Golden Ticket: Embrace Your Mistakes (Ticket 72)

Every artist needs fresh inspiration and sometimes mistakes can be a source of new sounds and ideas. Now, more than ever, musicians and producers have the tools to scrub every error from a recording but the end result can be flat, dehumanised and boring. Whether we screw up when the tape is rolling or mess up in rehearsal and then decide to keep the results, sometimes throwing a spanner in the works is the smart thing to do.

Or at least leaving the spanner where you dropped it.

Mistakes can make the listener feel they are really THERE or that the vibe is laid back or 'real' and not cleaning up your tracks is a great way to achieve this. Keeping count-ins, or even flying them in from other takes: I Saw Her Standing There, Taxman, Revolution 1, or catching snippets of conversation: Revolution 1 (0:00), Level With Yourself (0:53), Little Wonder (0:39). It's the equivalent of professionally lighting your 'no make up selfie'.

Keeping mistakes and retakes (e.g. the start of Bob Dylan's 115th Dream) help to humanise the artist; doubly so if they end up swearing in frustration: Hey Jude (2:58), Louie Louie (0:53), Good Riddance (0:00).

Vocals entering early is another common 'keeper'. Robert Plant comes in a whole four bars early on the second verse of Stairway To Heaven (1:32)* and James Blunt's premature arrival in You're Beautiful (0:23) is so obvious it warranted it's own parody.*

Singers sometimes struggle to get the words out and that stuttering can be serendipitous if your song is about barely containable teenage rage (My Generation) or accepting your failings (You're Only Human – 3:19).

Mistakes in the recording process itself can be useful. Both Revolution 1 (3:23) and Let Me Roll It (4:22) have extra beats caused by bad tape editing. Flying In a Blue Dream opens with other-worldly voices (0:02) – the result of picking up radio interference during recording. My own cover of River of Suffering catches the sound of a police car passing outside the studio (3:09).

The Right Time For Mistakes

To conclude – mistakes should be embraced when you're looking for fresh inspiration, want to bring the listener closer, humanise the artist, or just communicate a sense of fun and not taking yourself too seriously. If the nature of the mistake reflects the subject material of the song that's even better. And who knows? They may even advance your career.

When Ella Fitzgerald performed Mack the Knife in Germany for a live album, she forgot the lyrics to one of the many verses. Undaunted, she started freestyling lyrics (1:55, 2:50, 3:44, 4:00) throwing in a killer Louis Armstrong impersonation along the way (3:16). That performance won her, not one but, two Grammys*.

Revolution 1 – The Beatles (0:00, 3:23)

Level With Yourself - David Bazan (0:53)

Little Wonder - David Bowie (0:39)

Bob Dylan's 115th Dream – Bob Dylan (0:00)

Louie Louie – The Kingsmen (0:53)

Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life) – Green Day (0:00)

My Generation – The Who (0:05, 0:16, 0:30, 0:36, 0:41, 0:45, 1:20, 1:25, 1:58, 2:04).

You're Only Human (Second Wind) – Billy Joel (3:19)

Let Me Roll It - Paul McCartney and Wings (4:22)

Flying In a Blue Dream – Joe Satriani (0:02)

The River of Suffering – Matt Blick (3:09)

For an expanded playlist for this songwriting tip – go here

See also

Why you don't learn by your mistakes – lessons from a chimpanzee

Footnotes

Second verse of Stairway To Heaven

This is far from obvious but compare the chord sequences on 'verse 1' (0:52) and 'verse 2' (1:32) it's clear that Plant sings 'chorus 1' (1:19) once but Page plays it twice. Plant then sings verse 2 over one chorus progression and one verse progression then runs out of lyrics, leaving Page an extra four bars to fill in with some nifty fingerpicking. This 'mistake' would have been clearly obvious to all involved at once the reason it remained is – it's kind of cool!

Warranted it's own parody

You're Pitiful - "Weird Al" Yankovic (0:12) mercilessly mocks Blunt's entrance. In a similar way, someone on Sting's version of Shadows In The Rain (0:00) pays homage to bassist Joe Swift on Fingertips - Part 2 by Stevie Wonder (2:22) by repeated asking what key they're playing in.

Two Grammys

Ella Fitzgerald won Best Female Vocal Performance (Single) and Best Female Vocal Performance (Album) for Mack The Knife at the1960 Grammy Awards.

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Soundhog Interview

The whole purpose of Beatles Songwriting Academy is to tap the genius of the Beatles by taking their songs apart and using what we learn to create something new. With that in mind, let me introduce to you Soundhog, a self-described 'Beatles-obsessive of 35+ years standing' who is the creator of the wonderful Whole Lotta Helter Skelter mashup.

Who are you and what do you do?

My real name is Ben Hayes, and I'm a resident of a fairly small town in north Wales. I've done many things over the years, at the moment I work in a garage as a 'proper job', but still like to think that I'll be able to do something more creatively rewarding and make some sort of living from it, one day. I suppose everyone thinks that, though... get real, eh?

How long have you been creating mashups?

I started making things from other people's music a long, long time ago - back to cutting up 1/4" tape when I was 10 years old - but I've been doing stuff in the form of Whole Lotta Helter Skelter for about 12 years now.

Do play any conventional musical instruments?

I'm certainly not a virtuoso on anything, but I can play a bit of guitar, drums, keyboards, triangle etc. Occasionally this can be heard in my Soundhog work, and I also do other projects when I can find the motivation like Loose Capacitor ('70s analogue synth based) and The Secret Agent Five (my take on twisted '60s guitar instrumentals). I wish I could play one thing really, really well, but I do my best under the circumstances.

The Led Zep/Beatles mashup was something of a viral hit, yet you seem a bit down on mashups generally – why is that?

When I started out with this sort of thing, around 2001, you could count the number of other people doing it on your fingers and toes, and probably have the odd digit to spare. It was genuinely an underground thing. We called it 'bastard pop', or just 'bootlegging'. You couldn't find it very easily, the music press dismissed it as worthless novelty and only one or two UK radio shows gave it a platform. Visiting the one tiny club night in London dedicated to it genuinely changed the way I thought about music.

It only really went 'overground' when Richard X's welding together of tracks by Adina Howard and Gary Numan was re-recorded by The Sugababes. Once it went to number one in the UK singles chart suddenly everyone and their tone deaf dog started downloading cracked music software and making dreadful combinations of dreadful pop/rap records. Over-hyped nonsense like the Grey Album started clouding the waters and 10 years on, there's nothing clever or new about it and frankly it's all quite tedious. But it happens to almost all forms/genres of music eventually, I suppose.

The Beatles have a reputation for keeping tight control over their catalogue, yet they 'sampled', quoted or just plain ripped off other people's music. Led Zeppelin were even worse. Does old music need to be 'recycled' in order to create new music? Where do you stand on the whole copyright/intellectual property issue?

The biggest influence on music is the technology and tools available. It changed when new instruments were invented, when recording onto cylinder/shellac became possible, when multitrack tape machines appeared, when fuzz pedals and loud amplifiers showed up, then synthesizers, samplers, digital processing tools, etc. But you're still pretty much dealing with the same notes, scales and chords. There are very few musical forms around today which you can't trace back somehow to 50, 60, 70 years ago. I don't hear much today that I can't pick apart and identify where the various bits came from, or who they were influenced by.

As for copyright... erm... Obviously things like Whole Lotta Helter Skelter run roughshod over established copyright laws, however I've always been of the opinion that doing what I do doesn't actually harm the original works or their authors/performers at all, and it's not taking away a potential sale or whatever.  Nobody's going to stop buying The Beatles or Led Zeppelin II because they've downloaded my creation. I did get slapped with a nasty letter from the BPI (UK based record industry type thing) around 10 years ago, demanding that I removed certain stuff from my website but now if you're uploading your things to YouTube or Soundcloud you usually get knobbled before the file has finished uploading.

I'm surprised that Whole Lotta Helter Skelter' hasn't been wiped from the internet so far.  Perhaps some 'people who matter' actually liked it. Who knows? Jimmy Page's official website even featured the track on the front page a few months ago.  That was a big surprise.

In short, I believe in copyright, I think people's ideas and works in their original forms should be protected, and people should get what they're entitled to.  However, if other people can twist those works in other ways, with valid results, then they should at least be allowed to try.

Other than the two original tracks what were your sources? What was your actual process in terms of adjusting tempos, pitch shifting?

The sources were copies of the Helter Skelter and Whole Lotta Love multitracks - one came from a video game, the other from a bootleg CD. I didn't use anything else apart from a few bits of Beatles studio chat, as far as I can remember.

A lot of people probably assume I just slapped McCartney's vocal over some loops from the original Led Zeppelin record, but there was a hell of a lot more to it than that as you can see from the screengrab.

The thing was constructed on a PC using an old version of Ableton Live. Both original songs are in the same key, which helps massively as you don't end up with awkward sounding vocals through pitching up/down. Helter Skelter's a fair bit slower than Whole Lotta Love, so the Beatles audio parts were sped up to Zep tempo - as the latter track forms the backbone of the thing, it was important to keep time-stretching artifacts (i.e. horrible glitchy noises) to a minimum. Ableton allows one to do this fairly easily, but you've got to keep an eye on the details, which means a lot of manual work - because I was working with a lot of separate multitrack parts they all had to be carefully tweaked to keep them in sync with each other. Then there's stuff like having to EQ the bass parts from the two songs so they matched up as closely as possible sonically and replicating the panning of the guitar feedback noises in the middle section.

Are mashups brand new pieces of music?

Good question. I think it varies from track to track. The best examples, are the ones which sound like they could always have existed if the course of pop music had been different. If Jimmy Page had actually been in The Beatles, or the two groups had actually recorded together, rather than "this vocal" being put over "that music" by someone in his bedroom. Not really something 'new', therefore, but something from a history which didn't exist. (That all probably sounds very pretentious, sorry).

Is there anything conventional songwriters can learn from mashup artists?

A big part of it in the early days for me was mixing up styles, putting things together which normally wouldn't fit.  I do honestly think that what we did in the early 2000s has had a significant impact on pop music today in various ways, for better or worse. I'd just say, don't be afraid to get outside of the box.  Music's always been at it's most interesting, for me, when it goes blundering around trying out new things.


You can find Soundhog on Soundcloud or at his own website. You can download Whole Lotta Helter Skelter here and I'd highly recommend you also check out Ben's beautiful mashup of A Day In The Life and the Kid Loco Mix of Tracy by Mogwai. And if that's not enough Beatles related remixing for one day, take a look at my interview with the brain behind the Beastles DJ BC.

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11:17 I've Got A Feeling

Everybody had a good time????*

I've Got A Feeling is a pleasant enough song that punches a little above it's weight and appears slightly better than it really is.

Part of that is down to the feeling that this is a return to the Lennon/McCartney duets of old. Many Beatles tracks prior to Help have a shared lead vocal making it almost impossible for transcribers to discern who is singing melody and who is harmonising.

The reality is that this is another patchwork song like A Day In The Life, only in reverse - Lennon supplies missing 'bridge' for Paul. So despite appearances there is little emotional connection between the two and this is as much a true duet as Free As A Bird.

That said the song works because luckily the two parts fit together perfectly. They have the same chord sequence (though my guess is that Lennon's melody sat nicely on Paul's chords rather than both having come up with the same (admittedly simple) chord progression. The overlapping of parts isn't on a level with Paul's brilliant descant on Help (they both start on the 'and' after the one here) but John's low 'regular' line sits nicely under Paul's high meandering one. Paul's parts are all about 'I' but John's are about 'Everybody'. And John's wit shines against Paul's slightly lazy and vague lyrical offering. (He spends far more time telling us he has a feeling than what the feeling 'is').

There are a few nice lyrical moments in Paul's verse (please believe me/if you leave me) and bridge (wandering around/wondering how) but the latter get lost in the screaming, where as John's hair down/socks up/foot down gives a strong sense of shape to his part.

Predictably enough for blues screamer the melody uses lots of b3rd and b7ths, with Lennon's part employing the major pentatonic. There's some cool nods to the blues in the distorted chromatically descending 7th chords (0:29) that reminds me of Led Zeppelin channelling Robert Johnson on Celebration Day.

Perhaps the most interesting song tip to take away is how the band places the title in the verses.

This is the title,
The title one more time,
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
This is the title,
The title with a rhyme,
Oh no, oh no, oh no, yeah, yeah.
This is the title, yeah.

In the second verse McCartney develops the idea with less repetition


The second verse,
Is nothing like the first,
oh yeah, oh yeah.
A straight repeat,
Might even make it worse,
oh no, oh no, yeah, yeah.
This is the title, yeah.

But then the third verse (after the bridge) returns to the original scheme.

Maybe that's something you can take away.

*Andy Warhol - incase you were wondering. You're welcome.

   

12:44 I Want You (She's So Heavy) - with Nicholas Tozier

At this time of year the mullioned halls of Beatles Songwriting Academy become deserted as the students all go home for the summer, the professors head off to the nearest pub for research and the rest of the support staff put on the Stones and kick back. Even the school nurse is doing a European tour with Rammstein. So as soon as I heard that songwriting blogger Nicholas Tozier was in town I grabbed my Rickenbacker frying pan and invited him over for a traditional English meal and a chat about I Want You (She's So Heavy).

Matt: You want that last onion bhaji, Tozier?

Tozier: No, thanks man. I'm full!

One of the first times I talked to you, you said I Want You (She's So Heavy) was one of your favourite Beatles tunes. But what does a poetic, literary guy like you see in a song with just 13 words and hardly any description?

I’d call it more dramatic than literary. Just a few words sung like they’re meant. And to be honest, I think I enjoy the oppressive, ominous atmosphere more than anything else about this song.

That ominous atmosphere is really coming from the bridge section right?

Yeahhh. ROOOOOAARRRRRRR. Sounds like some kind of vortex opened up in the studio and started sucking all the Beatles and their instruments into it. It’s fantastic.

Did you know the album sides were originally reversed? Meaning this song (and that ending) would have been their final statement as a band.

I had no idea. That’s spooky.

It leaves you with a whole different parting message than

And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make

Mm, tell me about it. Ending with “I Want You” would make it more of a “Don’t get sucked into Cthulhu’s gaping maw” kind of moral I guess.

So beginning with the ending - I can see where you’re coming from, but for me that section is too long for anyone who isn’t stoned -

Ha! I have no idea why (I’m not stoned, I swear) but I like that portion a lot, actually. Maybe it’s the metalhead in me coming out after all these years. I’d argue that the song’s structure does drag, but for me I’d say the drag’s more in the middle.

Yeah. We have the verse section repeated in two keys (Am and Dm) and they do the whole thing four times. They could have cut the Dm section in a verse or two (definitely in the instrumental verse). After all the Am and Dm verse sections both end on the same chord progression [G to Am].

Totally agreed there. At that point the repetition isn’t really necessary. The statement’s already been made. Kind of like when somebody makes a really wonderful point orally, but then drags the speech out for five more minutes just rehashing that in less interesting ways.

Have you seen the Across The Universe film - it’s like Mamma Mia but with Beatles songs?

No I haven’t! Is this song in it?

Yeah it’s the best video I've seen where the visuals mean something completely different to the original meaning of the song. Let me show you.

[We head for the matron's room and find her PS3 console next to the statue of the Virgin Mary, underneath the framed Ringo Starr 8x10. Matt cues up the video on Youtube while Tozier admires the religious iconography].

Tozier: I think this Ringo signature is fake...

Matt: Here we go...

Tozier: Hmm, that was interesting.

Matt: Interesting in a bad way?

No, not at all. The social context of the song is interesting and I can see why they choose this very moody, grinding song to accompany that scene. Out of the whole film’s context it’s hard for me to pass any judgment on, but the visuals were very interesting and surreal and terrifying, which is entirely appropriate given that they’re talking about a sucking wound that the U.S. tried to stop by shovelling bodies into it.

The film is worth checking out. I wondered how they did such a good job of making a logical sensible piece out of such disparate songs when other shows (We Will Rock You) are embarrassing and tacky. I think it’s 'cos A, there are a lot of characters in the Beatles songs and B, the lyrical meanings are deliberately vague.

Yeah, I can see why you’d say that. An ambiguous refrain is useful for more than just verse development, I guess.

[We head to the drawing room for brandy, cigars and a game of billiards. Tozier pots the final ball off two cushions in spectacular fashion]

Matt: Darn you and all your fancy Down Easter ways!! Anyway, getting back to I Want You. I can hear the seeds of where the music scene was heading in this song. There are hints of Alice Cooper, early Led Zeppelin - the rock dinosaurs were coming!

Tozier: Totally agree with you there. This is blues, getting more and more nasty, more distorted.

I think Jimmy Page, would have done a better job as a producer/arranger on this song than the Beatles did. As you said, once the Beatles have stated their themes they just repeat - he would have built and added more parts...

I would hope so. Is it true that the Beatles mixed this as a group?! That seems insane.

Well by this time Lennon, McCartney and Harrison were involved in mixing, but not all at once. Have you seen those old consoles? There weren't enough controls to have one each!

[Chokes back his brandy] Oh to be a fly on the wall... No, I hadn’t seen those. I think your comment on being stoned earlier hit the nail. This song sounds stoned.

If you want to get a feel for what equipment the Beatles had at their disposal just watch any old Frankenstein film.

The creature walks!!!

Yeah but just REAAAAAAALLLLLLLYYY SLLLLOOOOWWWWLY!

[Laughs] Indeed! More of a shuffle.

Speaking of which - did you notice Ringo goes into swingtime on the final bridge fade out. The man was a genius. Sorry. Is.

I hadn’t noticed that! But now that I think back, you’re right. I was just thinking before we started talking that rhythms are really responsible for what momentum this song has.

Does the fact that the tempo fluctuates bother you? The song is a composite of 3 different takes.

It does sound a bit patchwork, but I hadn’t ascribed it to the tempo. Some of the transitions are certainly awkward, but I think the tempo’s only an accomplice in that. Not so sure about the heavily swinging bridge section that always makes me think of elevator music.

Are you calling the Dm ascending thing the bridge or the stop start E7b9 thing? Oh! The solo!

The solo.

Yeah, right. It’s Santana or Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac at their snooziest.

That’s a good way of putting it. It’s like Santana’s still a little sedated from his flight in or something.

[Laughs]. Put me in George Martin's seat and the solo (or at least half of it) would be my first edit for sure. Can I not persuade you to trim the ‘fade out' a little though? I mean the song is 7:47 - guess how much of that is the final section.

Probably about half an hour of that is the end, yeah.

Close. 3:10. On one riff! I mean the famous Hey Jude fade is only slightly longer [3:59]. The only fills are Ringo (very good) and Paul (very bad). I’d use the word dribbly to describe his fills.

That’s probably what the lead sheet said: “Slowly; with dribbles” The more I examine the song, the more its holes are apparent, for sure. Don’t ask me why, but I stand by the outro riff. There’s something about a sinister groove that I like.

I can get on board with that – it IS a brilliant riff. And if you were going to play one riff over and over again I’d want it to be that. Why is it so great?

For one thing, as you said, Ringo is doing his best to keep it all rhythmically exciting. And really if this wasn’t done at high volume with distortion, it’d lose a lot of its power. And if they’d played that riff in a higher register, it’d be a disaster.

For me the power comes from having a chord progression [Dm, Dm/F, E7b9, Bb7, A aug] that's basically minor, but nearly every chord has an F at the top - giving you a b9 on the E7 and a #5 on A which turns it into A aug.

Yeah, there are a lot of different dissonant relationships to that note keeping everything tense. It all “resolves,” but uneasily. Which makes us want to hear another repetition. Or in my case, 4,000 repetitions please.

[Laughs] Listen, I'm gonna have to feed the guard dogs in the theology department in a minute. Thanks so much for dropping by. I'm gonna turn our chat into a blog post. What's one thing (a concept, progression or arrangement idea) you'd say songwriters could take away from this song for themselves?

I think a good general concept is to just go ahead and be downright freakish rather than be boring. This song has weak moments, but something still comes across for me. Sometimes when you go into relatively uncharted territory like this song did, you’ll have a certain risk of failure--but if they’d tried to reign this in and keep it safe, it wouldn’t be the fascinating flawed lumbering monster that it is, and nobody would remember it.


What about you?

I think the big lesson is to keep pushing yourself to try new things. Lennon kept attempting mantra type songs with few words or one chord songs and they usually failed. You Know My Name Look Up The Number degenerated into a comedy number. But this was a success (up to a point) and I think when they went back to more familiar territory they were better writers for having done it. No experiment is a failure if it makes you a better writer.

That’s a great way of putting it.

[A series of blood chilling howls pierce the stillness] That's Luther and Calvin. Gotta go!

OK. I'll pull the gate shut on my way out!

Yeah, but walk, don't run!



Nicholas Tozier is an independent singer/songwriter from Maine, US. He's the author of the highly recommended eBook 31 Days To Better Songwriting and blogs about songwriting (The Halted Clock), supplies creative writing prompts (Bottled Ink), and appreciates good music (Good Aural).

Matt Blick is a songwriter/singer from Nottingham, UK. He's the Ringo Starr professor of applied chronology at Beatles Songwriting Academy and blogs about his own songwriting journey at www.MattBlick.com.

12:12 Mean Mr Mustard

Another song fragment by John Lennon. Another minature portrait of an oddball person. You could be tempted to tar this song with the same brush as Polythene Pam. But this is actually a clever little piece.

Three over four

The first part of the melody is a three over four hemiola (Ticket 29).

Huh?

The musical backing is clearly in 4/4. But listen to the first part of the melody. It seems to be in 3/4.

Mean Mr Mustard
1        2    3
Sleeps in the park
1         2         3
Shaves in the dark
1          2         3
Tryin' to save paper
1             2      3

Led Zeppelin used this idea in a lot of their riff based songs, like Black Dog, Over The Hills & Far Away, Kashmir

This idea is carried over to the chorus where "mean old" and "ma-an" have the same three over four idea but this time running at twice the speed of the verse.

All this time bending shenanigans comes out in the open on the second chorus where they change from 4/4 to a 6/8 time signature. (Ticket 15)

Fine mustard

The other interesting thing is how similar the "sleeps in a hole in the road" tune is to the guitar riff in I Feel Fine. Have a listen for yourself and see what you think. If I ever get a chance I might do a podcast or video or something...

Lyrically it's a bit sloppy. Where does he sleep? A park? or a hole in the road? I think we should be told!

I love your jacket - what's it made of?

By the way, I love Complete Scores but those Japanese transcribers have some hilarious trainwrecks with the lyrics. "Saving up to buy soup clothes"? Really? Maybe soup clothes are big in japan...

Once again, like so many of the long one songs, it just about stands up in it's own right, but could use another verse (and a bit of a lyrical tidy up)

That's all for now. 40 songs down - only 171 more to go! Merrry Christmas, Happy New Year, thanks for reading so far - look out for the Sun King - arriving in Jan!

Blessed Are The Single-Taskers

On 15th Aug 1969, while the Woodstock festival was kicking off in Bethel, New York, George Martin & The Beatles were in London laying down the orchestral overdubs for five of the songs on Abbey Road . For once the Beatles weren’t at the centre of the musical universe. But more remarkable from a songwriter’s perspective this was one of the few times they worked on several songs at once.

Saving the world, one song at a time

Like every other songwriter on the planet Lennon & McCartney always had numerous ideas on the back burner but one thing they habitually did (in terms of recording) was work on every song to completion. They very rarely focused on more than one song at a time.

Just let that sink in for a moment.

Picture just about every band you know. They go into the studio to record an album. First they lay down all the drum tracks. With b-sides involved this may be up to 25 songs. And 25 bass tracks. And so on. Weeks may elapse between laying down each instrument. Once the initial scratch tracks are done the rest of the band may not even be present. And even at the point that the songs are tracked the vocal lines and lyrics may still be unwritten. That’s certainly the case with Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, U2 and Metallica.

The Beatles however went in and hammered away at a song till it was finished and only when it was in the can did they move on to the next one. The only modern artist I know of with a similar way of working is Prince.

Ever wondered how the Beatles (and Prince) were able to handle such a wide range of styles convincingly?

Because this way of working allows you to totally submerge yourself in the song. It’s just too hard to switch gears between being children’s entertainers one minute (Yellow Submarine) and drug-fuelled visionaries (A Day In The Life) the next.

Rather than getting stuck in a “rhythm guitar overdub” frame of mind this approach allows you to get into a “song XYZ” frame of mind. After all, how unified do an album’s worth of bass lines need to be? Not as unified as all the elements of a song do.

Doing a complete song in a short space of time also gives you a much clearer sense of the song’s merits. How many rhythm tracks have been laboriously polished only to discover that, when the vocal track arrives at the 11th hour, the song sucks?

False Economy

So why don’t more people do it the Abbey Road way? Well, when it takes a whole day to mic up a drum kit, it makes financial sense to record as many drum tracks as you can in one go.

Here’s a bunch of observations on that.

This way of saving money leads to poorer songs. Poorer songs = lower sales. Lower sales = less money. So the strategy is “hey, if we spend less money, we’ll make less money!” Not a great idea!

Creating a perfect drum sound has become a quest for the holy grail requiring a mic for every piece of the kit, a channel for every mic & e.q. & outboard effects for every channel. No wonder it takes so long. Is the amount of time and money spent worth it?

There’s a stunning lack of unified drum sounds even on individual Beatles tracks. But be honest. Have you ever noticed the change in drum sounds on She Loves You  (1:23) and Strawberry Fields Forever (1:00) or the accidental phasing on From Me To You  (0:06)? Or is your focus on the song?

Maybe we would be less anal about drum sounds if we were trying to capture more of the bigger picture all at once. Is the kit fetish a symptom of engineers always having to work with vocal-less tracks. Who knows?

What’s best?

What’s best for the band and the song should never be overruled by what’s most convenient for the studio and the producer.What a band needs most is a large room with some separation, which is most like their normal playing environment.

In the 60’s Abbey Road was a combination of outdated gear and huge rooms that was pretty much at the Beatles’ disposal 24/7. By comparison many modern studios are overstocked broom closets too claustrophobic for any band bigger than the White Stripes.

Space matters more than equipment. Really.

Some Application

If your Abbey Road is a laptop and a few mics there’s little advantage doing any instrument wholesale anyway. So immerse yourself in the song, finish it and move on.

In a ‘real’ studio keep the time from the first count in to the final overdub as short as possible. Even if you go back later and remix or rerecord (as they did with Strawberry Fields, Ob-La-Di & Hold Me Tight) you’ve still wasted less time and focus. If one song at a time sounds too radical, try thinking of your album as a collection of 3 track EPs. Finish each EP totally before moving on.

Try to write something out of your genre. A kid’s song, a thrash metal song, a hymn, a comedy number, an R&B jam. Give yourself to it for a few days. Complete it, mix it and move on. Devoting yourself to a single (left field) project for a few days could produce amazing results and even refresh you as a songwriter.


More Be-atletudes


Blessed are the Co-writers 

Blessed are the Limited

Blessed Are The Limited

This post comes hot on the heels of watching It Might Get Loud. An 'OK' film rather than a great one, it’s chief effect was to make me realise what a great band Led Zeppelin were. So I dug out a load of Zep to listen to, the chief effect of which was to make me realise what a great band The Beatles were.

Back to the film.

Seeing Jack White make an electric guitar out of a few bits of wood and a coke bottle threw into sharper relief the Edge’s struggle to find the right setting for ‘Pride’ on a pedal board with more effects than the entire Abbey Road studio (circa 1970) and more processing power than Mission Control, Houston (circa 2010).

Right there I got an insight into why the Beatles were able to produce so much, so quickly, and so consistently whereas U2 (and most of their contemporaries) produce so little.

Don’t underestimate the power of limiting your choices.

When you have only 4 tracks, a few instruments, and some reverb you quickly exhaust all the possibilities and you are faced with doing yet another take or just saying ‘let’s move onto the next song.’ Even at their most technically advanced the Beatles had less to play with than I do on the garage band-equipped Mac I’m typing this post on.

I’m convinced that one of the (many) reasons for the Beatles greatness was that they wrote and recorded so many songs. The more you do something, the better you become. Duh!

But here's my point -

The Beatles productivity was inversely proportionate to the number of gadgets they had to dick around with. Spending 2 hours deciding how much decay to put on the guitar echo and 2 days soundchecking a drum kit might mean you take 2 years to record an album. And 2 years in the studio will often need 3 or 4 years on the road to recoup the advance.

Comparisons can be misleading, I know. Bono takes time out to save the world whereas The Beatles practically lived in the studio.

Nevertheless -

In 7 years...

The Beatles recorded over 12 albums worth of material.

U2 recorded 5 albums. (And in the last 7 years they've only recorded 2).

I think there's a lesson to learn.

Do you need to limit your options?

Scratch that. Why don't you try limiting yourself, whether you think you need to or not?

Take a hard look at the following areas.

Time (both recording and mixing).

Number of tracks.

Places to record.

Number of people involved.

Instruments/gadgets/hardware used.

Related posts: Tom Morello on Limiting Yourself
Hugh MacLeod And Paul McGuinness On Limiting Yourself

Lessons from U2's coffee table