Discovering the Two Amp Rig.
This time around, we looked for guitar sounds that really had their own unique personalities. That’s why we experimented with different rigs and used ideas from our rehearsals to see if they worked in the studio. One time, only Magnus and I were at the rehearsal, and since Carl and Shah weren’t there, I wanted to try to reproduce their presence using multiple amps. So we used the bypass on the tuner, directed the signal through a pitch shifter (shifted way down) and hooked the resulting signal to a 2nd amp. I like to discover. We use this rig on WRITE RIOT RIGHT!
The Double Dragon guitars
Recording the guitars was very fun this time. I put up a two amp rig for WRITE RIOT RIGHT to get the right amount of power this song needs.
I recorded with my Mustard yellow Epiphone SG. (”The Molester” as I called it this weekend)
I split the signals into my ORANGE TINY TERROR rig for the rythm sound, and my FENDER AMP PITCHED POWER RIG on the chorus. (Consisting of a pitched down super shifter and a fuzzbox wired to the Fender twin reverb amp)
I split it through my tuner.
FX
I use BOSS Super pitch shifter and Digital delay on W.R.R. (It´s my standard FX setup)
The Orange TIny Terror amp gives a high quality distortion, but I also have a RAT Deuce tone for my additional Overdrive/Distortion needs.
“A punch in the Phase”
On the bridge you may hear a sneaking fast guitar lurking from behind, and that was a special moment in the song, while the lights were dimmed and we had the right Spy-mood in the studio and I just jammed through the song with the Phaser on. This was the result of having the Phaser FX on.
I used a rough distortion while Shah used a rather clean guitar to give the perfect balance in the song. Shah used his dear Gibson for his guitar tracks (Actually, right now you can win an exact copy of this guitar over here at Dagbladet).
Download Write Riot Right!
Click on Clara and Léon to download the newly recorded song!
We’re the scary ones, we’re the daring ones
Here are the lyrics for the new song:
Set a tripwire, spitfire, send them in
To the deadliest sounds from the Theremin
Know what you’re going for
Write Riot Right!
We’re the scary ones, we’re the daring ones
Write Riot Right!
Say hello to my little friend Agathon
Oh oh oh oh oh
We’re the scary ones, we’re the daring ones
We’re the people watching over screaming write riot right!
No escape-plan for killing the messenger
Be like us put a hand near the antenna
Know what you’re going for!
Write Riot Right!
We’re the scary ones, we’re the daring ones
Write Riot Right!
…Or else you’ll be mutilated by the ghost of Clara Rockmore
Oh oh oh oh oh
We’re the scary ones, we’re the daring ones
We’re the people watching over screaming write riot right!
Recording the bass for Write Riot Right
Originally I had planned and was really keen on using a standard Ampeg bass rig on this song. The last couple of months I have been using a Ampeg combo when practising, and I really thought the energy in the ampeg would fit this song very well. So my plan was to use a classic Ampeg SVT head and test that out with some different kinds of cabinets that I could find in the studio (Harrys Gym has a lot of instruments and gear to play around with and to use for trying out different kinds of sounds and settings). But when things were ready for starting recording the bass, just after setting the drums live together with the lead guitar, we found out that we really wanted to try out the same equipment on the bass as were used by the first guitar. This was the amazing Tiny Terror amp from Orange together with a 4×12 Orange Cabinet. My Fender Jazz sounded really cool and fresh on this little guitar amp and we wanted to try this out on the song. After playing along with the song with this bass sound for a while I felt that I needed a bit more bottom in the sound, the little guitar amp didnt deliever much of that. Then our sound guy dug out from the pile of cabinets an old and completely filthy and dirty Marshall cabinet (This cabinet was actually originally owned by the band Entombed). With this cab we got the right low-end sound. To be able add more bottom, add effects and to blend in a different sound on the bass in the mix, I always also record a separate track directly from a DI-box. In the bridge part of the song I wanted to add a signature on the bass. Here I used a single Bass Chorus pedal, actually from Behringer, to get the right spy feeling in the tones on this part.
To sum things up:
-Amp: Orange Tiny Terror
-Cabinet: Marshall 4X12
-Mic: Shure SM57
-DI: Ampeg SVT Tube DI
-Effects: Bass Chorus pedal from Behringer
Write Riot Right! Drums
I started recording with my beloved drumkit Spike (for the uneducated reader, that is my drum set which I acquired with the money I made off my fifteenyearsjubilee). We started at 12 o’ clock in the afternoon and I tried to record the drums alone at first.. We soon heard that the metronome that felt natural for me was way to fast and we tried for the better part of an hour to find a proper metronome for our song.. After some mongering with these elements of our recordingsession we decided to track the drums and the the rhythm guitar simultaneously to capture the original energy of the song (which only contained guitar and drums to start with). We used a number of cool mics on the drums including a pot (like the ones you boil stuff in) on the bassdrum and an odd kind of mic placed near the floor on the left side of the bassdrum that worked as some kind of distortionmic. I was also told to place the drums off centre and to face them towards the corner where the door was located to make the natural tone in my drums to cooperate with the frequencies in the room.. As far as playing this particular song goes I tried to draw inspiration and ideas from jazzy stuff and the kind of drums you would expect from old bigbandsessions and the likes, and this is where the intro came from, as well as the chattering and applauding troughout the song (I consider these drumtracks allthou they are not drums at all. They still interact with what im playing and if viewed artistically has the same effect as percussives backing the drums)
Write Riot Right!
Etter den katastrofale avslutningen på vår forrige innspillingsrunde (se under), har vi omsider bestemt oss for å forsøke igjen. Merlin er derfor denne helgen i Harry’s Gym studio og spiller inn en ny låt, hvis navn er å finne i overskriften av dette innlegget. Vi kommer med fortløpende oppdatering på fremskrittet, samt bilder og videoklipp og litt sånn. Følg med.
Stupidest Voice in My Head Ever
Here’s a clip from one of the songs we recorded in Halden, a montage put together by our friend Henrik.
The Manhattan Project - Act 2: Curse of Merlin
The avid reader will probably remember my previous entry, regarding Merlin and our fantastic weekend in our new home; the recording studio. Well, this post is not only the follow-up to that, but also a plot twist in the tale. Because whereas the first weekend was a fantastically productive and magical experience, the 2nd weekend was pretty much anything but. Let me elaborate on the events that brought us only a few handclaps closer to a final result.
So on Friday the September 28th, we were due back in the studio. At 2pm, a message ticks in on my phone, reading “OK, bad news. Espen the sound engineer’s wife is sick and he’s not coming today. He might be able to come tomorrow. What do we do?”. Indeed. We tried to call him, but couldn’t reach him, so we decided to go anyway, just in case. We figured we’d at least be able to reach him at some point in the afternoon to clear things up. We never did.
Time for plan B: inventing a plan B. Just in case Espen wouldn’t be able to show up on Saturday, we phoned around to other people who might be able to fill in for him. After like the 6th person, we reached someone who Magnus in the past had referred to as “extremely blonde”. I don’t know what he meant by that, but we were willing to give it a shot. It was a backup plan after all. Well, no, it wasn’t, because Saturday rolled round and still no word from Espen. We went on his Myspace and saw that he had logged in Friday, i.e. the day before, so we even sent him a message on there, and then went to the studio to meet our engineer for the day: Markus.
“This song is out of tune”. That was the first thing Markus said. Turns out, it wasn’t out of tune at all. That pretty much sums up the experience with him. It took us about 3 hours to get started because all the wires in the studio were pissing him off. Plus, the previous weekend we had created a lot of audio tracks in the recording software and that really pissed him off too. Once we did get started on recording guitars, every time someone played something wrong and wanted to do another take, he would say “No no no, music is meant to be played wrong”. I don’t know what kind of music he had been snorting, but that lack of quality sure as hell wasn’t the attitude that represented the previous weekend.
After a while we realized we weren’t getting anywhere and just started recording crazy noises on the more complete songs. We also decided to just leave the studio and get drunk. Henrik joined us in the studio that night and we all went out to drink together. That was a great time, the absolute highlight of the day. Both in the studio and on the town, it all ended up being fun after all. We arranged another (!!) engineer to help us on Sunday, hopefully someone that was better suited than blondie.
Sunday rolls around and at 2pm we drive to the studio. At 2:30 still no word from our engineer for the day (one of the general managers of the studio). Finally, he calls us and says “Something happened”, then his phone dies. Ten minute later he calls back and tells us his grandmother is in the hospital. He’s not lying either. Un-fucking-belivable. We ended up getting Laurits to help us, a guy that plays bass guitar in half the bands in Halden, and the first thing he says is: “Seriously guys, there’s got to be someone better than me”. That day we had planned on finishing the vocals but ended up recording only some handclaps and keyboards instead. That’s all we got done. The insanity of it all.
And Espen? Well, we checked his Myspace on Sunday and it showed he had been logged on that day, read our message and not replied. We also called his cellphone and his wife, who sounded like she was in perfect condition, picked up and said he was out. Magnus is currently stalking him and we hope to reach him for a comment soon. Our impressions of this guy (who Magnus has worked with numerous times) just does not add up with the events. In the meanwhile, we have no idea how or when we’re going to finish the songs. So you’re just going to have to make due with these pictures, all of which is taken with a slow shutterspeed because that’s the way I like ‘em.
3 songs, 6 days, 3 producers. Fucking priceless.
The Manhattan Project - Act 1
In the beginning of September, we decided that we weren’t going to waste any more time on endless planning and made a simple executive decision to enter the studio as soon as possible to record a few new songs. So we settled on 3 songs, and if those would go well, we’d come back to record the remainder of a full-length (codename: The Manhattan Project). Magnus, our drummer, knew of a place in Halden (2-hour drive from Oslo) and an engineer that could help us record. Plans were very quickly put to motion and two weekends were reserved for us.
So on the weekend of September 21st, we filled up the trusted Merlin-mobile again (the Ford Escort that has served us well for nearly 10 years) with equipment and head out for the studio. No strings attached, just a weekend of playing around with the songs. It’s been 5 years since last time. Knowing practically nothing about the studio, we had no idea what were going to; pretty much the typical Merlin way. It turned out it was to be, at least for me, one of the most rewarding weekends with Merlin yet. The place was awesome (built into a mountain, taken straight out of Goldeneye on the N64) and our studio engineer Espen was a great guy who really understood and loved our music and knew how to make things work. Everything just sounded so much better than it ever had before. Magnus was unbelievable, insanely good beyond anything, and finished his songs in one afternoon. The next day or so we recorded all the bass and even nearly finished all the guitars on one song. Everything was just tight. That weekend was beyond our expectation and in every way magical. Henrik even stopped by to say hi and film a little, more about that later.
We left Halden on Sunday feeling really motivated and happy with the result and already looking forward to our next session in the studio.