How music is made (by us): Part 6
18 Mar 2023
Now, even though we've got our master, our finished music, we're still not done! We still need to get it to you somehow. We derive a lot of satisfaction just from the fact of our music, but it's always better to share.
These days, it couldn't be easier to get your music accessible by millions of people, using an online distributor. They handle submission to the likes of Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, etc. The list of services we're on is surprisingly long. If you use it, we're probably on it! There are, of course, controversies around the streaming services' royalty payment models, but they're for another post. The important thing is that people are able to listen to our music. As we said, it's always better to share.
In the same spirit, we make our music freely available for listening on our own website. In fact, for the All My Crimes EP, we've tried to bridge the gap between the impersonal playlist, song-skipping, tune-in-to-tune-out-your mind model of algorithmic streaming that dominates digital playback with the more immersive experience of playing back on vinyl.
How music is made (by us): Part 5
11 Mar 2023
You've got your final mix as a stereo file so now you're ready to "master" it. Mastering just one song on its own is mainly like mixing except you've only got one (admittedly stereo) track. You set its volume and maybe apply some EQ and compression to get the desired result.
Where mastering is interesting is when you're mastering a collection of songs, such as an EP or an album. Then, the purpose is to make sure that the different songs sit well with each other. Even if they're part of the same project, they may have different sounding mixes because different techniques were used or just simply because there are different styles e.g. a hard rock number followed by a softer ballad.
You don't want the song transitions to be unwittingly jarring (you might want to do this wittingly for artistic reasons) so again you can balance their respective volumes and EQ to help the flow. The difference with mixing is that in mixing at least some of the tracks are usually playing simultaneously, while you master the songs in sequence.
How music is made (by us): Part 4
4 Mar 2023
So far, if you're not familiar with music production, you're probably still with us. You might be able to imagine, roughly, what writing, rehearsing, and recording look like. But now we're onto mixing and this is where it starts to resemble witchcraft.
A bit of background first: each microphone's signal is recorded onto a separate track (or channel). This means that it can be manipulated independently of the others i.e. we can adjust its volume, location in the stereo field, and all manner of other effects and processing. Now, with modern computers and software, you can have as many channels as it takes to melt your CPU so some people's productions can span hundreds of channels. Our needs are a bit more simple. Usually we've got maybe 8-10 channels depending on exactly how we've mic'ed things and how many overdubs (like backing vocals) have gone on.
How music is made (by us): Part 3
25 Feb 2023
This is the moment. We've got lightning and we've got our bottle, we just need to capture it! There's always something exhilirating about recording sessions, a glimpse of limitless possibility and creativity. We don't have our own studio premises but we do have all the required recording gear. This gives us the flexibility to record wherever we can set up and, since we're a two-peice, we can actually fit in a lot of smaller spaces. We've recorded in living rooms, bedrooms and rehearsal studios.
The conventional method is to lay down a drum track with a rough rhythm guitar part all to a click. Then you overdub everything else one by one. This allows you to give each part full attention and re-record bits until you're happy with them. You do lose sponteneity that way though, so a lot of the time we'll at least record the guitar and the drums together. In those cases, we often forgo the click track entirely and rely entirely on feel.
How music is made (by us): Part 2
16 Feb 2023
Once we have a song, we rehearse to get it "gig-ready". This might be a sound close to the eventual recording but sometimes the production heads in a completely different direction. Marionette is a prime example of this since there's no way we could replicate that layered sound with just the two of us on stage. One day, we might play with a bigger ensemble of guest musicians and try to re-create it. We can hope.
A lot of this time is spent trying to build a kind of "musical muscle-memory" for the song to make it seem effortless. As ever, though, there's a balance to be struck. There's a certain naivete in earlier renditions which can be really appealing depending on the song. As you get more rehearsed, the result can be a bit more sterile, which suits other kinds of songs. In our case, we probably err towards the former: there's a cool energy to recordings made while the band are still in the process of learning the song.
How Music Is Made (by us): Part 1
1 Feb 2023
Recorded music, as an abstraction, is in the business of convincing you that the musician is there, in your living room, in your ear, giving you a personal concert. At your beck and call. It's unreasonably effective at this. Two (often one these days or, much less often, four) speakers are all you really need.
As you might guess, given that this post exists, there's quite a lot of heavy lifting going on in the background to create this impression. Forgetting about how the actual, physical and technological infrastructure comes to exist: the internet, computers, tape reels, delivery vans, vinyl discs, CD printers, DAW software, audio plugins, etc. etc. we're only going to focus on what we do as a band to create the music that you're (hopefully) enjoying. We'll talk about it in six parts:
- Writing
- Rehearsing
- Recording
- Mixing
- Mastering
- Release
I. Writing
This is the nebulous bit.
Be more low-tech
1 Jan 2023
Drop the needle and play. Press record and watch the reels dance. Write a letter and be ink stained for the rest of the day. Tune the radio until you find the sweet spot. Hold the photograph by the edges.
The list goes on but each of these things is passing into obsolescence as everything we do is on a screen. Even our keyboards have been replaced by screens. There’s something intangible being lost. There’s less feeling of a human being operating some machinery (a typewriter, a tape recorder, or, hell, a pen) and more of a disembodied mind doing abstract things. While all of this progress can be amazingly beneficial, I don’t think you can distil the human essence out of the human body.
Notes on music production
30 Aug 2022
In his memoir, Born To Run, Bruce Springsteen writes of his frustrations in getting the sound in his head down on tape in the Darkness on the Edge of Town sessions:
"… you can’t feature everything, for in effect you’re featuring nothing. Phil Spector’s records aren’t sonically big. The technology wasn’t there. They just sound bigger than your world. It’s a beautiful illusion.”
This is something we’ve been slowly learning, as we blunder our way through making recordings of our music. In fact, it appears that if you pursue technical “perfection" too much, you can easily break this illusion. It’s a vision through a dirty and clouded window, where the fogginess is part of the picture. Clean that window too much and the spectacle doesn’t have the same effect. Distortion can make a vocal larger than life, compression causes drums to explode.
We like DIY
3 Aug 2022
Here at Automatic Panic towers, or, if you like, Panic Station, we enjoy doing things ourselves. We write our own songs and then play, record, mix them ourselves as well as shoot most of our videos ourselves.
While we make our music, photos, and videos available on the various commonly-used "platforms", we try not to depend entirely on any one of them. This website is simply an extension of that attitude. It's our little haven, our patch of virtual land where we can do everything our own way.
So feel free to make use of the original web "platform", the web itself: bookmark this site, add our RSS feed, or subscribe to our mailing list. We'll do our best to keep you entertained.
Notes on Altered States
27 Jul 2022
Altered States is dedicated to history. History is a soothsayer, a shaman, an oracle. It shows us its alter egos, worlds that are part of our own but yet lie behind it. The worlds have always lived in conflict. They are the meta-physical manifestation of doubt. I doubt and therefore I am. But also, one who does not doubt cannot be. The certain ones, the zealots with no doubts, they are are un-making the world, tearing at the facade to show the forces that lie beneath. They are un-making the world to show that its pieces never really fit together in the first place. History is replayed repeatedly.