Stay hungry…

-J

New songs are done, and ready to be recorded but time to do it is at a premium these days. Hoping to remedy that because one song is dominating any new ideas, and I think it will continue to until it’s out of my system. It’s creating a creative logjam, and there is a lot of wood coming down the stream…so I’ve gotta clear it.

Finding Jack Conte’s blog very motivational these days, the man’s energy and passion are contagious.  Really has me wanting to take a stab at a Videosong, or something like it at least. Back to the studio…

Stay hungry,

-J

While you’re there be sure to check out the rest of the site, it’s chock full of mic reviews and other recording tips.

This seems to be happening to me a lot as of late. Not always in the shower of course, but almost always at a very inconvenient time. Shower, feeding the baby, driving, the middle of dinner. Now I’m not complaining! So all of you with writers block can go ahead and put down your pitchforks and torches. I suppose, after I’ve recorded the idea in one way or another, I try to understand what made my old friend inspiration suddenly return my calls. What was it about the pureed peas or the scent of my oh-so-manly body wash that brought it on? Of course, this path always leads to madness (or the dark side, depending on who you ask). My efforts to understand the seemingly random ways of inspiration have done nothing but scare her off and make me nuts.

So all I can do is make sure I’m ready when she arrives. In an effort to be better prepared I’ve done the following:

• Installed “Voice Recorder” for Android on my Nexus One: Simple recorder app that allows for auto-emailing after recording. I’m sure there are much more full featured apps out there, but this perfect because it allows me to record quickly and easily, and then transfer the recording to my workstation. It’s always with me (and within reach when I’m in the shower)
• Belkin GoStudio in the livingroom: When I’m not down in the studio, I spend most of my time in the livingroom. While I usually have my laptop or iPad with me, this is all about quickly laying down an idea before it’s gone without distractions. The GoStudio is great for that. With built in stereo mics for quick recording, especially if you’re not alone, and dual XLR-1/4″ combo jacks if you want to run a mic or guitar direct, it makes quick and clean recordings easy and portable. I’ve actually used some of the tracks recorded with it on some songs, the quality is that good (with a mic or direct).
• Notebook/notepad in pocket or nearby: Again, all about simplicity here. There are a million apps for both Android and iOS for capturing thoughts (Evernote comes to mind), but personally I find them all too cumbersome. Between my keyboard clumsiness to feature distraction, nothing beats good ol’ fashioned pen and paper for me. There’s something nice about the organic nature of paper, the scribbled corrections, and the evolution of the idea. That gets lost in digital to me. Besides, decades from now when I’m coming out of rehab for the 3rd time and have blown my millions MC Hammer style, I’ll be able to auction off my chicken scratch notes for “You don’t exist in Canada”. Hmm…now where did I put those…

I find that the more prepared I am for inspiration, the more it graces me with it’s presence. Maybe it’s just a matter of “flexing the muscle” or “you can’t do anything if you do nothing”. Either way, I still believe the prep is key. There is no worse feeling than being hit with that killer hook, liner, or riff and losing it to the ether because you didn’t dump it to a safe place fast enough.

It’s not so much about forcing the inspiration, as it is being ready for her when she comes a callin’. If you are, I think you’ll find that she respects your devotion and smiles upon you more often. And if not, there’s always exercising. -J

“That’s what she said” came together pretty easily once the gag hit me. I mean, lets be honest, it’s not exactly high brow comedy or incredibly original from a musical perspective. But it is fun, and was a good motivator. TWSS came right after PAX East during a real low point. The euphoria of it all (site traffic, feedback, twitter followers) had worn off and the reality of things had set in. The recordings sucked, people didn’t really seem to dig it, our QR code cards didn’t work with a lot of phones, and time to work on new stuff was getting harder to find. Dark times indeed.

It was late one night after I’d been partying with some friends that I sat down in my office with my 12 string. Shuffling through a stack of post-its with song or chord ideas scribbled on them, I found the notes I’d made after a Paul & Storm/JoCo show. The first verse and chorus came easily really, and then a few days of fleshing out the rest. I’ve got a page in my songbook full of TWSS lines that never made the cut. Michael Scott would be proud.

When it came time to record, I still wasn’t set on a style. While TWSS was originally written in a style very similar to what you hear today (maybe a little faster/edgier), I had this crazy idea of turning it into a Tim McGraw style country ballad. Something with that big epic sound and scale…strings, a key change perhaps. To this day I still laugh when I hear it in my head, but recording something like that with our meager setup wasn’t in the cards. I never could get the meter to fit right either. It always either felt rushed or far too slow and the joke was already stretched thin enough.

We laid the tracks as it was written with the exception of the bridge/break. It was supposed to be just a simple guitar solo break until I had the idea for the line “just might overflow”. I wrote the lyrics on the fly and Sully suggested that we try a synth instead of guitar to add some color. We tried a few patches and I was ready to scrap it until I found the Moog patch. To me, Sully’s keyboard solo is so wonderfully melodic and unexpected it almost saves the song from being a total bore musically. There is another patch in there that produces the feedback like sound that I love and a little glockenspiel, a nod to Pomplamoose I think.

The vocals and harmonies are all Sully. In the first demo we did of the song, we tried an accent harmony for kicks. After running the demo around to a few friends the one consistent bit of feedback was “more harmony!”. Back to the studio, I said “More of that!” and he delivered in a big way. As someone who can’t really sing, I’m always impressed by people who can harmonize with themselves.

To date, TWSS is still our most popular song (and that’s including the bunch we haven’t put online yet). I’m guessing it’s simplicity and subject make it more accessible than say, a song about the Thundercats. It’s also one of my favorites. It represents a turning point for MisCast. I can still remember listening to the final mix in the car and thinking “This is it”, and being excited to share it with people…without cringing or cursing every little mistake. There is still cringing, of course, but I don’t think I’ll ever make something “cringe-free”…I’m just not wired that way. Still, hearing TWSS and knowing we did this in my basement on cheap or mickey-rigged equipment and came up with something that people listen to and enjoy to this day will always be something I’m incredibly proud of, regardless where MisCast goes. -J

From Sully:

“I have been absent busy with work and feel I need to contribute in some way. So as a follow up to the piece Jay wrote about “That’s What She Said” I’m going to elaborate on my role in the creation of that tune.

Jay played me a rough version of it, and at once I knew it was more than meets the ear.  As he often does Jay will record a demo and sing the songs himself because its the easiest way for him to give me an idea of how the melody goes. TWSS was no different and as much as Jay self deprecates, with some practice he can sing.  So it really made my job with the melody a breeze. Because I dug the song so much and because i felt it so much hearkened back to our Better Off Dead days in terms of feel, I practiced the shit out of it.

When we did the first run through recording the first verse we stopped and Jay said something to the degree of “fuck” because he was very happy with how I was handling the song. We wrapped the original recording of the melody in a few takes and then sprinkled in some harmony that, as Jay said, we expanded upon when given positive feedback. The original harmonies were mostly fly by the seat of my pants things and are relatively easy from a music theory point of view, mostly 3rds and 5ths above. The bridge one though while still simple musically came at us almost by accident as I was trying to do one thing, missed and did that instead.  It turned out so much better than my original idea that I”m happy to have failed.  My favorite harmony idea never even panned out.  It was a bit of a bold choice that would have been a nice flourish, but I couldn’t get it right and it just took away from the song more than it would have helped so it landed on the cutting room floor.

As far as the keyboard part goes, it would take me 2 solid days to figure out how to play that keyboard solo again. Most of my instrument history is jazz and improvisation so I just took the chords and ran through some basic jazz ideas.  I am not a keys player. I am a trumpet and sax player and I think you can hear that in the solo as it listens like a wind instrument’s melodic line because my poor keys skills didn’t allow me to take advantage of the more advanced elements of a keyboard, like sounding 2 notes at once.  I like the solo none the less and feel, like Jay does, that the melodic twist in the middle of the song breaks it up very nicely and increases the interest at a point in the song where many might have had enough.

I plan to make more time for MisCast and hope that allows us to get more songs, more podcasts, more posts and some videos up here for the masses to enjoy.

-Sull”

Lyrics & info

As heard on Coverville!

Now with more backstory!!

I never thought this one would see the light of day, let alone be featured on one of my all time favorite podcasts. This all started years ago, when I thought it would be fun to do an album of “guilty pleasure songs” with drastically different (and sometimes ironic) arrangements. I’ve been chipping away at it ever since, keeping a list of songs and ideas…which as I read it over now is disturbingly full of 80′s girl pop.

Anyway, “Only in my dreams” was the catalyst for this journey down a dark, lonely path. I remember several occasions where I mentioned covering it to various people and the response was almost unanimous: WTF are you smoking?! Still, against better judgement, I kept it in the back of my mind…secretly tinkering with an idea. I’d gone about as far as picking up the chords in their most basic form and let it be for a while. One night after having had a talk with Sully about the “G.P.S. album”, I had the place to myself and retreated to the studio with a short pour of whiskey.

I often will just grab a drink, pick up a guitar, and hit record while I sit in the studio and just screw around. Sometimes some great ideas come out of it or some sobering perspectives on what I thought were gems. Either way it’s a great way to get the juices flowing or cleanse yourself of some terrible ideas. Case in point: Only in my dreams. That night I’d started my ritual and had a few more short pours and started to feel a little stagnant and spent. I tried to rack my brain one more time before I called it a night and Debbie Gibson starts dancing through my head. Prior to this I had no idea about the mood or tempo or anything, just that I wanted to cover this damned song. So I just started playing, stopped the recording and played it back. The version you hear on this site is the second take…ever.

It was the closest I’d ever come at the time to recording and releasing something completely spontaneous. I think that’s why I did release it. It’s so raw and imperfect that I almost find it charming despite it’s horrible pitch, sloppy guitar, and noisy recording. The guitar and the vocals were all one take (second take…ever) and then the little solo bit was a first take spitball I threw in to fill the spot of the sax solo in the original. The whole thing was just my Gretsch 5129 through a modelled Vox dialed in for a light surf sound and an SM57 for the vocals, which I like sometimes because it makes it “easy”. It’s almost cheating, but with the 57 you don’t have to worry about bleed over or crispy highs or which preamp you’re using. It’s not always perfect, but it’s great to scream at.

So it was with that somewhat misguided pride and the idea that I could hide behind the fact “that it was a joke”, that I submitted it to Coverville. I’d been listening to Coverville since the 9th episode and was just in heaven with every new release. I’ve always been a sucker for off the wall covers (in case this wasn’t evidence enough of that) and different takes on songs I already loved, which made Coverville a bit like musical crack for me. Couple that with the fact that Brian puts together a quality product and seems to have an endless selection and knowledge of it all, it was my wet dream to be a part of it.

I e-mailed the song to Brian after a few weeks of see-sawing about it. I thought that would be the last of it. I’d played the song for a few friends who made it clear that the song was crap and I buried it somewhere among the terabytes of data in hopes that it would never torture ears again. Ooops.

Chances are, if you’re on this site and reading this (on or before 6/11 anyway), you came here from Coverville. I remember I was sucking back my morning coffee, checking my site stats expecting the same 3 hits, 100% bounce rate I always got and BAM. There were over 300 hits in once day. “WTF is that?!” I thought for sure that someone hacked my server and was linking the latest celebrity sex tape or something. It was all traffic from Coverville. Apparently Brian had used my song and linked back. I was 3 weeks behind on my podcasts due to life crushing everything and had no idea. I think the geek squeee I unleashed that day is still echoing through the Alps somewhere.

Anyway, I’ve gotta cut this short before I ramble for another 800 words. Needless to say, I was thrilled and incredibly curious. What made those people come to the site? Do you enjoy the song? Was it so bad you had to download it to make people laugh? Hit me up on twitter, e-mail, the comments, whatever…because I’m seriously DYING TO KNOW. And seriously thankful. -J