The Faptrabulous Riffoonery of Tone-Deaf and Jar-Tard

Just got home from Walter's house, where Tony and I were given the opportunity to listen to what's been recorded so far for Hexlust's first album (meaning all drums, bass, and rhythm guitars). After giving five of the songs a listen, on quality speakers instead of the grainy floor monitors in the studio space, it pleases me to report to you folks that so far I am quite the happy camper!

See, our true purpose was to troubleshoot the tracks to see if there were any horrifying mistakes that may have escaped us up to this point. From what we listened to tonight there are just a few sloppy hammer-ons or painful dead notes from the guitars, so Tony and JT will both have a little extra rhythm work to do when they go in for the leads next week. Granted, we know that little mistakes add "character" to a recording, give it that "human element" and whatnot, and we accounted for that; what we were searching for tonight were the extra bad flubs that could reach out and slap us in the face after it's too late to do anything about it.

As for the recording of the rhythm tracks themselves, I was present for one day of recording for each guitarist. Tony's was an inspiring but rather frustrating day, his last of maybe three sessions. At one point he was having trouble with a riff where, when recording drums, I had suddenly and inexplicably slowed down (oops), which threw his concentration off and badly affected his playing. Walter tried omitting my drums, then tried phasing out Tarzan's bass, even tried telling Tony to just continue playing in spite of what he was hearing, all to no avail.

Finally, it was suggested that Tony simplify his picking style for that section, which did the trick stupendously. He was now able to just go with the flow, and the best part was that him matching my sudden slow-down made it sound deliberate and even gave the whole thing a kind of eerie feel. It's truly amazing what magic can happen when creativity is applied to a mistake!

As for the J-Tizzle, the one day I was there turned out to be the only day that mattered. How so? Because this fool somehow pumped out all his rhythm tracks in one seven-hour session! Were we letting him get away with first takes and sloppy runs? Hells to the no, JT was very good about policing himself but we also let him know when we spotted something he needed to do over again. It got a little tense in some places, and at one point he even asked that Tony and I leave on account of how scrutinizing we were. He got it done, though, and so far it all sounds great.

I also just want to say real quick that I love the sound of two different guitars from two different players. It may not be as perfect as the time-honored method of having one player track all the rhythms, but what matters is that the parts mesh well and they get the point of the song across. As long as that goal is attained, then it's a lot of fun listening in for the little stylistic ticks and foibles that distinguish each contributor. Some good examples of this are Cannibal Corpse's first two albums, before it was decided that Jack Owen would record all the rhythms for "Tomb of the Mutilated." I think Megadeth's early albums are the same way, though I have no proof of this and am surprised those dudes got anything done considering how constantly blitzed they were.

PROGRESS!

The month of August begins with all drum and bass tracks and half of Tony's rhythm guitar tracks completed for Hexlust's first album. There were a couple casualties along the way, the most obvious being "Sodomy and Lust." Though it was decided beforehand that we would lay down both our Sodom covers as bonus tracks or possible compilation material, I was so focused on rehearsing our originals that I put absolutely zero practice into "S&L". The result was a take so sloppy that we decided to just scrap the song entirely. Interestingly, it wasn't so horrible that Tarzan couldn't lay down a bass track.

Not long after this photo was taken, we also lost "Agent Orange" to accidental deletion. Not that I care too much, it was just an extra cover, nothing worth dragging my whole kit all the way back up to Temple (thank the gods). My only heartache comes from the fact that I put so many takes into "Agent Orange," the most for any song in these sessions, which admittedly is due to my own lack of preparedness for these covers, but still! Just about all of my fourth and final recording session was devoted to laying down both of those covers, and the fact that they're gone for good makes that whole day feel like so much dead effort. Thankfully I still had time to do a re-take of "FBF," as I wasn't satisfied with what I had laid down during my first session.

I was there for the recording of a few of Tarzan's bass tracks: smooth, fluid, and with an awesome tone! Walter set it up to where Tarzan's effects pedal/pre-amp thingy (I don't know things good...) was plugged directly into the computer, and also had a microphone positioned in front of his amp. The pedal result was like miking a bass drum's batter head, with a very "attack-based" sound, more high-end, where you could actually hear his fingers plucking the strings; the amp sound brought out the qualities of miking the resonant head, pure low-end "boom." By combining the two sources into one result, we got a bass sound that was sharp, yet punchy, able to be heard through the guitars while still providing the deep bulk for their frequencies.

Due to work schedules and Tarzan moving to San Antonio, nobody has been able to shoot footage of Tony as he lays down his guitar parts, so I'll try to get in there with him sometime soon to capture some of the action. While I'm at it I'll probably have Walter demonstrate Tarzan's bass sound, with the two parts separated and then together, which hopefully translates to the camera well. Speaking of which, I should have Tony post his footage of Tarzan's sessions to Facebook so I can slap it on this blog.

Hexhibition Bout

Videos from the second day of drum recording, Friday July 8, 2011.



Flubbed take of "They Conjure," one of the more interesting tracks I play. Drumming-wise, it is a fairly straightforward song book-ended by:

• A two-part intro, part one consisting of triplet double-bassing and part two having an odd time signature (0:00 to 0:44)
• An outro featuring some of the busiest, most fill-happy drumming I do in our set. It would have been captured in this video but I didn't make it that far before I messed up.
  

The fact that the latter involves so much "heavy lifting" for me is the main reason I spend most of the tune keeping a steady kick-snare-kick-snare thrash beat, with a few flourishes here and there. Things pick up with the double-bass section after the first chorus, but it never really gets more intense than that. That way I store up enough energy to really slam into the long fills I do at the start of the outro.



Right at the start of the up-tempo middle section of "Baphomet Dawn." This was obviously one of the unrecorded "dry runs" we do to warm up on a tune before actually setting it in stone; otherwise Walter surely wouldn't be playing Chess and would be doing actual engineering. (Right? Right???) As you can see, we had been at this for a while by now and cameraman Tarzan was pretty bored. Not that he's a particularly... "focused" cameraman all the time; he shot most of the videos I've posted so far, and you can see it's pretty hard for him not to make his short attention span evident. We say nothing about it because it almost always produces amusing results.

The Loss and Curse of Hexcellence

Videos from Hexlust's studio work, laying down drum tracks. All three took place on the first session, Wednesday, July 6, 2011.

Studio tour


Recording drum tracks (and everything else) for Hexlust's as-yet-untitled debut full-length took place in a sort of loft office over an old auto garage. Every day we recorded we get to the garage in the afternoon, with temperatures inside peaking at 110 F. The studio room itself was the only place in the joint that had precious air conditioning and a ceiling fan, both of which had to be turned off so as not to have the noise bleeding into the mics. The irony was not lost on us.

Competence


Of the nine songs to be included on this album, eight of them were recorded with Tony laying down a "scratch" guitar track along with my "official" drum tracks. What he would do was plug directly into the computer through an effects processor and have the sound sent out to us through our headphones, so as not to have amp noise bleed into my drum mics. The only tune I recorded with Tarzan playing along was "Meganecropolis," which was written, and therefore easier to follow, on bass. This was a pretty solid run of "Fucked By Fire," interrupted by a pesky stick flying right out of my hand.

Mercyful Banjo


As usual, we in Hexlust offset our devotion to efficiency and diligence with a horrifying penchant for buffoonery. Here, Tony attempts to play the beginning lead part from Mercyful Fate's "Into the Coven" (not "Duelling Banjos") on a four-string banjo (with one string broken) that was among the wall of guitars in the studio room. Fun fact: Tarzan cut the video right after Tony demonstrates the "typical" black metal riff. What you folks miss out on is Tony following that up with Averse Sefira-style dissonant chords, which sound oddly awesome on that instrument.

Douche Your Delusion, Part 2 (Recording)

DAY TWO: Saturday, February 9, 2008
The first order of business should have been Sodomy and Lust drum and bass tracks, but the drummer wanted to get some food in his stomach. So Sodomy was put on hold to allow Dart to munch on some Chinese food. In the meantime…

JT's guitar tracks were given the green light. I sat in and watched while Tony and Keith went into Damiyan's old room to warm up on 10-watt practice amps. Now that most of the rhythm parts and even some of the solos were already laid down, JT had little to no trouble blazing through the first two songs.

The highlight of those first two songs would definitely have to be when I went into the adjacent bathroom to relieve myself. I could hear him do his solo for "Toxic High" and was utterly floored. Well, as floored as one could get while holding his dick. I came out of the bathroom giving him major thumbs-up; it was just so… damn… *imitates JT's "excited" voice* awesome!

I must say I'm glad I stuck around to keep an eye on things; I was able to catch an instance in Tombs where JT's playing wasn't matching up with Tony's. I even had Tony come in to compare, and sure enough they were different. Trouble is that "different" is what JT had grown accustomed to playing over the past four months, so he had to pretty much re-learn the chorus and try and lay it down correctly in the same night. All this is addition to the eighteen bars of rhythm guitar he had to lay down for the middle solo section (Oh yes; his arm was tired too) His long solo for this song was a crazy heap of awe-inducing sweetness as well, so now the whole middle solo section really doesn't feel that long at all.

Well, we put it off as long as we could, but there was no delaying the inevitable: Sodomy and Lust drum and bass tracks were next on the agenda. After going through a practice run, Keith and I laid down a take that was almost perfect. Almost. Coming out of the guitar solos, the fill I executed messed up a little. I missed a tom and ended up rim-clicking it, and accidentally hit a cymbal in there, but I came back in on time. The rest of the song went off without a hitch, and when I thought about it, I wasn't going to try and run through it again. I had it 90% perfect, and if I were to try it again, chances are I wouldn't be able to get it as right as I had it. Besides, we were pressed for time, and Tony assured me that the rim-clicking sounds cool in some odd way.

Stepping up to the plate next was Tony with his sodomizing and lustful guitar tracks. The rhythm track went mostly fine. As with the rest of us, I think Tony needed more takes to get this one down than the others he did, but once he had it, all was gravy. His solo for this song was pretty much the only one he played "by the book", as in "true to the original version." That song has a very distinct solo, like "Love Song" by Tesla or "Am I Evil". Mess with it too much and it just doesn't sound right. Not like Troops of Doom; Jairo's intent with laying down the original solo for that song seemed to be "shredding in the key of spaz" so Tony was pretty much free to do whatever he wanted with it.

Finally, we had six-string thrashing from the J-Tizzle. And once again JT learned to play a part differently than how he'd been playing it for the past… forever. This time it was the verse part of Sodomy. By himself, without the other instruments to mask his playing, JT's riffing just didn't sound right. He had the correct frets and everything, but somehow it wasn't right. After going through a few takes like this, he ineptly stumbled on a way to play the riff which was… well, perfect! It sounded exactly like the version on the Sodom CD I have! After that, a couple more takes was all it took to put the rhythm track to rest.

Of course, we still had JT's solo to contend with. Like I said before, doing the solo to Sodomy and Lust requires a bit of loyalty to Frank Blackfire's original vision. We went through quite a few (Ten? Fifteen? JT's a picky bastard) takes before he finally settled on a solo he was happy with; it's not as thrashy as what you'd expect from us but it gets the job done while still sounding like the Sodom version. Huzzah!

JT, Keith, and I took off to Little Caesar's so Tony and Michael could set up for recording Tony's vocals. I tells ya, at five bucks a pie, ready made, you just can't beat Little Caesar's for convenience. It's not the best-tasting, and is only pepperoni or cheese, but when you've been building up a sweat all day, don't have that much cash, and are pressed for time, Little Caesar's is the way to go.

Gratuitous, shameless product placement aside, Tony's vocal tracks were probably the only thing we recorded outside of the main studio room. Which wasn't to say it was far away; he was positioned right outside the room, at the intersection between the empty, tiled hallway and the empty, tiled living room. "Lots of natural reverb" supposedly.

This part of the recording also bears the significance of having the biggest enforcement of the Uncle Bob rule. The mic Tony was singing into was very sensitive, so everybody had to shut up and sit still while it was going on. Kinda made me feel like Anne Frank, making nary a sound in an attic during the daytime while the factory workers downstairs recorded a thrash metal album. One peep and the Nazis'll get ya!

As you may have gleaned from what I've written so far, this recording experience was very "learn-as-you-go" in some places, some very apparent in the final product. As long as he's been the vocalist for this band, Tony's never really had a "defined" vocal style. Since all we mostly played were covers, he just changed his voice based on the song we were playing. This evening, Tony did come to a final vocal style that fit him, and you can actually hear the process through the recording.

In Troops of Doom, he sounded a lot like Max Cavalera. This hurt his voice a little, so he tweaked it for Toxic High, on which he sounded like Kurt Brecht from D.R.I. This suited his personality more but was not quite as comfortable on his throat. Finally he decided to see what it would be like to imitate Schmier from Destruction, and the result was that which we hear on Tombs of the Blind Dead. If you haven't listened to Destruction before, I would say think Joe Elliot from Def Leppard if he were to drink a bunch of root beer before performing. This style suited Tony the best, and was also the style he had the most fun with. On Sodomy and Lust, he was way into it, throwing in bursts of King-Diamond falsetto and "sex breathing" in with his Schmier-isms.

CLOSING THOUGHTS
As we were packing up to leave, Michael connected his console to our PA and let us have a listen of the un-mastered finished product. I cannot adequately describe the happiness I felt at hearing it; we actually sound like band! Not only that, but a better band, thanks to the little imperfections we focused on and corrected along the way! Which isn't to say it is perfect, are quite a few mistakes throughout, those both really obvious and those only obvious to us.

Maybe if we had stuck with only recording two songs, or had five days to record four songs with no work or school obligations, we would have been more nit-picky and the final product would actually sound… well, consistent, but I think the little flubs give the recording its own special charm. This is the sound of a very young, very raw band, still working out the kinks as we get ever closer to realizing our dream: an endorsement deal from Little Caesar's.

Michael said he's have it mastered and ready to go by sometime this week, at which time Tony and I shall receive an e-mail containing the finished product. When that happens, we shall put the music on the band's official MySpace and also be making hard copies to pass out to those who want them.

For this, another step in Hexlust's unrealistic conquest for the rock star life, I would like give a big warm thanks to my parents. Long after they were through making mortgage payments on the house, they were generous enough to allow my band to continue using it as ground-zero for noise every weekend.

Big thanks to Michael Barton, who was generous enough to lend us his equipment and patient enough to put up with our inexperience.

And thanks of course to Tone-deaf, Tarzan, and the J-Tizzle. Without you guys, my Friday and Saturday nights would be just another painful reminder of my never-ending single status.

Douche Your Delusion, Part 1 (Recording)

DAY ONE: Friday, February 8, 2008

First day recording our first demo! Yesiree, things were all set: Record two songs (one original, one cover) over a period of two days in the empty house from which my family had just moved (hereafter referred to as the "HexHouse") using Tony's friend Michael's recording equipment. The master bedroom was chosen as the main studio, with my drum kit in the middle of the room, Tarzan tucked away in the computer nook, and Tony's and JT's amps set up along the opposite wall.

Well, now that we had everything set up to record our two-song thingy, a dialog occurred:
"How many songs are we gonna record?"
"I thought we agreed on two!"
"Yeah, but are we really just gonna do two? I think we could do four."
"Four?"
"Totally, four."
"Alright, let's do four!"
"AIDS."
Four it is then! Two covers (Troops of Doom, Sodomy and Lust) and two originals (Toxic High, Tombs of the Blind Dead), the order being Troops, Toxic, Tombs, and Sodomy.

Well, now that we had everything set up to record our four-song thingy, we went on to the first order of business: Bass and drum tracks. The way it worked was that Tony would play along with me and Tarzan, with Michael recording all three of us. The bass and drum parts would actually be laid down while the guitar would later be discarded, serving the purpose of being a "scratch" track that Tarzan and I could follow.

So we get to work on Troops and guess what? The drummer can't play the song! I've been playing Troops of Doom since October '06, and for some reason I just cannot keep the rhythm today! After a few flubbed takes I relaxed, told myself I was just nervous about recording for the first time, got myself in the "it's just another practice" mindset that helps me not throw up all over my kit at shows, and went back to it.

This time I got it right. Yayz! Everyone celebrate! Oh noes! Our immediate celebration is caught on tape! So unless we want the sound of JT going "That was pretty damn good!" on the end of every track on the final result, we're going to have to keep quiet until Michael hits the button stopping the recording process. We christened this new rule the "Uncle Bob" Rule*. Since Troops is not a song that typically has cymbal decay, we were able to move on without doing another take.

Toxic High went rather swimmingly, Tombs came and went as well, I think we did maybe three takes max. The only problem came with how we were actually going to end it (Yes, you heard it folks, we've been playing that song for like four or five months, we even played that song live, and we didn't have an official ending!). We decided on some kind of gradual-fade-out deal that worked really well and moved on. And then came the bitch: Sodomy and Lust.

The most fill-filled song I play, not to mention one of the longest in our set list, I have to say ol' Sodomy was the hardest song in the recording process for all of us. And guess what? The bassist can't play the goddamn song! There are some parts of Sodomy that Keith just didn't know. Which is somewhat understandable, he's only been in the band a short time, so we took some time out to coach him on how the parts go, and we went at it again. Oops, Keith messed up the part before we go into the solos. Oh well, gotta give it the ol' college try, so hitch up and try again. Oops, Keith messed up again. Oops, Dart fucked up a fill. Oops, same mistake for Keith. Oops, Dart screwed up, different fill.

Tony eventually suggested getting food as it was now around 8:00 (I had been playing drums for three hours! Jesus.) So he and JT went out to What-a-Burger and Taco Bell while I did one more take with Keith, which astoundingly we got right! Well, I messed a little something up at the end, but who cares? I was just glad to be done with it! After that I sat in the kitchen with Michael and Keith, rubbing my very tired arms, trying to remember whose wise-ass idea it was to do four songs. Tony and JT got home forty-fucking-five minutes later. We pigged out and decided we still had time to take care of another order of business:

JT's guitar tracks. I would have gladly stuck around to watch him warm up, but I was helping Tony find his Zune. (A fine moment for any owner of a spiffy MP3 player: you lose track of it and can't seem to find it anywhere.) When Tony and I got back to the session room, I was surprised to find that JT was using Tony's Jackson guitar. Why? I dunno. He tried a couple takes with it; he may as well have programmed a wah pedal to say "ass" and kept it pressed down the whole time cause that's what it sounded like. Let's face it, Sweet Lady Jackson is Tony's guitar, nobody can make it sound good but him.

Sensing the same problem, Tony had JT switch over to Tony's LTD guitar, which more closely resembles JT's own Jackson in terms of pickups and string distance from the neck… or some such guitar shit. Except this one has a whammy bar, which JT's own Jackson doesn't (which, come to think of it, may have been the reason JT was using it). Anywho, he tried that a few times, and his riffing was definitely improved, but still something was off. It wasn't that his playing was bad. I've known JT eight months, from the very moment I met him he's had a guitar in his hands, so I can assuredly say that the J-Tizzle doesn't suck. We eventually surmised that he was having trouble just following the bass and drum tracks, so we decided to go ahead and greenlight…

Tony's guitar tracks. And guess what happens? On Sodomy and Lust, that totally awesome "final" take Keith and I did, I forgot to count off the beginning! And the guitar is the first instrument you hear on the song, so Tony has no idea where to start so that he'll match up with the drums and bass coming in a few seconds later, and the whole effort's shot to pooh. We say "Dammit!" and move on.
The account of the recording of Tony's rhythm tracks is pretty boring to anybody but Tony. He's been playing the cover songs much longer than JT and wrote most of the riffs to the original songs himself; laying down his rhythm tracks was nothing different from any other practice, requiring no more than two or three takes at a time. Watching him do Tombs was pretty amusing; the rhythm for the middle solo section requires Tony to play the riff twenty times, and I could not only see but feel the dude's arm getting tired. And I was starting to think "Good lord, eight bars of solo per guitarist, what were we thinking? How tedious can you get?"

His solos for these songs were something to behold: faster, crazier, more whammy-bar abused than any I've ever seen him do for these songs. In Toxic High, he even threw out the solo he'd originally written (due to a certain part he kept messing up) and made up a new one on the spot, which of course came out reeking of awesomeness. In Tombs, the lead he performed for the "long" solo section seemed to go by in an instant, and suddenly the section overall just didn't seem as long. Amazing what a good solo can do.

By the time he gets his rhythm and solo tracks laid down, it's around 10:30 or so and we decide to call it a night. Overall not a bad day at all, but one thing's for sure for the next day: We're gonna have to start all over on Sodomy and Lust.

*"Uncle Bob" Rule: In the movie "That Thing You Do!", the drummer's uncle (Bob) is recording the band's first record. After they complete a song, Uncle Bob uses the finger-to-lips indicator of "Shut the fuck up!" to keep them quiet until he hits the button a few seconds later, allowing the track to "die out" instead of just ending abruptly with the song or "dying out" with their voices in the background.