I recently completed my debut solo album, “Rise Time”. This was a very interesting journey for me, and it was definitely a bit of a turn from my previous singer/songwriter course. I’d like to talk a little bit about the process of creating it.
You can use this player listen to the entire album at 128kbps, as hosted on SoundCloud.
I had been wanting to do something that was more connected to the subconscious. So for about two months (October-November of 2009), I religiously practiced the following routine every day:
1. Wake up early, at 6:00 a.m.
2. Make coffee.
3. Warm up on the guitar for 10 minutes.
4. Record the first melodic figure that comes to mind.
5. Explore and record variations on that theme.
6. End by 8:00 a.m. No matter what state the piece is in, it is now complete.
7. Name the piece with the first words that come to mind.
The theory was that by playing so early in the morning, I was forcing myself in to a creative place before I was really awake. Therefore, whatever came out of me was coming from the unconscious mind. This is where the initial melodic figure of each piece originated. But by the time I was an hour in to the process, I was pretty awake. I could then make conscious decisions, drawing from my experience and knowledge of theory, how I wanted to develop each piece.
I also had a philosophy about how I was going to record at a technical level:
1. No emulations of anything! I’m really tired of trying to figure out if an emulated instrument or reverb sounds as good as the real thing. Generally, they don’t. So I decided to use the “real thing” whenever possible. All the reverb on the album, for example, is a Demeter RV-1 Real Verb (stereo spring reverb). Almost all of the delays and ambiance were created using the Roland RE-501 tape delay. One or two tracks were done using a digital delay pedal, but those are the exception, and were recorded before I acquired the RE-501. Additionally, none of the synths are plug-ins or digital. In fact, all the synths were created on the Roland GR-300. OK, I stretched the truth a bit…there is ONE plug-in synth that I used to generate an ultra-low bass on “Asleep In Bedlam”. I now really wish I had the MKS-80 at the time, because that synth sound was problematic. I’m pretty sure Jeff Lipton, my mastering engineer, had to take special care when it came in. It just sounded cold and brittle. Jeff made it a lot better. And I mentioned previously, when I decided to add percussion to two of the tracks, there was no way I was going to use a digital drum machine. I much preferred the analog percussion synthesizer approach. What initially attracted me to it is that it is not pretending to be real drums, and it turned out to have some very interesting quirks.
2. Wherever possible, use a tube in the signal path. I used a STDB-1 stereo tube direct box by Demeter, and also used a Universal Audio Solo/610 tube mic pre. That was the only mic pre I used, and I also used it as a direct box. I like this unit a lot because it has both input and output gain settings, allowing me to saturate the tube as much or as little as I want. When it came time to mix, I summed the signals in the analog domain and used a Drawmer 1968 Mercenary Edition tube compressor to compress the main bus.
3. Wherever possible, prefer analog over digital. There were very, very few digital effects used. A couple of digital delays and a couple of digital EQ’s were used because I didn’t have a viable option. Like I said, I prefer the real thing.
4. Don’t use distortion as a guitar effect. I had been inspired by the work of Zoe Keating, and the uneffected sound of her cello is amazing. I felt I should be able to do the same with the pure tone of the guitar. There is not a distortion box anywhere on this album. Sometimes distortion occurred as a result of a filter sweep with the wah pedal, or as a result of a compression pedal, but neither was an extreme distortion like an overdrive pedal would be. And actually I spent a lot of time tuning the wah pedal to minimize any distortion. Although I was already done with all the basic tracks by the time I got a better compression pedal, I did have it in time to use for some of the overdubs.
I recorded approximately 80 pieces during this period, and although only 12 are on the album, that does not mean the other 68 were bad. The 12 were chosen largely at random. As I reviewed all of my output, I simply mixed some of the better ones as they came along. But there are around another 40 pieces of similar quality that went un-mixed. I could easily put out two, if not three, more albums using the tracks I recorded during those sessions. But except for a couple of exceptions, I will most likely move on to the next idea rather then dwell on the past.
Based on the rules I was following, every song on “Rise Time” was composed and recorded in the space of two hours or less. In all fairness, I did need to re-record some individual parts. I really tried to avoid that, but in a couple of cases it was either re-record some parts or throw the entire piece away. But I want to stress the rapidity of the compositional process. There was no extensive laboring over compositional decisions or re-working of elements. It was a highly agile process. If something didn’t work, it just didn’t get used, either as an element or as a whole.
There were a few reasons why some individual parts needed to be re-recorded. The primary reason was that I was using a tube direct box for every track, and at some point the tube started dying and adding huge amounts of noise to the signal. But it wouldn’t malfunction immediately, it took time over the course of a session for it to become noticeable. As a result, it took a while for me to diagnose and fix. But it did leave me with a few parts that had so much noise as to be unusable.
Another reason why some parts were re-done was because I was printing the guitar along with the Roland RE-501 tape delay effect. It’s an awesome unit and I really love it! But in a couple of cases, the ambiance of the repeated effect became so dominant that the primary signal was getting lost. In order to establish any kind of clarity, the part needed to be re-done.
Finally, one or two of the parts were just crap because my rhythm was a bit off. What can I say, it’s not all roses at 6 a.m.!
But taken it total, the parts that were re-done represent the vast minority of the sounds you hear on this album. Overall, every song is true to what actually occurred in the early hours of that morning. I should point out, though, that the electronic percussion on Sea Of Tranquility as well as Godsend were both added entirely after the fact. When mixing them it just seemed like they needed something more. And I really wanted to experiment with the Vermona DRM1 mkIII that I had recently acquired.
Naturally, I spent a lot of time arranging and mixing afterwards. I would work on a mix for a while, and then let it sit for a few days or weeks. Then I’d listen to it again to make sure all the parts made sense in terms of volume, EQ, panning, etc. I also didn’t want to over-work anything, so giving the mixes some time helped me to see the forest rather than the trees. And I know from experience that if there is anything I don’t like, I’m going to have to listen to it for the rest of my life, so I’d better be happy with what I’m doing. I must say, it paid off. I am very happy with this album.
After I was happy with all of the mixes, I contacted Jeff Lipton, who I had met at a conference for audio engineers, and asked him to do the mastering. I was very pleased that he accepted the gig. He is dedicated to the beauty of sound, and I couldn’t have asked for a better set of ears and talent.
Finally, after everything else, I asked Kris Northern at Phidelity to do the cover design, and he graciously accepted the assignment. He did an amazing job! Here is the front and back cover of the 6 panel eco wallet.
That’s probably more than you wanted to know about the making of the album! I’m looking forward to making the next one. There will be a very similar philosophy about how it’s made, but a few things will be different. For one, I’ll be using primarily the Moog Guitar.
Until then, all the best!
George Ludwig
March 2010
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