I recently stumbled upon a couple of Christmas songs in my back catalog. They’re quite slow and reminiscent of "The Red House Painters," of the most incredible slowcore bands ever.
For subscribers of Fire, Fire, Red Star Down only.
Reading Notes
6-8 Minute Read | Laptop or Tablet Recommended
Topics and Themes
Context in Marketing; Behind-the-scenes of Archive Volume Three; Fixing audio with Izotope RX; Stories overpower recording quality
I have to be mindful to avoid falling into a common musician self-promotion pitfall. You know the one, especially if you have a friend who's a musician:
“You should check out my music. I’m on Spotify, Apple Music, and all the streaming services. Tell me what you think.”
I'll admit, I've done this to many friends! The last time I complained about how promotion like this doesn't really work (because it doesn't), a friend of mine patiently reminded me that context is everything in marketing. Paraphrased:
"If I met a musician on the street and he said, 'Hey check out my music,' I wouldn't do it. But if he spoke more generally about the ideas surrounding music that he likes, if he talks about things about music that he gets fired up about, and then told me how his music fits into that context, I'm far more likely to check it out.”
It was so simple that I forgot it for a moment: Context means everything.
I recently began these Behind-The-Scenes articles to give some context (the first one was for Lodern by Wicked Cities From A Distance). They’re similar to the commentary you used to get with DVD releases: You learn about how the music was crafted and hopefully gain some insight into what inspired it. And of course, if you dig the music, it's great for both of us. If you’re not into the music, you might be interested to see how it all came together, and what inspired the album in the first place.
Today, I want to do a behind-the-scenes look about Grande Valley Auction Incident's new album Archive Volume Three:
The origin story of Archive Volume Three
As I mentioned before on this blog, I recently unearthed some old tapes in the closet of my studio. My curiosity got the better of me. I had to know what was on them. I dusted off my old cassette tape player and popped one of those tapes in. I was horrified by what came out of the speakers.
The horror gave way to a little bit of shock, which led quickly to annoyance. Couldn't I have done better than that?!?
After a couple of days of mental back-and-forth, I became curious about the songs. Isn't there a curious force, a weird magic behind these recordings? Couldn't I possibly fix them up? Couldn't I use it as a chance to get better at audio engineering? I was willing to try. Besides, things were far getting too serious and I needed a chance to poke fun at myself a little bit. What better way to have a little fun than to publish some excessively personal, depressing songs recorded almost twenty years ago on a terrible cassette recorder?!?
The process of repairing the audio
The first problem I ran into was fixing the audio because the songs were recorded on a subpar cassette recorder using an internal microphone. It would be generous to say that the sound quality was... rough. I needed to eliminate the hum of the gears and the grinding sounds picked up by the internal microphone. It took some experimentation to figure out how to get rid the audio of the nasty artifacts, but Izotope RX10 ended up the winner:
Izotope RX10 DeNoising Plugins
Since both the voice and guitar were recorded in one take with just one microphone, I couldn’t adjust the vocal volume seperately afterwords. I had to grab the Master Rebalance plugin for Ozone 9 to boost the vocals back up:
Master Rebalance plugin for Izotope Ozone 9
Finally, I needed to control the “ss” sound in the vocals, often called sibilance. If sibilence gets out of control, any "ss" I sang would sound harsh, piercing, jarring, and downright bad. I relied upon Ozone’s Dynamic EQ module and Soothe2 by Oeksound for "De-Essing," and it sounded passable:
Ozone’s Dynamic EQ module and Soothe2 by Oeksound
When I approached each track individually, I needed to surgically remove offensive frequencies lest they take over the mix. Neutron’s EQ module allowed me to do just that. For example, on the third song, Generational Fails, I made these adjustments:
Neutron’s EQ module on Generational Fails
Overall, the changes I made up to this point accounted for 80% of the results. The remaining processing involved addressing smaller issues on each track and adding light touches to the master track. I enjoyed figuring out how to make this sound as appealing as possible. To be brutally honest, I don’t think I achieved much. Lo-Fi music is still lo-fi music, and you can't really polish a turd.
The origin story makes the music interesting (hopefully)
Still, despite the white-hot emotional mess I was in when I recorded these songs, I feel a tiny bit proud of them. I try to remember that it isn’t really the recording quality that matters. I mean, sure, we musicians all want our music to sound really dope. Yet, throughout the history of recorded music, there have been a great number of songs that told such great stories that listeners looked past the poor recording quality and loved them anyway.
Not like that’s gonna happen with Archive Volume Three! Let’s be realistic here!
Putting my bias aside, perhaps the story of these songs transcends the bad quality of the recordings... that sincerity about what is true, open, unembellished, and raw in life. Maybe the strangeness of my life filters through the music. Maybe the isolation I felt echoes around after a listen or two. Maybe there's something endearing about watching a train wreck happen in real time. I highly doubt it, though. I can only be certain that these songs are proof that I used to wear my entire heart on my sleeve, and damn, it was pretty heavy.
I could barely conceal my feelings from anyone during that time. I was in a dark place. These songs documented that time of my life almost too perfectly, and maybe that's why I was so embarrassed about them at first. I don’t mind sharing them now. I guess I have enough distance! It’s fun to look back and shudder at the dumbass I used to be, and I’m sure that when I’m 60, I’ll feel the same way about who I am now.
Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Amazon
Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Amazon
Archive Volume Three album cover, by Grande Valley Auction Incident
Where did this terrible music come from?
I have a rule. Whenever I'm taking things too seriously, I need to poke fun at myself. And here's the way I'm gonna do that: The latest Grande Valley Auction Incident record, Archive Volume Three. This is a compilation of songs from my last year of graduate school, in 2003.
During that final semester. I felt all sorts of confused. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I was done with classical guitar as a potential creative path. Whatever interest I had in academia as a career evaporated. I wanted to get out of town, but I hadn’t graduated yet. I was lonely, misdirected, and totally weirded out by the world. It's little wonder these songs came out of me.
I recently found these songs hiding on a cassette tape in my closet. The discovery shocked me. It wasn't like Christmas morning. Unearthing them sent a shiver up and down my spine. I knew I was in for it, but I had no idea by how much.
I’ll tell you directly: Archive Volume Three contains laughably bad songs. The singing is terribly off. The recording quality is total shit. I captured them by pressing record on a vintage tape recorder and throwing a Hail Mary. The songs make me cringe, hard. Imagine if someone found and published your junior high diary. That level of cringe.
No matter what, we could all use a good laugh…
And yet, I’ve noticed more than a few burdensome external forces invading my thoughts. I sense a weight in the air. The world has weirded me out yet again. I feel completely in danger of taking life way too seriously. I can’t have that. Gotta lighten things up a little bit.
So, I offer these slow-core, lo-fi, piece of shit songs for your amusement. After I got over my initial shock of listening to them, I felt better. I hope you get a huge belly laugh out of them and feel better, too.
Grande Valley Auction Incident takes a look in the rearview mirror and asks, “Hey, what if the music that was created during ____ and ____ wasn’t actually all that bad?”
Archive Volume Two gathers all interesting instrumentals from 2001 to 2003 and brings them together into one whopping collection.
Bandcamp | iTunes | Apple Music | Amazon
iTunes | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Amazon
Archive Volume One houses 11 songs from my past, recorded somewhere around 2001-2004. I listened heavily to The Red House Painters and Godspeed You Black Emperor.
Bandcamp | iTunes | Apple Music | Amazon
