Steven Henningsgard

I had this completely messed up dream where I went to New York, met up with Jamie Roberts (PR, BigMachineMedia), Rob Blasko (Ozzy Osbourne), Maria Brink (In This Moment), and Bram from MetalInsider.net, and went clothing shopping, while the dudes from Metal Injection followed us around with a camera. We got like a billion hoodies and shirts and shoes, and ate burgers and drank Long Island Iced Teas. Then later, my Dad called and bought the whole band dinner at the way-too-nice-for-our-band restaurant downstairs at the hotel we’re staying at. It was nuts.

Oh wait, that really happened a couple of days ago. What a completely insane trip this has been.

We started off at an Army Surplus Store (not really our thing, but it was a convenient place to meet up) and I got an old pair of boots. I later discovered the sole needed to be re-glued, which I’ll do later, but overall they’re pretty comfy and practical. The guys think I should get some sweat pants and tuck them into the boots. I don’t share their Cannibal Corpse-inspired enthusiasm for said questionable outerwear, but it might need to happen simply for the sake of doing something ridiculous and embarrassing: something I have a well-developed natural penchant for any way, independent of outside influence. We’ll see. (Hint: nope.)

Next on the list was some sort of hipster thrift store, featuring such gems as leather pants (multiple colors, of course), torn up dresses, ironic button-up shirts, and what appeared to be a combination lighter/mini-dildo. I doubt a more convincing indie-rock-band-heaven-on-earth exists outside of LA. Unfortunately for the very nice people trying to help us find some decent clothes, we weren’t really digging it. It sort of felt like we were back in Junior High, and our moms were taking us shopping for new school clothes: absolutely pure in their intentions, but somewhat fuzzy on the details of modern teenage fashion. I felt a little bad about turning down their suggestions, especially considering Maria and Blasko had been flown out from California just to help us out, but a large part of marketing is knowing your audience, and the people that we know that listen to our music would be pretty pissed off if we ended up changing our image. I really doubt that anybody involved with the contest wanted that at all.

I’d imagine it’d be hard to figure out what to do if charged with enhancing a metal band’s image: part of the point of metal is that it doesn’t really matter what you look like or what you wear, as long as you’re honest about it. I can understand the point of presenting a somewhat unified image though. If everyone in the band is wearing similar-themed stuff, and then one guy’s wearing some sort of insane retro-80′s-neon-throwup getup, that’s very likely going to throw some people off in a not-great way. Even metal fans can fickle and image-driven, sometimes more so than other genres’ fans. Just look at what happened to Metallica the second they cut their hair. With that simple decision, their entire image changed. Accompanied by the not-subtle change in their music, we were left with essentially a completely different band. Would Metallica fans have felt the same way about the band’s new sound if they’d kept their long hair and standard metal-band getup? What if the band had cut their hair just before releasing Master of Puppets? Would that album have been received as well? Obviously, I don’t have the answers, but it leaves you with something to think about. What if Metallica looked like the guys in Cobra Starship or Ratt when they put out “Kill ‘em All”? Hell, part of the reason they were so popular is because they looked like regular metal dudes, not glammed-up chicks.

Fortunately, us Iron Thrones dudes mostly wear pretty standard stuff when it comes to metal bands: jeans, t-shirts, & hoodies. Unfortunately for the people charged with enhancing our image, there’s really not much you could do to make us look like we sound, and so with very few exceptions, we ended up just getting more of pretty much exactly what we already owned. We also found that the budget we had to work with went quite a long way when purchasing “normal dude” clothes, vs. hipster stuff. The only slightly out-of-character purchase ended up being my boots, which I’d been needing for a while as the tread on my previous pair had worn out, causing me to fall on my ass several times last winter.

Any way, I’d say the biggest take-away from this experience was coming to realize just how much a band’s image is intimately connected with perceived legitimacy, particularly in the metal scene, whether or not most metal fans would like to admit it. This is especially true now that we’re in a time where most people end up seeing a band before they even hear them. First impressions are everything, and the image you portray has a very real affect on how people experience and interpret your music.

Cheers,
-steve.h

Apologies for the lack of updates. One of the first things you’ll learn when recording an album on a tight time schedule, is that there’s rarely much time for anything else. This is especially true when the music isn’t completely written (writing complete songs while in the studio is either a rare and expensive luxury, or a great way to make shitty tunes). Fortunately, we were 90% of the way there when we got here, and by the end of preproduction I’d say we were 95% done. The rest is being figured out along the way, and I think it’s turning out fantastically! Will is truly an inspiration to watch, especially from a beginner producer/engineer’s point of view. He edits as we’re tracking, and deletes bad takes with ruthless efficiency, which makes for some incredibly clean project files. I’ll be changing the way I work within sessions for sure. I’ve also noticed that much of the editing within Logic (the program we’re using to record) is very similar to editing within Reaper, and while I still think Pro Tools’ drum editing is superior, Logic looks to be vastly superior when it comes to project management and pretty much everything else. Because Reaper is such an inexpensive and customizable program (not to mention very DIY/Independent-minded), I think I’ll be using it as my primary rig hence-forth.

Tracking for the album is going extremely well. Pete kicked out the drums in 2 days, leaving an extra full day for overdubs and other fun craziness (I’ll try to get Pete to explain in more detail, as I wasn’t there for said overdubs. I do know a huge 26″ kick drum was used for something, and I heard tales of shakers…). After that came a full day of editing for Will (he’s a big fan of doing multiple takes, and taking the best pieces of each to make a whole), while we went out to New York for the “shopping spree” portion of the contest. I’ll get into detail about that some other time, as we did learn some interesting things about image and such. Before anyone gets their panties in a bunch, I’ll give away the ending: 95% of the stuff we got was different colors/versions of clothes we already owned and wore every day. I did get a couple of pairs of pants, which pretty much completes the trip for me.

Any way, back to the album! We’re in the middle of guitar/bass tracking right now, going song-by-song and piece-by-piece. We’ve been using different amps and distortion pedals for each section/movement, as well as layering a couple at a time for overdubs. It’s really quite cool to hear how the characteristics of each type of distortion help keep the song moving. For example, using a morbidly crushing tone for a slow heavy part, and a faster shred tone for faster shred parts, helps to accentuate the difference between parts and make for a very dynamic sound. All-in-all, we’re using around five different pedals and four different amps, sometimes chaining two different distortion pedals together. I’m not in the mood to check my math, but I think that makes for 60 different combinations. Add in the obvious tweakability of each pedal/amp, and multiple channels for each amp, and you’ll start to get an idea of the range of sounds we’re using on this album. Epic. That’s how many.

That just about concludes this update. There’s a lot more to tell, but I need to go track some more guitars in a couple of minutes and there’s one thing I’d like to address before leaving. Some of you have asserted that my posts up until now have been largely inane, speaking more of hotel/bagel problems than of any real content. I do admit that as a participant in a contest geared towards teaching independent bands the ins and outs of the industry, I do have an obligation to share my experiences and knowledge-gained with the world, and this journal would seem to be the logical place to do so. That being the case, these writings were originally posted on my personal website, with the intention of keeping family and friends updated on the contest and on myself personally. Shortly after posting the first six days, it was suggested that these journals might be some fun and potentially useful content to share on the No Label Needed website, and so they were posted (as you can see!) This was one of two reasons that the first few posts are generally lacking in any real content; the second being that not much went on in the first week. We flew in, met Shadows Fall for a day, drove to New Jersey, and didn’t really do a hell of a lot else up until pre-production started.

As one person hinted at in the comments section of one of the blog posts, part of being in a band that’s working with larger organizations is learning to “hurry up and wait”. Schedules have to be coordinated, things get pushed back, shit happens, etc., and sometimes you’re left waiting for a couple of days (or in some extreme cases, months or more). Learning how to be patient in these situations and to utilize the time given to you is a very important lesson to learn, as I’ve found out in the last couple of weeks. Had I known just how unprepared I was for some of the guitar tracking, I would’ve been practicing my ass off during those days off (as Curt was: he’s a smart guy!). That’s another good lesson to keep in mind: never leave any parts of your songs to chance. If you’re not absolutely 100% on something, you need to work on it over and over and over again. Get a laptop right now, throw Reaper or Garageband on it, and record your entire album front-to-back before even thinking of getting into an expensive studio where time is a factor. Unless you have the kind of budget that allows for weeks of just writing within the studio, you’ll just be wasting everyone’s time by not having everything 100% ready. Even worse, you’ll be taking time away from experimenting with fun overdubs and such, which can ultimately result in a relatively sparse and stale recording, depending on how things get done. In our defense, we found out we’d won only a couple of weeks before flying down, and had to ship the drums out the week before we arrived, so we were somewhat pressed for time, but I could’ve done a lot more preparation, and you can be damn sure I will next time!

Fortunately, things have been going smoothly and tracking is going extremely well. Much like everything related to this contest, we’ve been lucky

Cheers,
-steve.h

*NOTE: I’ve changed the names from “Day X” to “Update X”, as I’ve had very little time to think about blogging, and as such a lot of the content will be out of chronological order and updated sporadically.

We decided it’d be a good idea to wake up a little early today, so we could get a good start before heading to the studio. For some reason, it would appear that this hotel has decided to put a modest spread of bagels and various pastries out at 6:00 AM, and then stop refilling it past a certain point (breakfast ends at 11:00). I can say with some certainty that the “certain point” at which they stop is somewhere well before 8:00, as there was very little left by the time Adam and I got down there. I don’t mean to sound unappreciative of our free club-level continental breakfast: it’s really quite wonderful to have, and generally tastes quite good. It just seems somewhat odd to run it the way they do. Perhaps they had a huge crowd this morning that cleared them out? Or is it possible that there is a widespread bagel shortage nobody told us about?

Any way, we each had a croissant with a thick piece of chocolate in the middle of it (a questionable decision on the baker’s part) and some juice, and then went to check on Pete and Curt. When we walked in, we immediately noticed the water slowly dripping down from the ceiling. Curt mentioned it to a passing housekeeping lady, who got one of the hotel managers to come take a look. They decided it’d be best to have the guys switch rooms when we got back from the studio, which was fine with them as their keys had both ceased to work, as had mine. At least we now know why Pete couldn’t get into their room that one night.

Aching to get started on our record (and not being super-stoked on being at the hotel at that particular moment), we decided to head out to the studio a bit early. Although we were immediately greeted by a cold, rainy New Jersey day, our spirits couldn’t be dampened: we were going to the studio! We had a relatively good idea of where it was (two blocks away), but ended up getting directions to the correct building by a possible mob guy, who apparently owned the place. Once we got inside, we followed the signs to The Syndicate (the “big cheese” company running the whole show), where we found Will (Putney, our Producer) and Machine (our other Producer) hanging out with Marc in his office. We exchanged handshakes and greetings, and immediately got a good vibe. It really seems like everybody involved with this project is really excited to be working with us! Which, as you might imagine, only adds to the surreal-ness of this whole experience. This is certainly the strangest experience of my entire life, bar none.

Eager to get down to business, Will gave us a brief studio tour. It turns out The Machine Shop is literally across the hall from The Syndicate, and is clearly a very DIY and even somewhat modest operation (in some ways: the wall of boutique guitar amps is decidedly un-modest). It’s clear why they’re involved with the contest!

While Pete was setting up his drums, will let us know the game plan. For the next three days, we’ll be doing pre-production at The Machine Shop. Then, drum tracking at a different place (with a larger room for a better natural drum sound), and the rest back at The Machine Shop. It’s nice to know that the budget for this album allowed for so much time/attention to detail: it’s pretty much guaranteed to sound completely ridiculous. We’re so far beyond stoked at this point, it almost hurts!

Once Pete had his drums set up, we immediately got down to business tracking for pre-production. Because I’m really tired and have some studio homework to do, I’ll likely detail the process in a later blog, but essentially pre-production consists of laying down the tracks as we have them, then messing with tempos and arrangement, dealing with any weak spots and re-writing parts if necessary. It’s been really interesting to hear Will’s thoughts on the songs: he essentially pinpointed exactly the parts we knew were weak beforehand, and called us out on them. I couldn’t believe how quickly he caught each and every weak spot that we’d let slide, and set us to work figuring out something killer to replace it. As an aspiring producer/engineer, it’s really very inspiring.

After a quick lunch break (Thai food!), I had a brief meeting with Marc, just to catch up. It turns out the aforementioned food budget is indeed real! We’re saved! Thank yoooou Marc/Scion/Syndicate!

I ran back to tell the guys, who were equally excited, and we got back to work tracking another song. Machine came in while we were working on the track, and took the time to chat with me about the record, and about production/engineering in general. It was nice to know that he/Will didn’t plan on heavy quantizing/editing/sound-replacement on the drums (which made us all happy, especially Pete), and that generally the production style he uses is largely dictated by the band. It turns out that the albums he’s worked on that have robotically-accurate drums, were made so at the behest of the bands themselves, which I find interesting. I can’t relate to artists would want their performance to be artificially changed, but I feel like I do understand their point of view. Robotically-accurate performances are simply part of their art: that’s the sound they’re going for. Again, I can’t relate, but whatever floats your boat I guess.

As day turned to night, Will left us to work on some of the new parts we’d written. We hammered out a few ideas, but burnt out rather quickly after a full day of playing. Walking back through the rain, we started to realize the full scope of just how much work we had left to do. Curiously, as the reality was sinking in, the idea of food and beer at Houlihans became more and more appetizing. Adam, Pete, and I gave in to the craving, and had a good discussion about the record. The waitresses were slightly odd in a way I can’t easily describe, but were inarguably quite nice.

Burnt out and ready for sleep, we made it back into the hotel (where we AGAIN discovered our keycards were non-functional) and happily dove into our beds, with the hopes of getting some decent rest in our heads. That rhymed, and reminded me of a quote from some Dr. Suess Christmas story I can’t quite put my finger on.

Cheers,
-steve.h

P.S. Apologies for the delayed posts: it’s going to be hard work from here on out, and some days might need to be condensed or put-off until I have time. I’ll do my absolute best to keep these blogs daily, for those of you who are interested in our progress!