»Notes: Man of Clay

I recorded this song in what is becoming my usual way of starting off with a couple of riffs and then building drums, guitar, vocals and other parts around it. I think this has its advantages sometimes but I need to get back into the habit of actually coming up with songs away from the computer first, and practicing them beforehand. That way I can be more brutal.

More than one person has noted the opening riff of this song sounds Nirvana-ish, which I really can't account for seeing as the only Nirvana song I've heard is 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' (obviously). It wasn't my intention in this song to a) be so grunge, or to b) come off so comparatively mellow. I'm not a great fan of grunge.

My plan for the song was to build it up starting with the bass part. Usually I base songs on a combination of guitar riffs and drum patterns. Another song which I started from a bassline was 'Oberon' and I think the similarity shows. Aside from this, my only real concrete ideas for the song before recording were to do something slow (i.e. <150bpm). I was thinking a lot about Entombed's 'Say It In Slugs' whilst I was playing around on the bass coming up with the main riff. I don't think I really got quite what I was initially looking for.

I didn't use my multi-fx pedal at all in this song which made the delay effects a bit more difficult to work with seeing as the controls are so limited and there is no easy way to switch the effects channel on and off on my amp. However, the distortion on my Marshall is way fucking better than the distortion I usually use on my pedal. Without the effects pedal I had to improvise the volume swells with the volume potometer on my guitar. I was surprised how well that worked. I think only using the amp a) helped the recording session not to become long and bloated and b) encouraged me to be more creative with what I was doing guitar-wise.

I have been growing very fond of using my bass with the distortion on my amp, I discovered how awesome this sounded during the Goats I-IV session at JK's house.

I wasn't very pleased with the lyrics I could come up with. I find it hard writing lyrics and should spend more time on them outside of recording sessions and should probably stick to themes and topics that I know.

In the interest of further experimentation, I decided to bring the lower vocals to the fore of the mix and restrict my usual higher vocal style just to the chorus. I was pleased with how this turned out and may use the lower style more to develop it.

These are mostly here for my convenience.