Recording Heat Stroke, Pt. 5
Well, this installment of Recording Heat Stroke is going to have to be a little different because I literally haven’t recorded anything since last time that will be a final take…probably. But then again, maybe the fact that I have recorded a lot that will likely not make it to the final cut makes for an interesting topic…
I HAVE recorded a lot for Heat Stroke. For “Hotter Than a Mothereffer,” what it took to record that was pretty unique, for me at least. As I have mentioned before, that song started by the title popping into my head for no good reason, then jamming out a little riff and yelling those 4 words over the top of it. Funnily enough, that’s basically how it sounds today, in finished form, for better or for worse. After listening to it myself and playing it “live” to myself, it’s one of my favorite songs I’ve ever done. And I’m not one of those people that always says that about every new thing I do.
For the remainder of the album, I’ve got tons of guitar ideas recorded. This is something I’ve never done before…on purpose. I’ve definitely recorded some music or vocals and then left them for a few weeks or months before coming back to them, but with these new songs, I’ve intentionally let them stew for the sake of letting them stew. For example, a pretty new song I’ve been tinkering with called “Countdown to a Breakdown,” began its life as me just sitting here with a guitar in my lap, unplugged, and half-absentmindedly playing a little riff. I might have been listening to a podcast or something on Netflix that I wasn’t watching at the time, so I wasn’t paying attention to anything in particular. Anyway, after I actually started listening to what I was playing, I realized it sounded pretty cool, so I plugged in. Boom. “Countdown to a Breakdown” was born. Lately, I’ve been using something I used to swear by, the DigiTech RP250. It was set to a slightly overdriven patch, and that sounded cool to me. Then I switched to a heavier sound, and I liked that too, and I imagined a song starting with that first guitar sound and then slamming into the heavier one. So obviously I worked out the tempo I had been playing that riff at, recorded that riff using a few different effect patches, and making notes of all that in a handy text document, like I mentioned in last week’s post. A few days later, I listened to what I had come up with so far, liked it, and worked on a couple more riffs that could/would serve as refrains or choruses or whatever, and then recorded those. So basically aside from lyrics or vocals, that song is done the way I look at it.
It’s a similar story with the other songs I’ve started, and like I said, it’s just a tactic I’ve never intentionally done before. I’m not saying it’s a good idea or that I’ll do it again, but it’s what I’m doing for these songs. I have came up with different methods I would like to try, but I’m saving them for another time, another album.
It’s going to be hot this weekend, so that’s awesome. I played guitar along with a few new songs a few hours ago, and it was on the borderline of being too hot, which is just where I like it. It’s important to know where that line is though, and not cross it, which is what I did a couple years ago with the Punk Rebel Renegade album, on purpose. I predict I will finish at least one more song. If it’s not “Countdown to a Breakdown,” it will be this other song tentatively titled “Embers.”
Okay, that’s enough Heat Stroke recording “news” for now. I’ve been thinking about turning robbysuave.com into more than just a music thing. The Robby Suavé moniker came about in 2001 or 2002, and I used it only when talking about my music. Then about 4 years ago maybe, I started using it for everything. Not that I output much stuff besides music, but I feel like I’d like to post regularly on this site, and if I’m not recording for an album, I’m not going to have much to talk about. So let me rant off some things that I’ve been thinking about tying to robbysuave.com.
Firstly is live and archived audio of me screwing around with music. I’ve been experimenting with it over the last week or so, and it’s kind of fun. One day I came up with the idea of streaming audio of me practicing or whatever, wondering if there was already a site that would let me do that and even archive the sessions for me. Sure enough, a few exist. There’s a service called Mixlr that does exactly what I wanted. I’ve found that the audio can hiccup from time to time when recording, but it’s not a huge deal. If nothing else, while the Mixlr client records the audio file for me while it’s simultaneously streaming it, I could be recording it via another program myself, which would have no audio glitches. I realize even if I scheduled these streaming audio streams that no one would probably be there to listen to them live, I still like the idea of doing it. Along those same lines, I was thinking about making these audio recordings available as a podcast and do them once a week or something, which might be fun if I could come up with things to talk about instead of just noodling around on my guitar. I don’ know. I’ll probably post here or tweet about that later.
Twitch streaming. I usually like to play video games, and with the PlayStation 4’s built-in ability to stream via Twitch, it’s easy to do. I’m not sure I’d ever use a microphone or anything on there, but I don’t mind people watching me play. I’ve been playing the crap out of Rogue Legacy, and I can imagine a beginning player of that game getting a kick out of watching me play. I’m up to level 330 or something. It’s so crazy.
A hobby of mine is graphic and web design. Yes, I realize this site looks dumb right now, but I’ll spend more time on making it look pretty the more content it has. More on the graphic design part, I like to design Robby Suavé t-shirts. I’ve made 5 or 6 of them for myself. I don’t know anyone else that would wear one, let alone pay for one, but I’ve thought about making an online store so people could order shirts or posters or whatever else if they wanted. I can envision shirts emblazoned with “Hotter Than a Mothereffer” in large text being a cool thing. I’m definitely going to be wearing one once I come up with a good enough design.
There was something else not music-related that I was thinking about putting on here…yeah, I can’t remember what it was now. Anyway, come back next week for more stuff, and don’t be afraid to leave a comment below!