Leave of Absence vol. 2 - from a “drum slut” perspective
KeithHandy posted in Old skool, Producing on September 25th, 2007
1. Never Turn Back - Yamaha RY30 drum machine played by hand to a freely (no click) recorded acoustic guitar part. Brief punch-ins and hits added in certain spots to cover up some of the less smooth-sounding moments.
2. Open the Window - drum machine sequenced on the old Zenith computer with Cakewalk 3.0. The original cassette demo had me playing pseudo-drum-like white noise sounds (using the CZ-1) over an infinitely looping thump on a delay pedal, and I programmed the sequence to emulate what I’d played there, only less sloppily.
3. P.S.R. - drum machine sequenced on the Zenith, using a click and quantizing in a conventional way.
4. Quit Your Job and Join a Traveling Hindu Cult - this is a mashup from several different sources. The bit at the opening and closing is from a cassette improvisation, using the CZ-1 white noise sounds again, but then I overdubbed myself playing a real cymbal and some triplets on a real floor tom. The second section is the solo section from Wake Up, from the original Open the Window album, and I played the drum machine by hand into the computer sequencer at half the actual speed of the song (with click), then quantized it and played it back at the correct speed. The third section is extremely edited bits from a Mind Mogger performance, with Jeff Lewis on drums (I think there were more people on stage than there were in the audience). The fourth section is me improvising on the drum machine into the sequencer without a click, and then deriving all the keyboard and bass parts from the drum part (was originally a longer stand-alone piece called Stampede of the Media Hogs). For the remaster, I’ve carefully added sampled drums throughout the entire piece to give it a little more “snap”, which has the added benefit of making it sound more cohesive from section to section. When I do add new drums like this, I’m very careful to make sure they’re perfectly synchronized to the old drum hits, so they don’t sound like flams.
5. Revelation in the Resonance - the original demo was also from that same improvised tape in which Open the Window and the bookends of Quit Your Job were conceived, but like Open the Window, I replicated the song without using anything from the original tape. I looped eleven bars of Barb Johnson’s drum track from a Peachy Nietzches session for a song that they didn’t complete. For the remaster I have added sampled drums to make it fuller; it was the only way to undo the damage from over-compressing the original tracks.
6. Soldiers of Music - I programmed the patterns right into the drum machine itself instead of using the computer. I don’t know why. It could have been during a time when I couldn’t use the computer, because the monitor had died and hadn’t been replaced yet.
7. Ten Years From Now - drum machine, programmed into the computer. Most of it is a looping measure without any variation, except for the section that leads into the final verse, where I played the part by hand (probably at half the actual tempo) in order to give it more of a drummer-like feeling.
8. Undue Strain - the second verse and instrumental section originally had only a guitar, and I wanted a “small drum machine” sound for those parts, so I programmed the bars right into the Yamaha and carefully fiddled with tempos until I could match what I had played on the guitar. For the big loud ending part, I played the drum machine freely into the computer sequencer (no click) and then just cleaned it up a little, before adding any other instruments.
9. Various Fakes - this was originally only meant to be a demo, so I think I only had one repeating bar on the drum machine except for the breaks. There’s a spot in the middle of the guitar solo where I wanted a fill, so I played that by hand to an open track and then carefully punched/ping ponged it in. You can hear the sound quality of the drums change slighty where that fill comes in.
10. Waitin’ for the Wind - there are no drums on this. It’s just my friends and me, goofing around in Jeff’s kitchen circa 1993.
11. X-Ray Tex and X-Ray Ted and the Marvellous X-Rated X-Ray Specs on their Heads - I played the drum machine by hand after the bass, piano, and synth solo had already been sequenced. It’s mostly a ride cymbal, with an occasional snare crack.
12. You Feel Exactly Like Me - played the drum machine by hand. It only appears at the very end of the last verse, and again no click was used.
13. Zero Gratitude - this is Jeff Lewis’ drum track from one of his songs, sped up to nearly twice as fast. On the original mix I ran it through a pitch shifter to make it lower sounding, and combined that with the unaffected sound. Since the pitch shifted version sounded kind of crappy, I did my best to drown that out on the pseudo-remix (or “remaster and then some”) with another, cleaner version of the original drum track. Since it was still sped-up and high-pitched, I ran it through a “sub-synth” effect so at least the kick drum would have some more bottom to it. The disco-ish ending, though, is just a single bar repeating on the drum machine. This was also from a quick demo for a completely different song, and I “cheated” on the remaster by adding subliminal hand claps.
For all you non-drummers, I’ll divulge plenty of non-drum-related factoids about these songs when I make my forthcoming announcement…
