So I decided to make a record…

OK, so the title is slightly misleading.  I made an album of western, country & surf music, which will never be pressed into a vinyl record and will most likely exist only as a series of 1’s and 0’s on a handful of hard drives and on the mystical, magical cloud that is bandcamp.com.  Over the past six months I've been feverishly writing, arranging, recording and finally mixing & mastering a short LP of tunes all by myself in my free time.  Why?  Good question - one that I asked myself often during the process. Although the bands I've been a part of have usually been some combination of shoegaze, ambient, punk, emo or ska, I consider myself a fan of almost all  types of music.  In particular, the rustic sentimental part of me that takes pride in having lived in Texas and now Nevada has a particular fondness for western music and what I would consider real country music (or what Nashville music lovers would refer to as outlaw/Texas country and alt country).  For years I've wanted to write tunes in that vein, but previous efforts always ended quickly with nothing much accomplished.  Perhaps, as is so often the case with art, a more concerted effort coupled with specific goals and a timeline would do the trick?  Time to find out…

What a mess...

Heading into December of 2013 I didn't have much in the way of concrete musical ideas.  I had two songs written (guitar & vocals only) and a single riff played on a baritone guitar, but that was it.  But I began to formulate a plan.  I had all the tools I needed:  guitars, drums, basses, amps, a digital piano, a pedal steel (a difficult instrument that I’m still in the beginning stages of learning), lots of different microphones, a recording interface and a laptop.  At first I set the goal of recording eight songs:  four originals and four covers.  Feature creep soon set in and the scope of the project eventually expanded to ten tunes, all original.  Writing interlocking pieces for each instrument and then recording them is difficult enough when you’re just one component of a full band.  But doing this on the fly by yourself?  Maddening…  So why, then?

Because despite all the self-doubt, and disorganization, and the re-recording of pieces that invariably results from rewriting on the fly because you don’t have anyone (or stupidly don’t ask anyone) to bounce ideas off of, it allows one the best most comprehensive expressions of one’s artistic vision (or lack thereof).  It’s the same reason Tom Petty made Wildflowers as a solo record (more or less).  Or maybe, it’s just because after years wasting money and time learning to play music I can.  Regardless of why I chose to do it, it’s done.

Songwriting has always been a slow, methodical process for me.  Writing individual musical parts hasn’t been hard, but writing entire pieces that flow together obviously takes more time, and lyrics for me much longer still.  On the occasions when I wrote complete guitar pieces & lyrics for an Asterionella song, I would say the average length of time from start to finish was around two or three months.  But somehow my forced deadline of four months for the entire album (which eventually slipped to around six, as deadlines always do) lit a fire, and I accomplished more than expected.  Funny how that works, eh?

Writing western & country songs is different than writing shoegaze or pop songs.  There’s more of a storytelling element.  I tried to make most of the songs vignettes of what I consider traditional “western life”.  Stories could be comical and borderline farcical, or serious.  I tried to make album closer “Rhyolite” the most depressing thing I’d ever written.  What I considered “western life” both musically and lyrically could be anything from post-Civil War Nevada, to turn-of-the-century rural Texas to 1960s Southern California (or more accurately, my warped nostalgic visions of those places and times).  I pulled from a variety of influences, but tried not to succumb to mimicry.  The southwest sound as defined to me by Old 97s (my favorite Texas cowpunk band) and Calexico (who have created the perfect “soundtrack to the southwest” several times over) was my musical North Star.  Guidance was drawn from purveyors of real country:  Dwight Yoakam, Emmylou Harris, Ryan Adams, Junior Brown and their stellar backing bands.   And of course from the rebellious attitude of Johnny Cash.  Throw in The Ventures, Dick Dale and Man or Astro-Man? (for my two surf tunes), and a bit of The Verve for a bit of shoegaze sheen (always an element to my sound, no matter what I’m writing) and that pretty much sums up my pool of influence.  Enough name-checking.

Every amateur recording engineer's nightmare:  the drum kit

Did I mention that recording a record by yourself is a pain?  Rewriting and recording is a constant threat.  As I mentioned, In order to get this record done in a short enough time that it wouldn’t make me crazy or turn into my Chinese Democracy I had to write and arrange as I went along.  I layed down guitar scratch tracks (throw aways) before recording drums.  After I recorded drums I had to re-record guitars (multiple times to overdub for a thick sound).  Guitar solos and bass parts were usually written right before being recorded.  The same with smaller ancillary instruments like Xylophone or Melodica (look it up).  Vocals were a nightmare (I can’t sing, and it shows on the record).  Pedal steel was the worst.  It’s a complicated instrument (ten strings, multiple pedals & knee levers, etc.) and I was learning on the fly.  I recorded most of those parts in tiny, tiny sections (luckily I only used it on three songs).  Guitars for several tunes had to be recorded again at the very end, either because intonation was off or because the recorded tone was just awful.  Did I mention I had to change laptops twice due to technical problems?  


It’s a good thing the 24-year-old me didn’t make this record.  Besides completely overwhelming me to the point of insanity, it would have sounded terrible.  Recording drums is a nightmare.  You’re not recording one instrument, you have to treat each piece of the kit as one part of a percussive orchestra.  Recording the other instruments is  relatively easy, but still a pain.  Fortunately, through the years I’ve gotten good at ballparking where the mics need to go.  In almost all cases on this record my first take was also my test take.  “That mic looks right” was usually as scientific as I got.  If I took the time to fine tune everything like I should have, I’d still be making this record instead of writing about it.

41 tracks recorded to a laptop?  Par for the course, thanks to modern technology.

Mixing ran along the same lines.  I’ve been weekend-warrioring this stuff long enough that I can get everything sounding reasonably balanced quickly.  Mastering, while arguably the easiest part (if the record is mixed right), is also one of the most nerve-wracking because “this is it - IT’S THE FINAL STEP - once you’re done IT’S DONE!”  Tracks have to be segued, final effects applied, any further mixing changes made, and overall volume levels set (a huge decision in and of itself - curious?  look up “Loudness War” on wikipedia).  By the time that you’ve reached this stage you’ve already heard your songs in uncountable stages of construction uncountable times.  So much so that they’ll probably be stuck in your head until you die.  Now you get to export your mixes (once for each song…”grab a book, it’ll be a while…”), burn them onto a CD, listen to the entire album on your headphones, in your car, and on a home stereo(s) (while taking notes), remix/remaster/adjust, go back to step one and REPEAT REPEAT REPEAT.  All the while chasing that elusive dragon - the unattainable high of a perfect mix that will somehow sound angelic in your $140 headphones, your fancy component stereo and your shitty car system.  It’s impossible, but you try.  For a while.  Eventually your brain settles on what it perceives as the best compromise, you give it to someone else for a second opinion and finish.  What a relief.

The final chores are cathartic:  creating artwork & liner notes, signing up for a bandcamp page, uploading the finished product…  You feel good.  Time to tell everyone.  “Take my music!  It’s freeeeeeeeeee!”  You just want people to listen.  Of course, one must keep goals realistic.  No matter how much work I put into this, I realize that at the end of the day, most people are bombarded by so much media and music that my tunes are just a drop in a sea of people all screaming for attention like kids at the public pool yelling at their parents to watch as they jump off the tall diving board.  The great thing about the internet is that anyone can post their music!  Hooray, we all have a voice!  The terrible thing about the internet is that anyone can post their music. Like uncountable blog posts, we are lost in a digital ocean, growing larger by the second.

But that’s OK, because I have this album of music.  I made it myself.  No one besides my fiancé may ever listen to it again.  The world moves on.  But I made it.  

Life is good.