Metal School

Kurashu · Sep 15, 2008

Dannyalcatraz said:
Kurashu, if that's your opinion of Dream Theater, don't try Steve Vai. Or Buckethead.

I have no problem with progressive or techincal or experimental or avant-garde music, it's just when the songs stop being songs and become showing off that I have a problem with.

Compare Cryptopsy to Dream Theater. Or Gorguts to Malsteen.

Nyaricus · Sep 16, 2008

So, figured I'd pop in here and see how all my friendly EN World Metalheads are doing!

Things have been busy for me the past couple of months, my band played it's first show (and we're looking forward to some more coming up!) and got signed to a local record label as well!

It's not all good news though, as they just up and said "you have studio time in October, so be there" and we had to let them know there's no way we'd be ready for October studio time. We're still trying out a bassist who we think will fit in, we don't have the funding necessary to do that sort of thing just yet, and we don't even have enough songs to do a 6 track EP (which they, and we, are planning for - so at least something is agreed upon lol).

It's just stressful, we've successfully pushed them back to a mid-November studio time, but it still doesn't feel like there's going to be enough time to get everything in line for then.

On one hand, I am so excited - this means we are going somewhere with our music and will have something that will last forever. That's cool. But while we hardly want perfection (that's impossible, after all), we want to have our tracks down as well as we possibly can, and have music we really enjoy.

Also, we keep getting this line that they "aren't in this for the money" and so on, and that "they're here to help us out" and yet forcing us into studio with a half-finished product, a maybe bassist and no cash doesn't seem like they are doing either of those things. Blech. I held no expectations the label industry was going to be an entirely positive thing and it's held up those expectations (well, lackthereof) quite well. But, we're doing our best to give ourselves enough room to get what we need first. Our music is important to us.

Anyways, we did some re-recordings of our demos this past weekend and recorded our newest track "Spineless" as well, so check us out!

www.myspace.com/hoarfrostofficial

cheers,
--N

----------------
Now playing: Nile - In Their Darkened Shrines: I. Hall of Saurian Entombment
via FoxyTunes

Dannyalcatraz · Sep 16, 2008

Welcome to the (moderately) big time, Ny! I was thinking about asking how your band was doing.

Some possible solutions for your bassist problems if time is of the essence:

1) Your guitarist seems to have the chops for it- he might be able to lay down the basslines himself. With some studio wizardry, it will seem as if you actually have a bassist. Many bands have done something like this- Malmsteen did, and Prince is notorious for playing everything in the studios and just hiring a good band for the road.

2) Again with your axe-man: certain alternative tunings lessen the need for a true bass player. I personally favor New Standard Tuning (C-G-D-A-E-G)- created by Robert Fripp, the lower 4 strings are tuned like a Cello, giving you a substantial bottom. The great jazz guitarist Charlie Hunter uses an 8 string guitar (usually with a fanned Novax fretboard), tuned so that the bottom 3 strings are tuned like a standard bass, and the top 5 are tuned like a standard guitar.

3) Hire a session player to fill in for the EP- if your scene has a lot of your style of music, finding a decent session guy shouldn't be difficult. Again, this happens more time than you know, and sometimes those guys wind up in the band. Famously, Kip Winger played on a lot of rock/metal albums before forming his own band. Down here in D/FW, there are several bands that interchange members, especially for short term tours or quick gigs.

Thunderfoot · Sep 17, 2008

Ny, interesting new song, (though the vocals are much more muddy than your previous recordings, but I think that may because your voice is getting stronger). As usual I'm going to agree with Danny about your axe-man playing bass in the studio or finding a session guy for your recordings. Contact your label and find out if they have anyone available during that time, they want to help, maybe they have a session bassist (or multi-instrumentalist) in the closet.

Also, I'm not sure if your label has their own studio or if they are renting you time (either way, it's their money) so here are a few tips to make sure you ARE ready and help your label not go into fits about signing you.

1) Some of your stuff is loose in parts - make sure the studio has a click track available and use it. Yes, it sucks to have "click, click, click, CLICK" in your ear, but you are always on tempo...ALWAYS!!!

2) Unless they want you to, DON'T play studio live. Usually you will sound no better than a garage band and your engineer will have much more work (and you'll be doing more takes). There are very few bands that do well playing live in the studio, take my advice here, again, unless your label or the engineer wants something else - but make sure that the click track is in place even if they do want you to do live...or more to the point, ESPECIALLY, if they want it that way.

3) Don't play live for a week prior to going into the studio. Practice yes, keep a schedule as if you had gigs and require your mates to be there, but live play forces you to take chances with your equipment and more importantly your vocals, that you just don't need. Also, in your rehearsals, TURN DOWN and focus on the sound. Loud playing leads to easily missing mistakes that become glaringly obvious in the studio (and producers hate wasted time in the studio - trust me on this

) And if you feel tired or that your voice is feeling a little raw STOP!!!, The band can continue to play and you can even critique, ut for the love of Pete SHUT UP!! A singer with no voice makes producers a little nervous.

4) Have fun, but take it very seriously. When you play, play for the love of music. When you hear the play back - DON'T GO WOW WE'RE AWESOME, listen to your performances very intent on finding things that need work. Your producer/engineer will hopefully be doing the same and offering advice or possible telling you that something doesn't work or this part has to be done differently - don't argue, DO IT. Listen to both side by side and then make a decision. Often times your producer will have been a musician him/herself and knows more than you do so even if it is contrary to your vision, it may be a better direction - at least try it.

I really wish you the best of luck and hope that this gives you the confidence boost you need. You are ready for the studio, even if its not for a full feature length album, but I have this strange feeling that your label wants to see what your potential in the studio is before the completely invest in you. Remember what I said about projects a few months ago?

This may be their way of seeing what you're made of and how much your group figures into their company's future. This is where I tell you the bad stuff, you are playing with THEIR money, regardless of whether or not you are being paid - in music time IS money and the wind of the future blows... literally.

To you, your music is sacred, to them, it's pocketbook fodder - DON'T TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY - it's just business.

Welcome to the wonderful world of music Ny - you are about to get the education of a lifetime.
Thunderfoot
Seat of the Pants Productions
Button Fly Records
Hip-Pocket Studios

Nyaricus · Sep 17, 2008

Thanks guys

Danny, one of my guitarists Brett ("Hodr" on the MySpace page) is/was a bass player, so if things don't work out with this new guy (we're jamming with him for the 3rd and 4th time this Saturday and Sunday respectively and we are all thinking he will fit in) then he could fill in for session bass.

However, we are of course hoping that we will have a full time bass player, but we'll see how it goes.

Thunderfoot said:
Ny, interesting new song, (though the vocals are much more muddy than your previous recordings, but I think that may because your voice is getting stronger).

Thanks; in fact everyone has noticed a huge improvement in each others playing since those previous April recordings, but it's nice to hear it from a third party

I'm also using an amplifier as opposed to PA system right now for vocals, so there's that too which might have changed the dynamics a bit.

Thunderfoot said:
Also, I'm not sure if your label has their own studio or if they are renting you time (either way, it's their money) so here are a few tips to make sure you ARE ready and help your label not go into fits about signing you.

I'm not sure, whether it's their studio or not, but I think they have fairly close ties.

Thunderfoot said:
1) Some of your stuff is loose in parts - make sure the studio has a click track available and use it. Yes, it sucks to have "click, click, click, CLICK" in your ear, but you are always on tempo...ALWAYS!!!

I'm familiar with the idea of a click track, but have no experience using them. I'll talk with my band about it, and go from there.

Thunderfoot said:
2) Unless they want you to, DON'T play studio live. Usually you will sound no better than a garage band and your engineer will have much more work (and you'll be doing more takes). There are very few bands that do well playing live in the studio, take my advice here, again, unless your label or the engineer wants something else - but make sure that the click track is in place even if they do want you to do live...or more to the point, ESPECIALLY, if they want it that way.

Naw, we definitely wouldn't want to do that anyways - why not just make a live CD then? It's basically the same difference - except you only get one chance to play, haha

Thunderfoot said:
3) Don't play live for a week prior to going into the studio. Practice yes, keep a schedule as if you had gigs and require your mates to be there, but live play forces you to take chances with your equipment and more importantly your vocals, that you just don't need. Also, in your rehearsals, TURN DOWN and focus on the sound. Loud playing leads to easily missing mistakes that become glaringly obvious in the studio (and producers hate wasted time in the studio - trust me on this ) And if you feel tired or that your voice is feeling a little raw STOP!!!, The band can continue to play and you can even critique, but for the love of Pete SHUT UP!! A singer with no voice makes producers a little nervous.

Trust me, I've learned to shut the #&*@ up when my voice is waning, but I have also really extended how long I can scream due to lengthly band jams - not a couple of hours doesn't seem that long. That's a positive thing for live performances, as I've seen a few lead vocalists from my city say "ugh my voice is starting to go" after 2 or 3 songs.

The band has also noticed we've been turning up in our jams, so now we've come back down a bit too. Even this recording is quite a bit louder, especially the drums (which have no mics on them at all)

Thunderfoot said:
4) Have fun, but take it very seriously. When you play, play for the love of music. When you hear the play back - DON'T GO WOW WE'RE AWESOME, listen to your performances very intent on finding things that need work. Your producer/engineer will hopefully be doing the same and offering advice or possible telling you that something doesn't work or this part has to be done differently - don't argue, DO IT. Listen to both side by side and then make a decision. Often times your producer will have been a musician him/herself and knows more than you do so even if it is contrary to your vision, it may be a better direction - at least try it.

I am my own worst critic (as are much of of our band, the other guitarist Scott is much like me as well), so the solid advice here is already been taken into consideration. I definitely let my guys know when I like a part of a song, and when I dislike it, and when it simply doesn't work.

Thunderfoot said:
I really wish you the best of luck and hope that this gives you the confidence boost you need. You are ready for the studio, even if its not for a full feature length album, but I have this strange feeling that your label wants to see what your potential in the studio is before the completely invest in you. Remember what I said about projects a few months ago?

This may be their way of seeing what you're made of and how much your group figures into their company's future. This is where I tell you the bad stuff, you are playing with THEIR money, regardless of whether or not you are being paid - in music time IS money and the wind of the future blows... literally. To you, your music is sacred, to them, it's pocketbook fodder - DON'T TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY - it's just business.

Welcome to the wonderful world of music Ny - you are about to get the education of a lifetime.
Thunderfoot
Seat of the Pants Productions
Button Fly Records
Hip-Pocket Studios

Thanks Thunder, and Danny. I'll pass much of this along to my bandmates. As always, much appreciated

----------------
Now playing: Type O Negative - These Three Things
via FoxyTunes

Dannyalcatraz · Sep 17, 2008

Nice advice T-Foot.

I don't recall if I've said this before or not, but not only does practice matter...practice MATTERS. As in $$$$$.

The press in Austin routinely excoriated local bands for not putting in the time to practice (the Austin Chronicle's music reporter once ran a multi-week treatise on why great bands weren't getting signed), leading to sloppy shows that probably cost them gigs and even signings. I know of one band in particular that fired a bandmate to get signed because of his sloppy (OK, drunken) live performances and practice ethic.

In addition, if you go into your recording session good & tight, you save yourself time in the studio, and as we ALL know, studio time is dang expensive. If you're an established artist or independently wealthy, you can spend forever tweeking this part or the other to get your sound "just so"- but at the dawn of your professional career, every $ you don't spend is HUGE.

(I haven't seen your contract, but I'd bet it has a standard "recoupment" clause. That's the money that the record label gets to take out of gross sales before you ever see a royalty payment, and studio time expenditures are often part of that.)

reapersaurus · Sep 18, 2008

Thunderfoot said:
Anyone not interested in drum history tune away now, this is long and boring.

The most notorious example was Luis Cardenas who sported a monster 75 piece kit painted in tiger stripes. This was the largest single drum kit at the time
This came after seeing smaller jazz players like Peter Erskine and Billy Cobham integrate electronics into their normal sets but only for the purpose of electronic sounds.

The killer came in the 90s when grunge killed the large drumset (like it killed so many other things in music).

I just gotta say.......... wow!
What an impressive post!
I just found this thread (I don't get on here often), and the voluminous amount of info, eloquently and succinctly related in this thread is WAY above what people could possibly expect from an internet forum.

I've been drumming since 1980, and followed rock, pop, jazz fuzion, prog rock, and metal and I appreciate your correct inclusion of pioneers and noteworthy efforts from the different musical genres. For instance, Billy Cobham is frequently forgotten, but was a monster of chops back in the 70's.
I'll have to look up Luis Cardenas - that sounds fun, and I'd never heard of that monster set.

I like your wording of grunge's effects.
I'd have to say the biggest thing it killed was melody (musicality, and any motivation to be technically proficient on your instrument). Grunge killed musicianship for the masses, the way punk did for the niches 15 years before.

Thunderfoot · Sep 19, 2008

reapersaurus said:
I just gotta say.......... wow!
What an impressive post!
I just found this thread (I don't get on here often), and the voluminous amount of info, eloquently and succinctly related in this thread is WAY above what people could possibly expect from an internet forum.

I've been drumming since 1980, and followed rock, pop, jazz fuzion, prog rock, and metal and I appreciate your correct inclusion of pioneers and noteworthy efforts from the different musical genres. For instance, Billy Cobham is frequently forgotten, but was a monster of chops back in the 70's.
I'll have to look up Luis Cardenas - that sounds fun, and I'd never heard of that monster set.

I like your wording of grunge's effects.
I'd have to say the biggest thing it killed was melody (musicality, and any motivation to be technically proficient on your instrument). Grunge killed musicianship for the masses, the way punk did for the niches 15 years before.

Thanks for the kind words and welcome to the schoolhouse!! It's always nice to meet a fellow skins basher. Something Danny wanted when he started this thread was solid information as relating to history to teach the young uns'; needless to say, I complied.

I have had many varied jobs built around my musical career and doing some professional writing and research fell into that (I was an Intelligence Analyst for a time).

As for your comments, Luis was a real diamond in the rough - he had this monster kit, but the song of his that hit the airwaves was a remake of Runaway by Bobby Sherman. Not a real drum heavy song and it was completely a waste (IMO). Oh well, that's the business for you.

Dannyalcatraz · Oct 8, 2008

Just thought I'd pass this on:

I recently attended a recording of a live album by my church's music minister, one Curtis Stephen (not to be confused with Christian rocker, Steven Curtis Chapman). It will probably to be released on his own Razed Records label. He's one of the few Catholics making a big splash in Christian rock.

I bring all of this up because the guy playing lead guitar on the album is his good buddy, one Mr. Andy Timmons- arguably one of the top 3 guitarists to come out of Texas in the past 3 decades (SRV and Eric Johnson being the other 2).

I don't know when it will be out, but if you like Christian rock at all, you'd probably enjoy this recording. It was a dam...er...darn good show.