Guitar Gear Forum

does your band's music get stuck in your head?

mine used to very occasionally, almost never. lately, after writing some new stuff, its constant. when at work, and the music is off, my brain is constantly going through a mental soundtrack. being as scatterbrained and ADHD as i am, this normally goes through everything from george straight to slayer and rhiana or who fucking knows.

these past few weeks it has been constant Robo Cougar. completely unconsciously. ill be mentally grooving and think,"what is that? i love that. oh shit, its that new song we wrote!"

not narcissism or anything, just happens. a LOT.


is that an indication that its time to make an album? so many people make albums because its just what bands do and they need a recorded product. the good ones are ones with some sort of unifying atmosphere that work well together as songs, seemingly recorded because the songs needed to be heard, not just because the band wanted to justify their existence to the public.

with the right outside producing influence, i think this could be that time.

"no." ?

Happens to me all the time with songs I'm currently working on. Hell I was playing a riff last night when Amy got home and I caught her humming it a few minutes later.

As far as making the album, when I have 10 of those songs then I know its time.

it's getting to be like 6 or 7....those last few cant be far behind.

i have to be honest though: i think we need a producer. im all about full independence, etc. and i would want control, but i need someone who gets the idea and can herd us in the right direction production wise and suggest/comment on all the little here-and-there atmospheric parts that make the difference between 10 songs recorded and a real album. just sort of a sounding board.

we have some great minds in the band, but our communication of ideas sucks lol.

know anyone like that around here? friend of mine carter francis produces his own stuff, which i like. digging on the new Play By Numbers full length he just did.

I don't know anyone local that I trust. I co-produced my solo album with my buddy Anton out in LA, and I co-produced the BCB record with the engineer who worked on the album as well as the frontman.

The biggest thing I would suggest, even before a producer, although a knowledgeable producer can do wonders during this time, is pre-production. Part of that would be making rough demos of everything you want to record professionally. A couple mics in the room is fine as long as you can hear everything. That way songs that need arrangement tweaking, tempo adjustments etc etc are inescapable.

yup, just doing that now actually. an H4 in the center records much more nicely than expected, can hear everything clearly.

and if i recall, talking to carter, "producing" was just having a good engineer who could turn our sort of sound-effect mouth noise descriptions of what we want into reality. thats what im looking for. plus just an outside perspective, but a trusted one.

Y0UNGBL00D wrote:yup, just doing that now actually. an H4 in the center records much more nicely than expected, can hear everything clearly.

and if i recall, talking to carter, "producing" was just having a good engineer who could turn our sort of sound-effect mouth noise descriptions of what we want into reality. thats what im looking for. plus just an outside perspective, but a trusted one.

In my (admittedly) limited experience, the best producers are also musicians. For example, If my buddy lived out here, I would be bouncing every song I wrote off him. Like, "what do you think about the transition here? Should I make this major instead of minor? I have this verse but I need a transition riff into a chrous, what do you suggest? I'm not happy with this vocal melody, should try I try going down instead of up? I feel the guitar solo is too fast, should I try it slower? etc etc etc"

Also hearing harmonies is huge. I remember him telling me he not only helped arrange all of the horns for Ozomatli's 3rd record, but also helped create a lot of the harmonies. When we were tracking vocals for my solo album, he would suggest harmonies and then sing them to me so I knew exactly what he was talking about. In fact he did the same thing for Danny Bravo when I had him track back up vocals.

He's the type of producer that does writing sessions too, where you can bring in half finished songs in and he will help inspire and steer you in the right direction. Also helps he can play the shit out of guitar, bass and keys.

well tell that fucker to move out here haha

Yup. I'm my biggest fan.

what kind of stuff do you do? i need to chdeck out more gab peeps stuff. im only ever on here at work though

i guess what im trying to say too though, is that it used to pop in my head how i imagined it...if i had just written a guitar part, or part of a song, it would spring in, briefly, how i imagined it would eventually sound, and it was kind of abstract of course.

now they pop in how we're playing them, like an affirmation that all the parts are there.

The stuff I wrote, never played out, and has been with me for nearing twenty years, maybe more, and still gets stuck in my head from time to time is stuff I figure I should do something with. I'm constantly coming up with new stuff though, so it's a bit of a pain trying to carve out time to finish up old songs that seem to have taken on a life of their own.

One of mine I cooked up when I was still living at home I still catch my dad humming every once in a while. That's probably a good sign for that tune.

Y0UNGBL00D wrote:what kind of stuff do you do? i need to chdeck out more gab peeps stuff. im only ever on here at work though

I do a pretty varied assortment of melodic instrumental garbage, never to completion either. Well, I had a band for a minute and we managed to get a couple pieces "singer ready" and were starting to try out vocalists but then drummer moved away and long time bassist-music buddy got promoted in job and had to travel throughout Latin America. That was fun, but me just me.... wide variety of melodic instrumental garbage.

thats the other thing...we've gone instrumental, im no longer doing vocals.
im 50/50 about it. but when they play in my head, they are vocal-less and there is no drive to put vocals to them.

Hah yeah it's happened to me although only with two songs and just the melody lines from them.

And hell yeah, put that stuff on an album. Is there a compelling reason not to?

Y0UNGBL00D wrote:thats the other thing...we've gone instrumental, im no longer doing vocals.

They better be some really fucking entertaining songs.

no, ive wanted to for a while. its just now i have a reason more than "i want to make an album, ANY ALBUM! because it defines my legitimacy as a musician!" know what i mean?

Yeah man, I had the experience of recording my first full length in a real studio last fall. Such a great experience. But we definitely waited until we really had enough material and picked what we thought was the best fit. I think it all had a pretty cohesive sound.

how much input did you get from engineer/producer?

We did it all in one weekend and worked with two engineers. One of the guys was buddies with our singer so it was real chill but they asked a lot of questions about what we were going for and were super cool about offering suggestions and advice while letting us still do mostly as we pleased. We decided to record it "live" and they handled setting up all the mic's and stuff and were great at letting us play our takes and offering comments about performances, details, or just general advice. All in all, it was a great experience. They really worked with us and supported us to make it the best product it could be.

Absolutely. Usually trying to think how to improve it, and failing miserably