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Category Two -- Digital Magic
After you release a record album, you're really down to a few simple choices. You can perform the songs, promote and sell the record, maybe make a video to go with a couple of the tunes. Talking about it seems the least intelligent way to get people to connect with it. But come back when you're finished because this one does have a story. First, the credits. Hurricane Alley is: Carl Hayden - Guitars, vocals and drums (on "Woman") Special guests: Cara Hayden -- Backing vocals on "After the Rain" Contributing songwriters: Ron Kramer -- "Masquerade" Engineered by George Ziemann Cover art -- Chris Davies Of the 11 songs on Category Two, it's safe to say that only one of them came out like the author intended, and maybe not even that one. I engineered and produced it, but the end result was not what I envisioned. Thank God for that. Between the time the songs were written and recorded and the time that I uploaded the tracks for distribution, something happened. About a hundred somethings, in fact. Right down to an hour before uploading the last track, this album refused to be what I wanted it to be. It insisted on making itself better. We recorded the music in early March, in the infamous Shred Shed, which is basicly the exact opposite of what a recording studio should be. We were all crammed in one room. Some of the songs only got one take and we only recorded eight songs as a band. Due to my personal failure to bring the ADAT recorders, the drums were recorded as a stereo pair instead of 8-10 discrete tracks, and in some cases as one mono track. There was no acoustic separation. Everything bled into everything else. It should be almost unlistenable. Eight songs weren't enough to call it an album, so three songs were pulled in from previous sessions. Two of them had been recorded in Carl's living room and another one Carl and I had pieced together over the internet in 2005. There was no real theme to the album, no grand vision. It was just a bunch of songs. By the end of May, I thought the album was finished, a remarkable accomplishment, considering that Big City (Hayden's Wall) took 15 months and Category One took 8 or 9 months. I had already decided on the order of the songs on the album, which had less to do with a thematic approach and was more about ebb and flow. The order stuck, but that's about all. One of the songs is titled "Midnight" and is a tribute to a singer of the same name, the lead vocalist for a Florida band called Crimson Glory. Tim wrote the song, but Carl was once Midnight's roommate. He had already lived out this song and I was amazed to watch him go through Tim's lyrics and insist on changing some of them. I never saw him do that before and never saw him be so deeply moved by any song before. On "Midnight," we changed the lyrics, which meant gutting Tim's low lead vocal and re-recorded a two-part vocal at the top of my range to replace it. In the end, Tim would get to add the low part back in, and not even aware of this, Mackenzie sent me a text message asking for a reconsideration of the mix on the two parts that were already there, prompting me to add a third mid-range harmony at literally the final hour before uploading to iTunes. "Masquerade" got a violin syth sound to replace what was supposed to be a guitar lead; Carl's guitar lead that set the entire tone of "When Will I Learn" was completely replaced by a track from a guest guitarist from Minneapolis. "Little Money" was written as an acoustic track. I insisted on fleshing it out with bass, drums, and keys. "Simple Words" remained acoustic, but the final compression would bring out the environment it was recorded in, including the air conditioner running in the background (which seem like an Abbey Road touch, so I left it that way). I was ready to release the record in the first week of June and fate separated me from the computer that held the master tracks. I didn't get them back for a month. In the interim, I went out and lived 9 of the 11 songs, plus one of my favorite cover songs to make up the difference. I was halfway through the experience before I even realized it, but when I did finally recognize what was happening, it was unmistakable and undeniable. A couple of the songs I merely watched happen, but the rest more or less happened to me. At first, this fell under the category of weird-ass shit. Kinda spooky in a way. But before it was over, I was almost anticipating and waiting for the next one to happen so that I could live it to its fullest. I was not disappointed. That by itself, was almost enough to make a significant difference. It wasn't just a bunch of songs anymore. I knew that the album really wasn't done. It suddenly meant more to me than ever. It needed much more work, more attention to detail, more care to try and draw out the essence of what each song now represented to me. Before I was halfway done with the reworking process, I had to stop when it became obvious that the 10th song was in the process of happening. Thought I was just going to miss that one. And I could have if not for a totally fortuitous "accident." Didn't even see it coming, but as soon as I did, I knew what it was, stopped and immersed myself in it for a while. I realize that's all rather cryptic. Most of it is better explained elsewhere. Then things got weird. I don't know if something happened to my computer during June, or whether I messed something up blowing the dust out of it before I started final mixdowns, or if this was just the final bit of cosmic debris that had to fall down on me, but what had been no problem in May suddenly was too much to ask of my 12-year-old Mac G3. All of those drum tracks had been broken out into 8 (or 10) individual tracks to improve the tone of each individual drum. Every kick and snare hit had actually been manually reinforced or replaced entirely for more punch and presence. Cymbals and toms had been yanked from the mix, isolated and spread across the stereo spectrum. Timing was corrected. Fills were trimmed, moved, eliminated, or cut and pasted. Whatever the song (and my critics' ears) demanded, it got. Then it was time for the computer to voice its own demands. "Your hard drive is too fragmented or too slow." I verified all the physical connections, backed up all the sessions to an external drive, emptied out the hard drive, degragmented and brought the sessions back in one at a time. Same problem. Too many tracks. The computer demanded that I mix the drums back into a stereo pair. For a couple of songs, that was enough, although it took me more than one mixdown before I got anything I was satisfied with. For most of them, however, it was only the start. "The bounce handler can not keep up." Couldn't use any of the plug-ins. Even something as simple as EQ had to be permanently etched into each track. One song has an acoustic guitar, two rhythm tracks and multiple leads. Had to be mixed into a stero pair. Multiple keyboard tracks, carefully overlayed and with automation to come in and out of the mix -- now one stereo pair. Effects had to be burned off into an actual audio track, then reimported and re-automated. Then the lead vocals, background vocals and all of the (now audio) effects tracks had to be mixed down into one pair. Where everything had once been fluid and malleable, it was now etched in stone, piece by piece. 24-track masters were reduced to 9 or 10. Not only that, the songs were still changing. Each step of the way, I felt like I was losing control of the final sound. I was hating the process. It was surely going to ruin everything. The final step was to reduce the 24-bit session down to a CD-compatible 16-bit. Some people will tell you that they can't tell the difference between a CD track and a 128k mp3. I can tell the difference when I downsample to CD version and I never like what it does to a song. Makes it lose depth and nuance. So I didn't even listen to the 16-bit versions. I knew I would be disappointed and that it would be enough to make me stop and fight with the mixes some more, something I was just too mentally fatigued to consider at this point. Just uploaded to Tunecore for distribution and let them go. It always takes me time, usually a couple of months, to distance myself from the finished product enough to apppreciate it and listen to it with fresh ears. Didn't even sit down and listen to the album as a whole until a few days later. When I finally did let myself hear it, I decided to really listen to it like I used to do in the old days. Turned off my cell phone, caught a buzz, turned off the lights and turned up the volume. No visual stimulus, no distractions, just the music. Just listened. I loved it the first time through. It gave me chills in more than one spot. It made me cry once. Something other than myself was the final arbiter of how this record sounds. The painful process didn't ruin it at all, it made it better. Even the order of the songs, which almost seemed random at first, brought them together as one contiguous, coherent thought. Each song sets the stage for the next, and the last song is the logical conclusion to the train of thought. The order is not just fortuitous, it is perfect, for reasons I did not comprehend until I listened to it as a finished work. It started as a bunch of songs. It ended as a concept album. I just didn't understand the concept until I heard the finished product play back at me. Now, you may think I'm just saying all this because I want you to go out and buy a copy. There is probably a little truth to that, or I wouldn't be bothering to write this all down. The greater truth is that there is something mystical and special about this record. It is much greater than the sum of its parts. It took on a life of its own and it has a touch of magic about it that I cannot claim responsibility for. It was truly out of my hands. Sadly, we may never get to perform it. Carl is coming back from the east coast in a couple of months, but Manny is fighting cancer. After major surgery attempting to remove it, he has been told that he has only months left to live. He's fighting that proclamation, and he will start aggressive chemotheraphy in just a couple of weeks in an effort to turn that clock back. But it will very likely sap the physical energy needed to play drums, especially in a live situation. That future remains to be seen. |
by
George Ziemann -- August 26, 2010