I am finally moving in direction towards the new record that I’ve been talking about for a while now. I’ve got the electric guitars in the bag for the first two tracks (for the most part), and now I’ve got two new tracks to work on. There had been some distractions for a while, but I think that I’ve actually got things sorted now and I’m back on track to produce something that is going to hopefully be unique in today’s less-than-unique metal scene. Not super “new”, necessarily, but a new approach to familiar things. A blending of the music I love into something great.
I have yet to decide on a lyrical theme. Before I wrote the fourth track, I was pretty sure that I had one down, but now I’m not so sure. It makes the whole planning process a bit of a pain in the ass, but again, it’ll sort itself out. The recording process itself has been pretty fun for the most part. One major thing has been that I’m trying to keep things more raw. A lot of the reviewing and music listening that I’ve been doing has made me realize just how over-the-top the industry is with production right now. And while I like *clear* production I also like bands that sound like they went into the studio and played their instruments. In this case I’m trying to do most everything in one or two takes in order to have a more raw approach and I think it’s going to work out for me, but I guess you’ll be the judges of that in the long run.
Also, it’s not certain yet, but it looks like I’ve got someone else to play bass on this record. I think that this is a major development because bass is a completely underrated instrument in its importance. I love bands with good bass, think Steve Digiorgio or Martin Mendez or Jeroen Paul Thessling. Having a great bass approach on this music will definitely help carve its own sound, as well helping to pin up what I consider to be one of the weakest aspects of my own music—a lack of fretless bass.
Apparently a bunch of people found Æthereal through some download sites. That’s great! Download my music, but I want to clarify something right now:
This old version of the album is not recorded very well. It is a demo and it sounds like shit. I am currently working on an updated version of the album with a much higher sound quality. Anyone who downloads the album from BandCamp for free (or donates) and leaves their e-mail address will receive an e-mail and a promo code for a free copy of the new version when it is done.
It is awesome that you’re interested in the music and I really appreciate that. Just, keep in my mind that this version probably takes a few listens to get understand the music and the newer version will sound much, much, much, much better.
It’s been a while since I posted an update. I’ve been busy recording a bunch of stuff, one such thing is the track “Haunted by Visions” which was the third track off of the Premonitions demo from 2008. In light of the fact that I’m going to be recording an EP this summer, I’ve decided to go back and re-record the record to get myself acquainted with the material and, frankly, because the old record sounds not as good as I would like. It was obviously a much poorer quality demo than I had originally imagined due to my own ignorance.
I’ve always been frustrated with the reaction to the demo personally because I feel like the material on their is strong and I aim to prove that with this new EP and a full or partial re-recording of Premonitions. In any case, you can hear the full song in its new “demo” form at MySpace!
Did more recording work today. Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve been this involved in mixes and stuff. I still don’t have studio monitors, so the mixes aren’t going to be great but I think I’m on the right track. Plus, the quality is just so much fucking better anyway. You can check these out for yourself, as well. I’m uploading some pictures, but I refuse to include any of my recording slippers.
The vocal takes on this baby are not as good as they could be, that is absolutely for sure. I love the feel, but the over-singing could probably go (that is I go a little sharp). I really enjoyed doing the death metal vocals today. It was like tapping into all the rage and despair that I’ve got going on right now. But, my throat is pretty sore.. I didn’t used to have that problem when I was younger.. I think I may have overdone it.
I think these things are getting better. It’s still hard to compare it to more professional stuff, ’cause now I’m confused as to how I’m supposed to be making this stuff better. I’m not really sure, but at least now I’ve gotten rid of that fucking mechanical, fake, lifeless tone that I had. It’s hard to imagine that I ever thought that Premonitions was worth releasing.. But, we all make mistakes. The utter lack of dynamics on the album kills me now. Oh the difference a fairly cheap little condenser mic can do.
I became unnecessarily excited over my newfound ability to create tracks that sound less like ass. But, I have to say that I am still pretty interested in this whole phenomenon of “compression.” This is, indeed, my production blog and I’ve decided that the time has come to take this on. Now, partially, my issue is that I’m using shitty software. I’ve got GarageBand’s patented “Shit Drums” as my backup. They sound wimpy and shitty and they do me no favors. The guitar tone hasn’t helped, but I’m starting to make it towards the promised land with better mixes and so forth. I discovered that GarageBand has a four band compressor today and I thought “what the hell does that do?” So, I started fucking around with it only to discover that, indeed, it compresses stuff. But the problem with compression is that it has no bias. So everything ended up sounding crazy bassy because of the huge bass bias in my song.
This bass bias lead me to a conversation with my recording guru, who goes by the name of Steve Henningsgard and who is not only pretty good at this shit, but in one of the best underground bands in the US today. Anyway, dude gave me some serious tips on all of this stuff which lead me to a final conclusion: the only way to go about this is experimentation. This is what I have done. What compression what basically allows you to do is increase the volume of your whole track by lowering the dynamics of certain things, so I wanted to see this in action. It’s interesting. For example, in the “Fast and Smooth” setting, the vocals get totally screwy. So despite being able to jack up the volume to practically unheard of heights in my stuff, the vocals are pretty crazy weak. Interestingly, the quiet parts are completely unaffected (as should be expected, they’re not too loud).
Below I have juxtaposed all versions for comparison by the patient observer. Frankly any help is appreciated.
So, I got a new condenser mic. And while it doesn’t output at 96k, it still has a pretty good sound. I’ve uploaded the track [Motion Blur (2010) [12 MB] · The labeling might be weird if you open it in iTunes, I’m not sure what that’s about but it should be Æthereal – Motion Blur (2010) – Motion Blur (2010)] that I recorded with it yesterday here. I’m considering doing a whole thing that you can get off of Band Camp with all of my demos and promos from these past few years, but I might wait a bit until I know about other things that are happening. Anyway, this iteration of “Motion Blur” sounds kinda flat to me, but I’m not sure what to really do about that as I pretty much lost the whole thing to a weird ass GarageBand fluke. So, this is what you’re stuck with. Still, the acoustics sound good, even if the vocals sound flatter than I thought they would.
Things are looking good in the Æthereal camp right now. While a real band has yet to be pieced together, the writing process continues. I’ve rediscovered a couple of full-blooded excellent tracks from an earlier writing phase. With the use of Peavey’s Revalver MKIII free trial and GP6 I’m back into the writing mode. I guess I never realized how bad my tone was until I got my hands on that MKIII plugin. Wow. Unfortunately I can’t record with it right now ’cause I haven’t been able to purchase it yet, but seriously, once I get the cash I think I’ll definitely pick that thing up. It’s beautiful. The 6505+ model has given me some fucking ridiculous tone, and that’s despite only being at a lower resolution quality. It is really something that I want to investigate further. The biggest issue, really, is that something like the Line6 X3 Live has the best of both worlds (well, more like ALL worlds). That thing is a total beast. The only question is if the tone will live up to the Revalver plugin!
Also, I’m looking for good lessons on compression. I’m feeling a tad lost in that entire area. Anyone got any suggestions?
Up until now I’ve never really had a childhood icon pass away and I tend to not do a lot of the hero worship stuff that a lot of other musicians do. But Peter Steele from Type O Negative counts as an exception, because Type O, Life of Agony and that whole group of bands on RoadRunner was really my coming back into heavy metal when I was younger. It was Type O Negative’s black humor that taught me that one should never take oneself too seriously. And as an individual with a lower range vocally, Peter Steele also pointed out that using that low range to front a band was actually not only possible: but it was really cool.
Bloody Kisses and October Rust (which I will ever refer to as October Lust, due to the content of the songs) have been major influences on me and rank very highly on my list of amazing metal albums through time. While I listened to Carnivore and the earlier and later Type O Negative stuff, it was really those two albums that have stuck with me all these years. I was the right age to identify with the angst, to love the heaviness and to really appreciate the humor. Another thing that the band did which has influenced me a lot is they made it very clear to me very young that loving music other than metal was totally OK. The covers of The Beatles tracks and, particularly, “Summer Breeze” will live on in my mind as some of the coolest tribute work every done by any band.
So here’s to Peter Steele, his family and friends at the news of his death. The first song I thought of was “Red Water (Christmas Mourning)”. Now Peter is one of the ones missing from the table. And his huge presence, his sense of irony and humor and his incredible voice will be sorely missed.
I’ve spent the afternoon nailing down a bass part for a track that one of my friends has been working on. I think it’s going to sound totally fantastic, actually. I’ve sent off the rough version to him and hopefully he’ll dig it. It’s been so long since I’ve played this much bass, however. My fingers are so fucking sore, I can’t even begin to explain. I’ll definitely post a version of it here once it’s done. Can’t wait to hear if he likes the track or not.
The writing process continues for the EP, right now I need to find more material for lyrical inspiration. I might actually be working on lyrics with another individual for the first time. I’ve always worked on lyrics alone, but sometimes I feel like having someone else to work with is the best option. Partially ’cause I feel lyrically dull right now and partially ’cause I want to bring in other individuals to Æthereal. I’ve always thought it was a shame that I couldn’t find other musicians in time to do anything up in Umeå and now that I’m in Uppsala I’ve had a bitch of a time even finding a local scene. If anyone knows of anything, you should definitely get in contact with me as I desperately need local metal.
I’m going to start the grueling process of tabbing my material now. I’ve never discussed this really, but my method of recording has been, up to this point, that I map everything out in Guitar Pro 5 and then I export midi files into GarageBand and I demo like that. It’s a pretty insane process if you think about it. I write two guitar tracks a bass track and all the drums and export them to use them as scratch tracks for my work. Because GarageBand doesn’t have a way to change time signatures inline, I have to actually record each section of the song separately and if there’s a rotating time signature, it’s even worse. Sometimes GB will freak out and create 100 of minutes of a single note when I export a multi-time-signatured midi. I know that the music doesn’t sound the best comparitively. It’s way too quiet, the tone is weak and stuff. But if you consider how it was recorded, I think it sounds pretty good all things considered.
Welcome to the brand new Æthereal website! Not only will this site be the place for information, news, etc., etc., etc., but it will also be a place where I plan on doing a DIY blog (over at the Production Blog section). There will be more news coming soon about an EP that I hope to have out this summer and feel free to check out the links section to find out about bands that I dig, admire or worship.
Don’t forget that Premonitions is FREE to download over at Band Camp (or you could give a donation, which is greatly appreciated!). Also, you can hear extra tracks and other projects over at the Extras / Sounds section of the site and you can also download the entire Dumah discography over there for free!
While I don’t want to show off too much, I’d like to say that I’m really stoked with the work that I was doing today. I was feeling particularly inspired due to some reading that I was doing that was totally separate from anything to do with metal at all. I don’t know how everyone else is, but I find that sometimes my best ideas come when I’m not at all working on the things that need inspiring. Right now I’m reading a book called Racial Domination, Racial Progress which is actually a text book that I helped to do research on. During one of the sections I got a sudden insight into how I could do two things that I want to do at the exact same time. First, I can work on an EP for release later this summer or early in the year, something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while now, and at the same time I can grapple with a smaller concept that I’ve been trying to work on.
What was the most fascinating aspect of this whole thing, is that I was then inspired immediately thereafter to go and write something. That thing that I went to write transformed also fit perfectly with another piece that I’d be working on that had been giving me trouble for a while now and boom, new song. I know a lot of artists don’t like talking about the creative process and I know that some turn it into a job. For me, inspiration always strikes at the weird moments when it’s not supposed to be hitting me and this was a perfect example.
The other thing that occurred to me is that there are so many ways to work on a concept. In the entire creation progress I find lyrics the most difficult thing to work on. This is mainly because I think that it’s so easy to be totally trite when you’re writing. Because of this, I decided a long time ago that often times lyrics should be left until last and they should be written cohesively with a certain idea in mind. In this case, the concept on which I wish to write on could be approached from many different perspectives: but I’ve long thought that most of them would be cheesy. This new approach is something new altogether and I’m really looking forward to seeing it through.
New Material, A Sample and an Announcement
I am finally moving in direction towards the new record that I’ve been talking about for a while now. I’ve got the electric guitars in the bag for the first two tracks (for the most part), and now I’ve got two new tracks to work on. There had been some distractions for a while, but I think that I’ve actually got things sorted now and I’m back on track to produce something that is going to hopefully be unique in today’s less-than-unique metal scene. Not super “new”, necessarily, but a new approach to familiar things. A blending of the music I love into something great.
I have yet to decide on a lyrical theme. Before I wrote the fourth track, I was pretty sure that I had one down, but now I’m not so sure. It makes the whole planning process a bit of a pain in the ass, but again, it’ll sort itself out. The recording process itself has been pretty fun for the most part. One major thing has been that I’m trying to keep things more raw. A lot of the reviewing and music listening that I’ve been doing has made me realize just how over-the-top the industry is with production right now. And while I like *clear* production I also like bands that sound like they went into the studio and played their instruments. In this case I’m trying to do most everything in one or two takes in order to have a more raw approach and I think it’s going to work out for me, but I guess you’ll be the judges of that in the long run.
Also, it’s not certain yet, but it looks like I’ve got someone else to play bass on this record. I think that this is a major development because bass is a completely underrated instrument in its importance. I love bands with good bass, think Steve Digiorgio or Martin Mendez or Jeroen Paul Thessling. Having a great bass approach on this music will definitely help carve its own sound, as well helping to pin up what I consider to be one of the weakest aspects of my own music—a lack of fretless bass.