another year. Seemed much longer than a year. As always there was good and bad; ugly and beautiful. This was a year when I decided to consciously cut back on the ‘noise’. All the stuff swirling around that destroys creativity. Sooo……Newspaper – dropped. Cable TV – dropped. Staring at phone feeds – ehhhh…..work in progress, but improved. Have a basic idea of what’s what without drowning in it. There’s so much to do musically and with the site, and I needed some energy to work on it.

So my wife Lorena and I ventured to the national parks to do some hiking and photography. Two weeks in the parks works better than years of meds or therapy for me.

I even got to work on my ‘dislike’ of heights. Seems if you add jaw dropping views, my brain tends to ignore the height.

So when we returned at the end of September, I got back to work. Three features that were started – ‘Grapevine’, ‘In The Studio’ and ‘Messin’ With The Music’ will continue in to 2020. We’ll see what else we come up with. There are a bunch of new Electrostatic Rhythm Pigs original songs in the works. We may even get a new tune from Steaming Mulch. And we’d like to get more eyes and ears on ChurchHouse Productions. More contact with like minded folk (hint – tell your friends).

So ends our yearly update. Hope your 2019 was great and your 2020 will be better.

December Grapevine

December in the Northeast. Daily weather report: cloudy with a chance of more cloudy ending in rain.

The Kids – Mesmerized by an unusual sunny day

So we need new music to listen to. Again, in another interesting coincidence I came across a style of music I hadn’t really listened to before in two different magazines (one was not even a music magazine). It’s often known as ‘desert blues’ and is associated with the Tuareg people of northern Africa. Think of combining blues music with African drumming and time signatures. I’ve included a couple of examples. And of course we also have……..other stuff.

First Up: Tinariwan – ‘Kel Tinawen’

This song is from their recent album ‘Amajdar’. A lot to love here. First, the majority of this album was recorded live. In the middle of the desert. Using a mobile studio in a camper van. The video has some great clips from the recording. The rhythm underpinning of the song is absolutely hypnotic. All the instruments flow through the song – almost like listening to a waterfall. The first song I listened to put me in a trance and I ended up spending the night on my tablet listening to song after song. You can feel the blues in the song’s vocals. It’s so strong language doesn’t matter.

Next: Mdou Moctor – ‘Tarhatazed’

Mdou Moctor has a bit more familiar blues sound. The band’s instrumental makeup is kit drums, guitars and bass. Again, what sets it apart for me is the rhythm. A lot of 4/4 blues is stomp (and I do love a good headbanger). This just flows. I wanted to show a live video for this band. The lead guitar by Moctar is amazing. On top of the hypnotic flow is absolute shredding. I’d rather hand play guitar than use a pick, so watching him hand blaze through notes was cool. Supersonic index finger. And since it’s live performance, no overdubs or punch-ins, just nailing it. Watch the whole video. About half way through they push up the tempo and really roll. So delighted.

Finally: Bodega – ‘Truth’

What’s a good ‘chaser’ for hypnotic trance? Sharp, angular new wave. This takes me back to the early days of ‘punk’ or ‘new wave’ (or whatever you wish to call it). Bands like Television, Wire, Talking Heads. An insistent, rolling drum line. Crispy guitar lines that cut though the mix. Listen to the lyrics – the joyful snap of a great sarcastic observation. Sing along with middle finger held high. A lot of people found the great part of ‘punk’ – the primal scream of singing along to bands like The Clash. Guess what – it’s still out there if you want to find it. Pull up the lyrics to ‘Truth’ and shout along.

Retro: Sly And The Family Stone – ‘Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)’

This song (and band) pulled me body and soul in to the joy of funk along with performers like James Brown, Parliament Funkadelic, The Meters and Prince. It also made me pick up bass guitar. Spent hours trying to get the feel of players like Larry Graham, James Jamerson, Bootsy Collins and Victor Wooten. Playing bass let my turn off my brain and listen to my body. Sit back and enjoy the slap and pop on this song.

Messin With The Music Part 5 – Novocaine For The Soul

Greetings. We’re back with another tune to be messed with. This time we’re honoring ‘Novocaine For The Soul’ by Eels. This was a fun song to work with. I really enjoy the anthemic, sing along nature of the song. Again, we stayed basically acoustic except for the bass guitar. The song has 12 string guitar, bass, mandolin, six string banjo and a little percussion with tambourine and egg shaker.

To give a wider, stereo feel the 12 string guitar foundation track was played twice and panned hard stereo left and right. I think giving a track a wide stereo sound is important and playing a duplicate instrument track is a great way to do it. The two tracks can be very similar, but will almost never be identical (unless you force that with computer manipulation) so you hear each track distinctly from each channel. We worked the same concept with the vocal tracks, recording the main vocal twice and adding two harmony tracks.

Another thing that made this song interesting was the key. We don’t usually change the song from the original key. Specific keys do give songs a certain feel. Major key versus minor key or in this case having the song in D flat instead of D. In the original song they did this by using capos on the guitars. We ended up down tuning the 12 string guitar a half note and transposing the chords so the guitar could be played in first position for a fuller, richer sound. A capo was used on the 6 string banjo. We also added a second mandolin track that acts as a ‘voice’, along the lines of playing a guitar lead.

We may not have said this before, but all the Messin’ songs are played by Electrostatic Rhythm Pigs. You can find these songs and the band’s original music on our SoundCloud account (we have links on this site). We’re also slowly adding all the band’s songs to our YouTube channel (here’s a link to our YouTube channel): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0vVN4p_KzvLg1DEuUSJoqw

This is the season for sharing. So please share our songs and videos with your friends. Add them to your Facebook feeds. Become a follower of our blog. Email us with questions or comments. We really appreciate your support.

In The Studio – Episode 8

Welcome to Episode 8 in the ‘In The Studio’ series. Today’s topic is how to create mixing options for yourself during the recording process. A couple things to add about the process in the video. In the video the guitar sounds you hear have not been EQ’d on the mixing board. You can magnify the differences in sound by tweaking the EQ on each microphone using the mixing board. You can also add more diversity by adding effects units in the line between the guitar and amp (this will make more sense after you watch the video). As always if you have any questions or ideas, let us know.