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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Anyway, off to work then.

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.

Because I designed and run this website, I’m able, then, to more easily just pop in and spew out information about what I’m working on and what these things actually mean. These will show up on the front page, but you can also access the archives from the menu as well if you want to sort out the banal news (or exciting news, for that matter) and just jump right into what’s going on. It’s here that I’ll discuss about writing, thoughts and ideas, why I’ve made certain decisions and how those decisions will play out in the long run. This will be where I do my “studio diaries”, but since I’m all DIY there’s no studio, just my home.

I look forward to this rare opportunity to communicate openly about this kind of stuff. Screw all the distance stuff, I think it’s fun to be able to produce directly and throw it out there. I hope someday that Æthereal because a bigger project over time, but even if it doesn’t, I hope that those who pay attention will enjoy these blogs and that they’ll open up discussion about music, self-production and all of the things that come with it.