FOUND IN DRAFTS
(I'm still avoiding doing that massive "you need these" albums post.)
HELLO! I have been spending my Saturday doing what I do most Saturday's I have off; I have been listening to music and reading. It has been awesome, but then I got a bit... reflective?
I was asked by an old acquaintance today if I could come and try out for his band. They are in need of a drummer and, well; I like to hit things. I started to try to figure out what I kit layout I should bring to a tryout. It also got me thinking about what I even play (from a genre standpoint). So, I started to go backwards starting with the last thing I did with The Twin.
The Twin
Inner Demons
Inner Demons was the last set of songs I wrote with The Twin. The actual writing process took about a year between November 2011 to approximately March 2012. For this album, I decided to go as minimalistic as I possibly could while still being able to play the first EP. I just used the following: kick drum with a double kick peddle, high hats, 20" ride, rack tom, floor tom and snare. This forced me to focus more on using the kit to create interesting patterns as opposed to using a multitude of cymbals to create a wall of sound. The actual writing process involved a lot of Pat handing me a riff and me playing it a billion different ways until I got the feel and flow I wanted. Most of the drum lines were not set in stone until I got into studio with Jordan and we agreed on the final hit counts. In studio, we added a second 20" ride to fill the recordings out a bit.
The general feel I went for came from my pop background instead of the metal one I usually used. I tried to use complimentary beats as opposed to trying to play as fast and heavy as possible. The exception being
Live Together/Die Alone, which is just me beating the crap out of everything I had.
NOTE: Roman Candles had been recorded for almost a year before everything else and, therefore, had a china in the mix.
NOTE PART TWO: Fact or Fiction was a song that was intended for the first EP, but was cut. We accidentally played it again years later.
Dirty Dancing & Victims
These songs were meant as part of a three song mini EP that just never seemed to finish. We spent way too much time working on them and not enough time hiding them from the public. The end result was some of the drumming I am most proud of and probably will be for the time being in my career. Dirty Dancing was just an exercise I used to do with bands like The Dillinger Escape Play or Meshuggah, where I don't actually follow the drums but every single stroke of every instrument. For instance, I would make the guitar lines all hand work and the bass lines all kick drum play. What came out of me doing it over a track like Dirty Dancing sounded far more chaotic than what is actually going on. Except for the last part, which was me showing a friend of mine that you can do interesting things with only a rack tom and a floor tom. I don't think she ever realized that it was for her, but that is okay. Victims was a little more straight forward in being it was closer to a standard hardcore "follow the accents" game. This song kind of fell out of me the week we first recorded it and, other than minor flourish tweeks, it never changed. It was also the last track I ever recorded with 3 cymbals and, therefore, is full of splashy goodness. So many china hits!
These two songs were intended to be complicated on drums. The riffs were sporadic, but still dived into parts of crescendo. This allowed me the freedom to ruin myself for a part or two, then back it up with something simple. These songs on stage always left me needing a moment before we continued; the day we retired Victims, I was a very happy boy.
EP
The first EP was one of the first times I had ever been recorded by someone else. The experience that I gained from the summer of 2009 will forever be treasured. It showed me what a shit contract looks like and what kind of people to keep watch on. I am STILL proud of the songs on this EP, even if the quality is garbage. I worked for several weeks straight with The Twin before I joined to shape the skeletons they had been working on the year prior. The sound we were going for was clear in all of our minds right up until the last day of studio. My set up for the kit back then was HUGE. Tom and such was the same, but I'm pretty sure I had 4 cymbals plus a china.
At the time I was on a huge death and nu-metal kick. Other than a couple of Underoath tracks, I had stayed away from most of the scene they were trying to enter. I came from a very violent and uneducated place. I like to pretend that this made us somewhat unique at the time. III remains as one of my proudest moments in drum writing history.
Livestalk & The Bodies Sessions
Kevin came up to me a few months after All Cut Up disbanded and asked if I would record a couple of the old tunes that he has modified. He explained how he was working with a calvalcade of different musicians from the area to come up with some new collective project with his favourite musicians. The three songs that I picked were Introduction/Slight Deduction, Pour Vous... and A Yearning (For Originality). All of these songs I had played with Kevin at a show a few months prior and still remembered most of them, so I felt like this was the best option due to time constraints and other things. We went to this shit jam hall out in Hespeler, crammed a tiny drum kick and a few microphones into the room, and gave her shit. The session went off without a hitch, but I had honestly forgotten all about it after a few months. About a year later (maybe longer), Kevin asks to meet me in a parking lot. I was not expecting myself to ever play on an album that felt that way, but I was in love with the ideas and final product. I have gushed over this album for years, and if you know me you will know just how proud I am of it, so I will stick to just my small part in this portrait.
I used the same drum kit layout I used for the Inner Demons EP, except I believe I left the double kick at home. Introduction... and Pour Vous... were both written by Kevin a year later using a sequencer (Fruity Loops?) to line up the basic drum progression he needed. I just gave parts a bit more flourish and beefed up the ending of Pour Vous. A Yearning... was an All Cut Up track that we never (?) used. There are more time signature changes than anything I have worked on previous or prior, and the accents don't always line up measure by measure. I'm not going to lie, I like to use that track to show what I am capable of as a drummer. The whole process from my side took maybe three hours and a good portion of that was catching up and seeing how life had been for my giant friend.
(4/4, 6/8, 4/4, 6/8, 4/4, 6/8, 10/8, 4/4... 7/4, 6/4)
All Cut Up
Human Promo
This was just Kevin and I recording onto tape at the Tugnut household. It was just post Caitlin deciding to leave the band, so we just covered all the parts. The EP consists of one song from our second EP, one from the first and three that were new. It showed a progression from where we were to where we were trying to get to. It was all recorded in one day and, unless I'm wrong, was mostly one take live off the floor. I actually really miss this set. I am pretty sure that we were too young for what we were coming up with.
I used so much gear back then; I think I count 5 cymbals plus high hats. The songs were all pop or punk in structure, so the writing was pretty straight forward. Flourishes were usually either a stop or blisteringly fast fills. Also, how did my feet move that fast at any time? There is NO editing to what we were playing, and I can't even pretend to be that fast for that long anymore. I don't think I could have for years at this point. Oh, me when I didn't have a job...
ALSO! I still use bits and pieces of the song Eat The Pills, Kid in other songs I have written since! Just noticed that when listening to it for the first time in forever.
Okay, fuck it. I'm done going down this road. There are three sessions you are going to be missing. The one was in 2006, when All Cut Up recorded a full length album. The other two were the first two ACU EPs and MY GOOD GOD we don't know what we are doing but it's awesome. I recorded the other three and I didn't know how compressors worked. For being in high school and listening to a strange array of music, we pulled off something pretty cool. Though I miss it most days, I hear it is better dead. Did you want to check these albums out? Let me know! Get a hold of me and I can set up stream points no problem. Hell, I think All Cut Up is still on MySpace, if you wanted to sort through the decades worth of bands that are now long dead to find us.
I'll probably do something less wordy next week. Or maybe I'll just put up pictures of cats. Internet loves cats.
-J
