Monday, November 25, 2013

New Album Production Journal: Day 575

A couple of weekends ago we wrapped up a very successful #RW4 weekend, sort of a Bohemian Grove*-type get together we arrange to work on projects as a group, in person.  How successful were we, you ask?  We have almost all the vocal recordings done now, which was a biggest check box we needed to complete for getting this album finished.  That alone took most of the day on Saturday and was easily the most extensive stretch of recording in 40PF history.

We also talked a lot about the release and production of the album, album covers, and track names though those results were less concrete.  Still I think we all consider the weekend to have been a huge success given the amount of recorded material we completed.

(As far as how the album sounds with all the vocals recorded, I'd like to wait before commenting on this specifically.  This is only because I want to wait to hear everything again through speakers before I judge it based on what I have in my head from memory.)

Now all the tracks will go to Anthony for mixing while the rest of us start work on design and release specifics.  There are still about a couple dozen super-crucial decisions that need to be made in the way of release dates, printing, pressing, and marketing and it's my own personal goal to have those things nailed down by the end of January of 2014.  This means we could finally have a release date within the next couple of months.

I'm kind of speaking out-of-school by saying this so don't hold me to any of this (not like you would given our great track record of releasing things on time!!!!).  Like the rest of America late November is a tough month for 40PF in that we're all super busy almost the entire month with social events (read: tons of fucking parties) so getting work done over the next few weeks will be almost impossible.

But we're working hard and will continue to work hard to get this album released for everyone to enjoy.  Thanks for hanging on!

* - Bohemian Grove reference made possible thanks entirely to Anthony Jackson

Friday, November 08, 2013

New Album Production Journal: Day 558

1.  #RW4 is coming up next week and I'm beyond excited.  I can't wait.  There are so many things we have to do but I don't care.  I lub it.

2.  Real quick, amazing writing tip I figured out recently (if only for myself in the future):  if you write everything down on the computer, then never delete anything.  I mean don't ever delete a line, or even a word unless it's spelled incorrectly.  Anything you don't want to use just space it down to the end of the document or paragraph.  Change the style to strikethrough, whatever, just don't delete it!  Ever!

I say this because in writing the last four or five songs I have used and discarded hundreds of lines, phrases, words and it has led to some rewarding outcomes.  Like all artistic processes, almost all of this work is thrown out and never used.  But the things that I have written down and never deleted that end up getting used have been really fun and extremely helpful.  Had I deleted these things I may still be writing from scratch, which can be daunting.

3.  Speaking of writing, I've finally gotten verses written for everything now but every day I'm finding something not necessarily wrong but not exactly right about a different verse every day.  So I'm constantly rethinking things, going over songs in my head, rearranging, and editing and it's as fun as it is frustrating.  Fortunately this means that this album will feature some of the most extensive writing that I've done so far, without question.

4.  After next weekend I hope we can announce some final plans and start rolling out some release dates.   Stay tuned to @40PF on Twitter starting next Friday and on for any immediate news.

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Looking Back: 10 Years After "Haunted Hell"

10 years ago, 200 miles away in Asheville, NC, on a night almost exactly like tonight (muggy and almost kind of cool at night but too humid to really feel it) Forrest Jameson and I sat down with a bottle of Ciclon and recorded a call-and-answer Halloween themed narrative song called "Haunted Hell."  In it we describe ourselves getting lost from the rest of the "40PF crew" inside a haunted house full of your typical haunted house cliches.  Only in our haunted hell there's the ghost that looks like Goldie Hawn (who we dance with!?), and then of course the zombie who apparently used to pitch for a Dodgers farm team ("zombie threw a baseball, hit Wyatt in the balls").  It's a pretty standard haunted house story but there's a sort of odd humor to it that keeps you from dismissing it completely.  But that's not why I like it.

"Haunted Hell" to me is great because it recalls the reckless experimentation of our early years.  Forrest starting writing, then I started writing a continuation of his verse and it suddenly became a single storyline told by two people, which at that time hadn't been done by us before.  Granted we were still pretty new to things back then but it still shows a level of innovation that I admire about us at that time.  We didn't second guess it, ever, we just did it.  There was a nervous, excited energy that just came from the idea alone where we would be writing and would get anxious to hear what the other person wrote.  It was electric and impulsive.  It came out of nowhere.

After 10 years that giddy, almost childish impulse to follow your gut and say "fuck it!" goes away because it has to.  We force ourselves to re-think our first thoughts because, unless you're a genius, you find out very quickly that your first idea isn't always the best.  Like the Milton Glaser etching reads, "Art is work".  You have to write a thousand drafts, paint a trillion strokes (sometimes) before you can achieve a meaningful piece of work.  Over time you lose the balance between instincts and intellect--between feeling and thinking--and sometimes the work suffers.  "Haunted Hell" is refreshing because it worked in spite of this imbalance of head and heart.  It was impetuous and succeeded, however mildly, as a result.  Having hindsight can damage your opinion of early works, but for me, I never have a negative thought about "Haunted Hell".  It's stupid, and silly and fun and I'm glad we made it.

Every Halloween I play this song and every year it makes me smile, and makes me grateful.  Forrest has gone on to use the call/answer device we attempted in this song on other songs he has written and performed on and they have resulted in some of the best work any of us has ever produced.  Selfishly I can't help but think that this song we wrote and recorded that "halloween night 2003" had something to do with it.  Even if it didn't I'm still glad we made something special.

Please enjoy "Haunted Hell" found on our wiki page using the link below.

"Haunted Hell"

Happy Halloween!

Friday, October 11, 2013

New Album Production Journal - Day 529

(Let's skip the 1000 words where I apologize profusely and lament about how I haven't kept up with this like I should, and how not posting more defeats the purpose of this blog.  Okay?)

Writing for this album has always been a problem for me and now that most--maybe all?--the beats are done I've been putting a lot more energy into it, and so far it's worked out great.  Early on I realized that I wanted to go really hard at this project with everything I had, and I think I've done that with the beats, or as least as good as I could.  But it wasn't until about six months ago where I felt like I could finally put that same energy into lyrics.  Now that I'm here thinking about words rather than song strucutres it's great and I'm seeing things totally different than I ever did in 220.

That change in perception, how there's this newfound clarity at looking at lyrics, and even music, instrumentation, beats, makes me think that in a lot of ways I hope that this album will fucking destroy everything we've done before it because I feel like those past experiences have held us back in making this album.  And not that that's our fault either.  When we started this we really didn't know what to do, exactly.  We knew what needed to be done--record these vocals to this beat, edit them, etc.--but we had no process for doing.  We still don't have the process down, probably won't have it down by the time we finish and I think that's directly a result from having never done this before.  In 220 we would get the urge, find the beat, write, record, listen and that was it.  It was quick and it was self-contained, which is the exact opposite of making this album.  There has to be a constant dialogue.  There has to be a firm, steady, easily accessible organization system.  There has to be honesty.  Everything needs to be readily available at all times and everything has to be done in a timely manner.  Everything has a "need by" date, even if that date is a long way away.  These are things that are hard for any band or group so I don't think by any means that we have failed ourselves.  I just think we have learned a lot, possibly at the expense of inexperience, which okay.

I don't want you to think I regret our times in Baird, or 220, or in mobile studios, or The Rail or Georgia or Asheville or anywhere else because I don't.  Nothing can take away the best and worst of times we had 10 years ago.  I don't regret anything from the past, and I never will, but that doesn't mean I don't want the future to be better.  We didn't know how to do this--we're still figuring out!  But I think we're having a great time and I think the payoff when we release the album (FINALLY) will be more rewarding than we could imagine.  I hope it's that way at least.

Here is where I would describe where we're at, except that things are still too discombobulated to properly articulate.  Besides that it would be boring to read, much less write.  If I had to sum up our current progress I would stay it's "slowly but surely coming along" or some other contrite cliche that bands always give magazines when they're a year away from releasing a new album .  That does NOT imply that we're a year away from final release, although full disclosure, we still don't have a final release date.  That's just where we're at.

I can tell you that you should be on the lookout in mid-November for #RW4 hashtags.  This is for our big semi-annual/annual get-together which we call Reclamation Weekend.  During that time we'll try to post vauge, confusing, mostly uninteresting news from it on twitter.  So yay for that!

Rather than showing off things we've finished recently and giving you, the reader, dare I say the fan?, something substantial to consume relating to this album, please take a look at the "Money In The Bank" video, or listen to the "Blood In Your Throat" song again, won't you?

Thursday, September 05, 2013

In The Meantime: Music Of 2013 Mid-Year Review Past/Present Future

Before we get back to whatever it is I think I'm going to get back to I recently caught up with our old friend Wes Delaney (WD) of Ear Infections to talk about the year of music in 2013.  We did this a few years ago and it was pretty fun so we gave it another shot for no reason in particular.  Enjoy!


Tuesday, September 03, 2013

INSIDE THE MUSIC - "Double Deuce"



WYATT:
Yo, Brutus Buckeye, you've got little brains and small thighs, but you're cooler
than most of all the other guys who deal drugs, get high, kiss their families
goodbye (arranging drive-by's since you were the age of nine...nine..nine)...


Tuesday, March 26, 2013

New Album Production Journal: Day 371

Ugh.

Work on my side of things for this album have been hideously slow and unproductive.  For a while I couldn't focus.  Then nothing sounded good.  Then I just didn't have time.  Then I would get back into things and I wouldn't be able to focus.  Things sounded horrible.  Then I wouldn't have any time, for weeks and weeks on end.   And then when I would get back into things, I wouldn't be able to focus.  Things sounded horrible--etc. etc. etc. etc.

There's no excuse really but that's part of what led to my post last week:  announcing our anniversary (YAY!) and, unfortunately, also that we weren't able to finish things in time.  Instinctively from day one I never thought we would make the deadline, because it's easier and more natural for me to focus on negative things.  These people are called pessimists but you'll rarely hear anyone call themselves that.  They think that because they can embrace the bad that somehow that's more realistic, which is why they call themselves realists instead.  The logic that this kind of thinking requires is insane and yet it's so omnipresent we never think about it.  So think about that, man, while you suck on the teat of corporate America, carefully crafting your brand because you are the commodity, man, you are the reason we--

Ugh.

So while I didn't think we would make the deadline originally, I always maintained a modest level of hope.  Of course to me, hope is used as a false positive, as in, "I hope I get this beat in time because I don't want to sound like a shit head by saying 'Fuck, there's no way I'm going to get this beat done in time.'"  I tried staying positive and maintained a thin veneer of a gungho disposition, but it wasn't for the right reasons I don't think.  To his credit Scurvy D was always headstrong and positive, a decisive boost to the group's morale, all the way up until about a week before the deadline.  Despite his efforts and my own futile "BE POSITIVE" ethos (what a success!!) I sit here dejected that we have not finished in time.  Even with suspicion that we wouldn't make it, I'm still disappointed in myself.  It weighs on me a great deal and I hope everyone can forgive me.

From here on out though things will be different.  We have regrouped.  We have restructured.  We have reorganized.  We have altered our priorities.  We have delegated.  We are on a track that is somewhat more smooth than when we first started so in a sense we're doing fine.

On 03/22/2013 I started work on four new beats:  one for Sample Pages and three for the new album.  (Side note:  from here on out I'd like to start using "sketches" in place of beats.  In my mind "beats" are more of a fully realized product with some semblance of structure and will mostly remain in tact for the final version.  Everything else is a "sketch," or a "draft," but I prefer to maintain the painting/drawing analogy because it's my fucking choice.   There are lots of sketches on my computer and there always have been, since the very beginning   Most are no longer than eight bars and most suck complete fucking ass.  They are so horrible that I'm afraid that when I die someone will waste part of their life listening to them and will be able to empirically conclude that I did in fact suck complete and total fucking ass.  That said, I have to make a bunch of shit to get to something serviceable, much less good, which is why I'm only half joking when I say that I suck complete and total fucking ass (I just suck fucking ass).  Over time working on abandoned sketches helps to flesh out the track that they eventually, hopefully become.  Maybe I pull an instrument or a setting or I steal a riff from one of these shitty sketches, and when that happens and I can make it work, it was all worth it.  My problem as of late has been getting to the point where I can be happy with a sketch.  There have been times where I tried and tried to be happy with something shitty but I get so disgusted with myself that I just close it out and hit don't save.  Ugh.)

I've also been working with Anthony some trying to provide input for some of his ideas during the mixing/editing process.  (Anthony, by the way, is working his ass off while I'm crying on a blog.)  I don't want to begin to think about how insane that project is but he apparently loves it.  I was thinking today that I need to send him more real world examples to help maybe articulate what I'm trying to say.  I don't do that enough.  I need to do that more, goddamn it.  Standby while I send him this Aaliyah video just for the hell of it (shhh don't tell him, let it be a surprise)..........


Ok.

Other than all of this I think we're going to be fine.  Right?  Tonight I believe I'm going to be working with Scurvy D and Forrest and maybe finalize some takes on something and maybe finalize a beat, maybe.  I don't know.  But from here on out, nothing but positive thoughts.  Positive, positive, positive.  Positive positive, positive, positive, positive, positive...




Wyatt

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

10 Year Anniversary

Today, March 19th, 2013, marks Forty Psychic Frames 10 year anniversary.  10 years together.  10 years of 40PF.  Even though we are constantly looking back and referencing our past in almost everything we do, it's still hard to conceptualize what 10 years really means.  It doesn't feel like ten years.  The music doesn't sound 10 years old (shut-up).  We don't look 10 years older (seriously, stop laughing).

Our history is very important to us and we see ten years together as 40PF as an amazing accomplishment.  Sure, there is a large body of work we have together that is tangible and more than worthy of celebration.  But more than that, this anniversary is indicative of how close our friendships are and how much we value our relationships with each other.  It is in these relationships and interactions that which we treasure most.  Maybe, hopefully, our music and our work will live on, but it was never about that in the first place.

We'd like to thank the fans for their continued and tireless support over the years.  What we lack in volume we make up for in unrestrained enthusiasm.  To reach one person outside of our group in a meaningful way is overwhelmingly awesome and we want you to know how much we appreciate it.  

We have been working long and hard over the past year on a lot of new material and while we had hoped to have released it all today, sadly it's just not ready.  Rather than release something we aren't completely and totally proud of we decided to wait until we can finish everything to our satisfaction.  Historically this method of production is kind of new to us, as we usually try to write, record and release things as soon as possible.  So in light of this exciting and rewarding new procedure we hope that you, our devoted fans, understand and remain patient.  We promise we won't disappoint you.

Here's to 10 more years.  All of us.  Together.



Nondescript picture of us sitting is excessively nondescript


Wednesday, January 02, 2013

Things I Liked A Lot This Year: 2012

Rather than bore you with summary of e v e r y  s i n g l e thing I liked this year, like some sort of closeted narcissist,  I'm just going to list them as I see fit.  No bullshit, just a plain list, which is still bullshit.  For any albums listed I've tried to include the Spotify link for that album for those of you on Spotify, and for any song I've included the link to the whatever the top YouTube result is.  Anyway, enjoy!!