tangemeenie blog

A Shout Out to the UK; Release Date Announcement; More on the Way

2009-06-02T18:24:00.001-07:00

Just a couple of quick items to announce. First, the "official" digital retail release of "The Gilded Age" has now been set for 9/8/2009. That's when you can expect to start seeing it offered in all the major digital download stores, like iTunes and eMusic.

In what some might consider a blatant disregard for our own commercial interests (and what others are just as likely to interpret as a cynical self-promotional gimmick), we're now planning to extend the availability of the free download version of "The Gilded Age" through the end of this month.

Why? Because one of our readers/listeners was recently generous enough to create properly tagged versions of the MP3 files for us (I'll admit it--I was the lazy one who only posted untagged files), and we think it'd be a shame to let the effort go to waste. Now the new tagged MP3s are available when you download the full album through this blog.

So we offer a grateful shout out to Phil in the UK who created the new and improved, meticulously tagged MP3 files for us, and we invite you to keep helping yourself to our hearty all-you-can-eat musical buffet until the end of June.

Tell your friends about the free downloads and your enemies about the digital release.

Finally, I hope to find time to start posting a series of articles on the technical and non-technical aspects of producing and releasing a DIY album like "The Gilded Age" soon, with a particular focus on how the entire production process can be carried out from end-to-end with only a few relatively inexpensive tools. It's also been suggested I discuss some of the tools and techniques available to independent artists hoping to use the internet to promote their music, so that topic should eventually get some coverage here as well.

All this and more to come soon.

Lori and Steev in New Photos

2009-05-08T21:12:00.001-07:00

Steev, Lori and the Uke.
Originally uploaded by Cloud 13 Records

We recently shot a number of promotional photos. Here are a handful of them. The ukulele was my idea.

Lori's expression seems to be signaling a sort of rye amusement. Possibly, she thinks my idea to pose with the uke was silly.

In any event, click on the photo to view more photos from the Tangemeenie photostream on Flickr.

Orders for the new CD are still coming in steadily, so thanks again for all the support.

Low-Flying Airplane Carrying a Banner that Says "Buy Now"

2009-05-04T21:49:00.000-07:00

So we're a few days in now, and orders have started coming in at a steady pace. I mailed out the first batch of CDs this morning, so if you ordered one, it should be arriving in the next few days (probably a week at the latest). We've also had some donations for downloads.

Thanks to everyone for helping get us off to a good start! We've already got orders spanning four states, NY, CA, MS, and FL.

We'll keep you posted with more news, photos and other goodies soon.

"The Gilded Age" -- Available Here, Now

2009-04-21T20:32:00.000-07:00

"The Gilded Age" is now available for a limited time only through this blog. You can order or download it using the options on the right sidebar of this page.

The final track-listing, for those of you downloading the album, is below.

NOTE: If sequencing whole album for use in a play list or burned CD, tracks marked with an asterisk should be preceded by at least a 2 second pause. All other tracks should not be preceded by a pause.

01 - The Memory Hole
02 - 1,000 Tiny Knives
03 - Flesh & Bone
04 - Underwater Silent Film
05 - Secret Book
06 - King Flesh & Bone*
07 - Left Hand/Right Hand
08 - The Gilded Cage*

Late for a Very Important Date

2009-03-23T19:35:00.000-07:00

Well, as the more astute readers out there have probably noticed, the date I'd originally been hoping to start offering our first limited release of "The Gilded Age" has come and gone. Illness in the Tangemeenie household, along with a delay in the shipment of our CD packaging and other factors, are forcing me to push the date back a few more weeks.

But never fear--it's still coming soon. The new planned release date (and this one can be considered firm) is April 21st.

We don't plan to do much beyond word-of-mouth promotion for this initial release, so please, tell anybody you know who might be interested to drop by and check out the blog and download the free MP3 version of the album, which we'll be offering here for a few weeks when the limited physical CD release first goes on sale.

Sometime after that, we'll do a full digital retail release and release "The Gided Age" through the Cloud 13 Records' online store.

Viva el Progreso!

2009-02-15T02:56:00.000-08:00

For the longest time now, I've been meaning to post photos of the project studio and short-run CD production set up that I'm using to produce "The Gilded Age." It only seems reasonable to give you a look at the specific tools I'm using, since the point of this blog is to document the process of making "The Gilded Age," and since such a major part of what makes the whole project unique is the particular tools involved.

Tonight I finally got around to taking a couple of quick pics of the workspace and figured I would share them along with the latest updates on where the project stands right now.

This first image is the view of my desktop workspace. As you can see, really the only conspicuous piece of music production gear here is that condenser mic standing there. That and big jumbles of instrument cables in all the drawers are really all that distinguish my audio production workspace from an ordinary home office setup, to the naked eye, when I'm not actively laying down new tracks (then the only difference is there are instruments scattered everywhere, too).

I use ordinary computer speakers and a pair of $100 studio headphones for monitoring. I don't use a DAW control surface or anything like that; I just use software mixers (which means my working method entails lots of clicking around the screen with my mouse to tweak virtual faders and knobs--it's a nuisance, sure, but worth it to save a grand or two). That squat purple and gray device on the far left of the frame is my thermal CD printer, which I'm also including another, closer shot of below.

This next photo (sorry it came out a bit blurry) is just a shot of the space below my desk, where the computer tower and digital audio interface sit on the left, and the CD duplicator tower sits on the right.

I built my PC out of spare parts and the cheapest, most feature-rich new components I could find over the years. It's actually got pretty modest technical specs, with a 1.70 GHz Pentium 4 processor (overclocked to run closer to 1.9 GHz) and only 512 MB of RAM.

My external audio interface--that cigar shaped device with the orange light on it--connects to a PCI sound card that can mix and process audio internally at ridiculously high bit-rates. The interface itself only provides two direct inputs for tracking (not including the digital I/O pipes, which I rarely use), but both are clean, phantom-powered mic pres, so they're all I really need for overdubbing.

The duplicator tower burns and verifies 4 CD-Rs at a time at high speeds. I have to manually feed and unload blank CD-Rs into it, which can be tedious, but at least it's four times less tedious than it might otherwise be.

Finally, this is a close shot of my thermal CD printer. It's a smaller desktop version of the industry standard short-run printing technology--if I'd had another $5,000 or so to sink into it, I could have gotten one with an auto-loader and a receiving bin for running as many as 1,000 discs at a time without lifting a finger.

This model produces a finished product that's just as polished, but it requires each disc to be fed in by hand. It prints in high-gloss, full-color directly onto a special grade of printable CD-R, using a three-panel thermal print process, so the quality is indistinguishable from most commercial retail CD products.

We invested in this printer and the duplicator tower about four years ago (at a combined cost of right around five grand), and have printed somewhere between four to five thousand CDs since, both for the artists on Cloud 13 Records (the CDs we advance bands to sell at live shows), and for various other paying clients, musicians and non-musicians alike.

So that's a quick tour of the audio production studio, graphics design shop, and CD production facility that made "The Gilded Age" a reality.

Now for those updates I promised. The CD insert artwork has been sent off to the printers. I'm waiting for the prepress proofs to arrive any day now. Assuming the proofs look good, it should be another week or two before the inserts and jewel cases arrive. And once they do, I'll be able to start burning and printing CDs, and assembling the packaging.

My previous experience has been that I can turn around a batch of about 50 copies of fully packaged CDs in a single evening without having to stress too much. So it shouldn't take more than a week to produce the 150 copies that will be sold here through the blog.

If everything goes as planned, I'm now aiming for a release date of March 24th. Tentatively, that's the date we'll first start offering the limited issue handmade CDs for sale here. We'll also start offering the whole album for download in MP3 format here in return for an optional donation on that date.

That's all for now. It's late. I'm going to bed.

Free "Faust"! Get Your Free "Faust" Here!

2009-02-01T18:36:00.000-08:00

To begin ramping up for the release of "The Gilded Age," I'm going to start this month off by offering our previous album, "Faust," in its entirety as a free download from this site.

(While you're here, you might consider giving "The Gilded Age" a quick listen, too. You can stream the latest versions of all the tracks in the jukebox on the right sidebar of this page.)

Released back in 2001, "Faust" doesn't have much in common with "The Gilded Age" musically, but it represents my first effort to produce a full-length that could pass for a big budget release using only cheap digital gear.

A lot of the stylistic choices I made on that album were driven, in fact, by the limitations of the gear at my disposal and the constraints of the challenge I'd set for myself.

For example: against all my instincts as a working musician, I made generous use of pre-fab drum and percussion loops on "Faust." Why? Because properly recording acoustic drums would have called for not only a decent mic mixer (which was well beyond the budget for "Faust") but also several more good microphones than were available to me--and even then, as most audio engineers will vouch, drums are the most challenging instrument to work with in the studio.

Even under optimal studio conditions with expensive gear, trying to get a clean mix around acoustic drum tracks can be a royal pain if you're not an experienced audio engineer (and I wasn't).

So I put aside any lingering qualms about the authenticity of the process, and set about doing whatever I needed to do to achieve the best results.

There's some more general background info on "Faust," including more about the overall recording process, here on my personal blog. The rest of this post will include lyrics and liner notes for the individual tracks, in the order in which they appear on the album.

The title of each track below is a link to a high-resolution MP3 (256 kbps) of the track. Click here to download the entire album at once in a zipped file format (66.5 MB download).

INSIDE THE MOON

This one was supposed to introduce the major theme of the album, its organizing concept being the Faustian bargain. I always imagined it being sung by a Mephistopheles-type figure as he makes his seductively worldly sales pitch ("make your heart too black to break...", etc.). I thought by establishing this theme early it would be harder to miss. Somehow none of this came across to reviewers of the album, who almost all made a special point of mentioning how they didn't get the connection to the "Faust" myth.

THEME FROM TANGEMEENIE

Buh-buh-buh buh-buh-buh-buh-buh buh buh buh buh buh-buh. (Repeat.)

A loving homage to mindless commercial soundtrack music. This was supposed to be the theme song to a movie ("Faust: The Movie") about a young music school washout who strikes a Faustian bargain to begin a lucrative career in the commercial TV and film soundtrack industry.

UNDERWATER CAVES

This was supposed to be another lyric reinforcing the Faustian theme, only in this case Mephistopheles' sales pitch takes the form of a siren song that invites the listener/protagonist to participate in their own willing self-destruction. The 'secret fire' represents the temptation of exotic and mystical pleasures. Like any good siren song, this one is meant to lure sailors to their doom.

INVISIBLE HAND

We were frequently very, very broke during the period of time when these lyrics were written.

CALIFORNIA

[Instrumental.]

A loving instrumental tribute to cheezy movie soundtrack music. This was also meant to be a track from the soundtrack to "Faust: The Movie"

SEAM

I wrote this song while looking out over the wing of our plane as Lori and I flew back from Germany, where we had been forced to abruptly call off our honeymoon after getting the news that my grandmother had died unexpectedly. Somehow it came out as a happy, Os Mutantes influenced pop-song complete with buh-buh-buhs. It was a case of trying to turn lemons into lemonade, I guess.

FAUST

[Instrumental.]

The main title theme song to "Faust: The Movie," another left-handed tribute to the soundtrack genre.

ENERGY

This one is unusual for the fact that Lori wrote the lyrics and sequenced the entire arrangement herself. My only contributions to this track are the guitar parts. It was briefly a big hit on the internet music charts in France. Lori has told me it was written about a beautiful experience we shared one evening, sitting on a hill outside our old apartment, during which she looked up and could literally see radiant energy moving along the overhead power-lines.

Goodbye to This, Hello to That...

2009-01-09T19:38:00.000-08:00

With New Year's Eve still fresh in memory, the new Tangemeenie record soon to be released, a new President about to take office, and so many far-reaching historical changes underway, the theme of letting go of the old in order to more graciously embrace the new somehow seems especially timely.

This post is in keeping with that theme of "out with the old, in with the new." The free download I'm posting now (an outtake named "Clueless") was, in a round about way, the track that first got the ball rolling for "The Gilded Age."

It was written and recorded just after our other band, Pocket Novel Mystery ("PNM"), broke up and then briefly reformed with a new line up. Around that time, Lori and I found ourselves caught in a flood of painful developments in our personal lives. We got bitter about things for a while, and a little of that bitterness found its way into this song.

This recording began as a test of my new project studio set up. It was--if not the first--among the first recordings I made using my new audio I/O interface. Listening back to it now, it's pretty obvious I hadn't quite figured out how to engineer a recording on my new rig. And at the time, I didn't own a condenser mic.

Also, I sort of backed my way into recording the song--by which I mean, I recorded it initially with only an acoustic guitar (no click track; no lyrics or vocals) playing as a scratch track.

It was meant to be a crude demo, with guitar and voice only (as soon as I got around to writing the lyrics, of course). Then I decided to record drums for it. So I took my old portable studio out on a field trip.

I kept my drums at a friend's house, where some other local musicians and I used to get together every couple of weeks to play noise rock. With a pair of cheap Sony headphones slipping out of position even as they gave me tinnitus--blasting away at full-volume, but still barely audible over the clatter of the trap kit--I tried to play along to the mix of rhythm guitars as the tape rolled. I only added the bass track later. So instead of the conventional order for tracking a set-up like this (i.e. DRUMS --> BASS --> GUITARS), I recorded in this order: GUITARS --> DRUMS --> BASS.

You'll probably notice I drop a beat here or there. Still, this track's redeemed in part (at least in my mind) by the epic, swelling heavy metal climax that kicks in about 1:58 seconds in.

Here's the link: Clueless (256 kbps)

Clueless: Found yourself a mark / sitting in the dark / waiting to be scarred: / you should be ashamed, / I hope you're ashamed. / Found yourself a star, / hitched it to your car, / shifted out of park, / and rode it away, / you rode it away. / Because you are so completely clueless, baby. / So completely lost and lonely. / Broke somebody's heart, / blamed it on your "art," / made another start, / now you can't complain. / No, you can't complain. / Found yourself a mark / sitting in the dark / waiting to be scarred: / you should be ashamed, / I hope you're ashamed. / Because you are so completely clueless, baby. / So completely lost and lonely.

What's Next for "The Gilded Age"

2008-12-14T19:25:00.000-08:00

The good news, of course, is that after two years of on and off production (much of it more off than on), "The Gilded Age" is finally almost ready for its release. But the even better news is this: For at least the first few weeks, we're going to offer the whole thing in glorious, high-quality MP3 format for free download through this site (you'll have the opportunity to donate any amount you'd like in return, but you won't be obligated to make a donation). We'll also provide high-resolution files of the CD-insert artwork and the CD face that you can download, so you can burn and package your own CD if you like.

At the same time, we're going to press a limited run of 150 CDs on the same desktop computer we used to complete all the other aspects of making "The Gilded Age." These CDs will be pressed using our own industrial grade short-run CD printer, and will feature full-color, thermal transfer printing on the face--in other words, even though we're making them on our home computer, they'll look like commercial retail CDs. The remaining printed material (CD inserts and tray cards) will be produced by an outside, short-run print shop, but all the CD artwork and other printed materials will be designed and prepped for press using the same desktop computer used to record, mix and master the finished recordings. We'll number, assemble and shrink-wrap the packaging for each CD in the limited release by hand.

Finally, we'll also offer a version of the physical CD through the Cloud 13 Records on-demand store. That version of the CD won't be numbered and won't be manufactured by us, but it will still be produced on-demand. We'll probably also release the CD through digital retailers like iTunes, at a later date, but you might as well get it free from us before then.

In the meantime, while we're working through all the little stuff that's left to do, keep checking back here regularly for updates and the release date announcement. I'll also be posting more downloads of outtakes/demo recordings that didn't make it to the record in the next couple of weeks.

D'oh. Fixed Bug with Jukebox.

2008-12-10T12:59:00.000-08:00

Just found and corrected a bug with the Flash jukebox player feature on the sidebar. If you were having trouble loading it before, you should find the problem resolved now.

Sorry about the hassle.

Stop, Look and Listen

2008-12-08T18:08:00.000-08:00

As promised, the jukebox now features a full-quality streaming preview of the "The Gilded Age." The tracks are mastered and in the proper album sequence in the playlist, the only difference being that the audio player inserts a couple of seconds gap before each track which won't be there on the finished CD.

So the final track listing is:

Memory Hole
1000 Tiny Knives
Flesh & Bone
Underwater Silent Film
Secret Book
King Flesh & Bone
Left Hand/Right Hand
The Gilded Cage

More updates coming soon about what happens next...

Back from the Brink

2008-12-07T19:02:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend Lori and I were shut in because our two-year-old son Ander is currently under quarantine with a common respiratory bug.

Fortunately, his condition has improved considerably since Thanksgiving weekend when he first came down with a fever and started showing the other symptoms of the virus, but because tests late last week showed he was still contagious, we're under doctor's orders not to take him out in public.

The upside of all this bad news has been that I've had a little extra time lately (with Ander sleeping a lot more than usual) to work on the album. So now, I'm pleased to report I've completed the final mixes and many of the other finishing touches for "The Gilded Age." I'll be updating the jukebox with streamable, high resolution MP3s of all the tracks from the album in the coming days.

The next step, of course, is when the really difficult and dull work begins.

In the meantime, here's a peek at the album cover artwork (lovingly repurposed from a Soviet propaganda poster design). Check back soon. Things should start happening a lot more quickly now.

The Long Hard Slog...

2008-11-25T13:35:00.001-08:00

Well, the good news is we're finally done with recording all the basic tracks for the record (including all the lead vocals). As of this past Veterans' Day, Lori finished recording the last of her lead vocal tracks. Now the real work starts.

Mixing. It's the bane of my existence. I've never really felt I knew what I was doing on a mixing board in the past--so basically, I just mixed by trial and error, trusting my ear while blindly turning knobs and twiddling with faders. This time around, I've been educating myself and trying to take all the right steps to get the best possible results. Which means, of course, a lot of reading and revisiting things I formerly thought I understood.

Anyway, I've been mixing obsessively late into the night for a couple of weeks now (pulling all-nighters until as late as 3:00--3:30 AM on the weekends). The results, I think, are turning out to be worth the extra effort. The goal is for this latest record to be basically indistinguishable from a bigger budget studio record when all is said and done. "Faust" was just a practice run; I'm hopeful by the time all the knob tweaking, signal routing, tone generation, and EQing are finally done, "The Gilded Age" will be a major advance over what we were able to do with "Faust."

I apologize again, for the infrequency of these updates. It's not that we haven't continued making progress (as slow going as it's been)--just that we haven't had a whole lot of time to blog about it, given other personal priorities. So here are some new downloads to thank you for your patience. Enjoy!

1) "Flesh and Bone"
2) "The Gilded Cage"

Tangemeenie Gets Blasted by CMJ!

2008-09-05T18:40:00.001-07:00

In a good way, I mean...

More precisely, we were honored to be featured in the latest edition of the CMJ Blast email newsletter, a result of our song "The Gilded Cage" having finished in the top ten of OurStage's weekly contest in the electronic/electro-pop category.

Never fear if you aren't a CMJ Blast subscriber, you can still read what CMJ had to say about us on their staff blog here.

Tried to Rock

2008-09-05T07:02:00.000-07:00

Check it out: An article I whipped up on my old high school band is being featured on the Tried to Rock (www.triedtorock.com) blog. Yeah. I'm so old I was actually in an 80s band in the 80s.

Sorry for the general lack of new content and updates around here lately. For some time now, Lori and I have been grappling with tropical storms, Cloud 13 business (the Soft Targets just launched a massive East Coast tour--check out their tour diary here), personal issues, chasing our two-year-old son around everywhere to keep him out of harm's way, and on and on.

In other words, we just haven't made any further progress--or found even so much as a spare moment to work--on The Gilded Age for some time now. Hopefully that will be changing soon.

Left Hand/Right Hand Final Mix

2008-07-03T21:06:00.000-07:00

Back in March, I posted an early rough mix and some background notes for the track "Left Hand/Right Hand." Since then, I've made substantial progress on mixing and mastering that track, so now I'm posting what I think is essentially the final mix. And I'd like to use this posting as an opportunity to compare and contrast the two mixes and discuss what improvements were made and what I learned along the way.

Here are links to the two mixes of the track that I'll be referring to throughout the rest of this post:

1) Left Hand/Right Hand Rough Mix
2) Left Hand/Right Hand Final Mix

Another recent post on this blog dealt with how I felt I had finally developed a healthy appreciation for the importance of proper gain-staging at every point in the signal path in the digital domain. Well, naturally, that doesn't mean I don't still lapse into bad practices. And the earlier mixes of this track are perfect illustrations of just how easy such lapses are. Gain-staging, of course, is only part of the overall signal processing picture. Signal processing, in general, is every bit as challenging and full of potential perils in a digital environment as in an analog environment.

In this particular case, I had several different kinds of problems to deal with. First, I had over-compressed the whole rough mix all to hell during mastering, as usual (it always takes me at least a couple of horrifically squashed mixes to figure out how to back off the mastering compressor a little). Second, the drum mix sounded especially tiny and weak and the problem seemed to lie with the source audio. Third, there were minor but not insignificant flaws in key parts of the performances (particularly in the bass guitar and lead guitar performances during the verses). And finally, but perhaps most annoyingly, the guitar sub-mix during the verses was a mess.

For a couple of days, I drove myself crazy trying to ferret out the source of all the signal degradation I thought I could hear in the guitar sub-mix. It only gradually dawned on me that it might be a multi-factorial problem. And part of it, I eventually concluded, was that the lead guitar line had been horribly over-compressed. Worse still, I’d applied multiband compression processing directly to the source audio (don't ask me why--my system's pretty low on RAM, so it may have been a misguided performance optimization thing). So the changes to the source audio were irreversible, which meant this particular take of the performance was ruined unless I was willing to live with the signal degradation; I wasn't. I also didn't relish the idea of having to reset my gear to do the performance again. Then I remembered to check the audio pool to see if there had been a previous take that might be salvageable. As luck would have it, there was. So I performed some edits to work around the weaknesses in the performance and used it. And finally, I mixed everything down again and burned a CD to listen to the results.

The noise (not noise in the technical sense, but in the perceptual sense) was still there. It was less pronounced. But it was definitely still there. That is, if it had ever really been there in the first place. By this point, I was beginning to doubt the unwanted noise was even there at all—sometimes after scrutinizing a mix for a certain length of time, you start to overanalyze these things. I wondered if I wasn’t just letting my ears play tricks on me.

By this point, I was scratching my head in frustration (if I still had hair, I’d have been pulling it out).

Then during a final close listening, I realized something that turned out to be the key. The signal noise seemed to be a feature not of either of the two particular guitars in the sub-mix, but of the sub-mix as a whole. In other words, it was as if the sub-mix were over-compressed—not just one or the other of the guitars individually, but the sum of both of them. Suddenly it all came together: I had applied limiting compression on the guitar sub-mix and on each of the individual guitar channels before routing them to the sub-mix, so I had effectively applied limiting twice, and basically each time, cranked the input signal up as high as it could go. So the audible signal degradation I was hearing was an artifact of unintentionally applying too much limiting compression.

This realization ended up being the turning point in pulling the mix together. The other problems were relatively easy to solve. Getting the drum sound I wanted without re-tracking still presented a bit of a challenge, but through trial and error, I soon stumbled on just the right combination of distortion, EQ and compression to get what I wanted. The remaining problems all centered on minor flaws in the performances, background noise from tracks that should have been muted, etc., all of which could be cleaned up with a few simple edits.

The lesson this experience drove home for me again is the overwhelming importance of analyzing and inspecting every aspect of signal flow when mixing. It's also important not to make unexamined assumptions about how routing choices might affect a signal within a particular mixer architecture.

The end result, I think, is a much cleaner and balanced overall mix. I’m thrilled with how the new mix showcases Lori’s vocals. The guitar solo at the end also sounds a lot cleaner now as a result of the various improvements to the mix. This version was mixed down and mastered in 16-bit rather than 24-bit resolution, so the final album version will probably be a little cleaner still, but the mixing process for this track is now finished (making it the first completed final mix of the album).

More Fun with Widgets (or Gadgets or Whatever)

2008-07-01T21:50:00.000-07:00

Now you can keep up with the Official Blog of Tangemeenie the new, old-fashioned way: By adding one of our brand-spanking new widgets/gadgets to your web site, Facebook page, MySpace page, iGoogle home page, etc.

That way, you'll have instant access to updates about our progress on recording "The Gilded Age," free downloads, home studio tips and music industry commentary on your own terms.

We're offering two new widgets for your consumption. As you can see below, our new widgets are pretty handsome, too (and they're both brought to you with the help of Widgetbox.com.

The first is yours truly, The Official Blog of Tangemeenie, only now in widget form:

The second is the entire Cloud 13 Records internet singles library in widget form (these are selected MP3s we offer for free download under the terms of a Creative Commons license from each of the releases on Cloud 13 Records):

Finally--Some Feedback

2008-06-02T19:57:00.000-07:00

Recently, I gave a CD of all the rough mixes of tracks currently targeted for inclusion in "The Gilded Age" to long-time friend and Tangemeenie fan, Doug Matthews. He (with the help of his young nephew-in-law Aiden, who's also a fan) was kind enough to provide some detailed feedback on the tracks by email. Since we haven't gotten a whole lot of user feedback through this site yet, I figured, what the hell--I'll just post Doug's feedback and my remarks on his feedback here. Additions made to the text for clarity are enclosed in '[ ]'; my responses are marked in blue text.

Track 1 [Memory Hole]: Aiden says "This sounds more like a Pocket Novel Mystery than a Tangemeenie." I love the instrumental lead-in to this song. Any way to introduce some suspense in the [section] before the rocking guitar? Dunno if that'd be a tempo thing (why did everything slow down... oh!), a drums thing (an inhalation-length pause before an amped bass drum kick), or a picking thing (fewer and fewer notes leading into the rockage). Also, considering that you lyrically introduce the concept of drowning-out-with-white-noise, and then have fuzzy dee-tar [that's Ander-speak for 'guitar'], why not pair the two up? Too obvious? You'd have to to rearrange the lines, but it might be fun to have the line about white noise lead right into the actual noise. Also, this is a song about fighting, but your voice only gets fight-y in the second fuzzy part. Get angry, dammit -- they're trying to drown you out. Didn't you listen to your lyrics? Also, Radiohead! (in a good way)

Actually, I think Doug makes some good points about doing a little more to build suspense toward the chorus pay-off. Maybe some post-production sound effect wizardry is called for. I'll give this some thought. Lori tells me the vocals on the first verse are a bit weak, too, but I'm reluctant to redo them a second time. After Lori works her vocal magic on this song (she plans to sing a harmony on the verses, if not the chorus too, I think) then I may reappraise that decision.

Track 2 [1,000 Tiny Knives]: I like the bass line. As an instrumental, the song's 30 seconds too long. This one seems like it could hold lyrics, though. Also, fadeouts are for cowards.

I forgot to tell Doug when I gave him the CD that this track wasn't meant to be an instrumental, we just haven't recorded Lori's vocals yet. Once we do record the vocals, the track may or may not fadeout in the final sequence of the record.

Track 3 [King of Flesh and Bone]: Great guitar line, starts off strong. Rhythm needs work. There's lots of opportunity in this song for clever syncopation -- the "just wanna see you fall" bit is already naturally an off-meter lyric, but the music doesn't take advantage of that -- and in fact, later in the song, you draw out the words out to fit the meter rather than punch it through quickly, which is what the lyrics lend themselves toward. I keep thinking about "Turn You Inside Out" (from REM's Green) ("I believe in whatyoudo... ibelievein what.. you... do..."). I wanted to break that cymbal (high hat?) over my knee by the end of this song.

Clever syncopation? Off-meter? Whatever, dude--this is America. Nah, I think I know what Doug's saying, but again I'm really reluctant to redo the vocals. Sorry that you find the high-hat grating after a while, but as much as I'd like to redo the drums, I really can't right now, because I don't have a drum kit anymore, and I want a live drum performance for this song (as opposed to a programmed beat). Now, if someone were to lend me a VR-kit for a few days, or something, then I could work some magic.

Track 4 [Left Hand/Right Hand]: Ooh, this one's on to something. Is it too fast? That IOUs and Alibis bit could be positively sultry, but the song feels rushed. See what it sounds like slowed down by 20%.

Sure, now you tell me. Slowing the track down at this point in the production process would be a big pain. I'm not sure I'm convinced it's enough of a problem. But I'll give it further consideration.

Track 5 [Underwater Silent Film]: My favorite of the instrumentals. This one is the right length. Three instrumentals is too many. If for some reason you don't use this as an instrumental, it's too pretty to abandon -- use it as the break or lead-in to another song.

This one actually is meant to be a real instrumental, so, cool.

Track 6 [Secret Book]: Do I just like slower songs? I don't think so, because I'm also into punk rock. But as with Track 4, this song seems to call for sparser-ness. "Blow my mind"? Really? The plot/imagery twist is nice. But again, songs about going blind and books with blank pages seem to call for more rests, fewer notes.

Yes, really. I'll pick up your hand and slowly blow your little mind. What's wrong with that? Also, on the topic of sparsening-up the arrangement, isn't minimalism really played out now anyway? Haven't Low, Kings of Convenience, and so many other masters of minimalism already done it all so much better than we ever could? (Besides, I'm absolutely not redoing any of the guitar work, since it was the last piece of studio work I managed to capture on the guitar that I eulogized here).

Track 7 [Flesh and Bone]: Isn't this on Faust?

No, but Doug's confusion is understandable. This is easily the most "Faust"-like song on the new record.

Track 8 [The Gilded Cage]: I believe that this is the first time you've gotten an explicitly socio-political song into a 'whole' musical format (cf. that 'Armies' song [a Pocket Novel Mystery song]). Introduce the (clever) cage/age pairing in the second repetition of that line. e.g. first time around is 'living in a gilded {cage or age, you pick],' with additional rests; second time introduces the pairing. Unnecessary words in brackets: "when we haven't [really] done a thing," "no one('s) [really] knows|sure when we arrive." Linger over the words, and let them stretch across a beat occasionally. They are good words, and deserve to be rolled around in the ear. Musically, this song calls out for echoey feedback-iness in place of the current sustained notes, especially in the section starting with ain't-it-strayeyange. Haunt me more -- the lyrics, rhythym, and melody are there, now I want effects! Shit should be slowly scraping across strings. Also, fadeouts are for cowards.

Yikes. Sounds like work. Let's wait and see what Doug thinks after Lori's vocal contributions are made. I don't think I'm prepared to budge on the fade out for this one.

Track 9 [The Boss Man Song]: Secret song! The first lines should be a repeated refrain (up to "to be working at all") sung by a pub full of drinking Englishmen. Have Mike Stephens [aka Stereomaster] take some microphones to Finnegan's Wake on a Friday night, stand on the bar, and make them all sing the lyrics to this. That would be both effective and ironic.

Tangemeenie Dominates Indie Rock All-Star Kickball Tournament

2008-05-28T21:20:00.000-07:00

Well, okay, it wasn't so much a tournament as a single game. But since we've been taking a little break from studio work recently and don't have much news to report in that area, I thought I'd share a little of what we do when we're not doing what we do when we do what we do (if you know what I'm saying).

In this case, Lori G. and I took the recent long Memorial Day weekend as an opportunity to join some of our friends from the local indie music scene for a rousing game of kickball. Alongside members of Girls on Film, Mira, Fantome, and Cassini Lines, we sweated ourselves into a frenzy and had an all-around great time.

That's Lori G. there in the first picture, just before sailing one smoothly over home plate, presumably for a perfect strike. That's me in the second one, charging off like a man on a mission to tear the first baseman's heart out with my bare hands. You can see more pictures of Tallahassee's hottest indie rockers getting sweaty on Flickr, here.

Sometimes, I guess, you just need to take a break from sitting in front of a computer all day, get out into the world, and significantly increase your risk of getting skin cancer.

As Goes Tangemeenie So Goes Metallica?

2008-05-11T00:08:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting new development: In yet another in a long series of eerie parallels between Tangemeenie and Metallica's career paths (not least of which being our remarkably similar logos), Metallica seems to be taking their cues from The Official Blog of Tangemeenie these days, with the recent launch of their new Mission Metallica site.

That's right: The hard rockin', formerly hard-drinking boys who brought us such time-honored classics as "Creeping Death" and "Call of Ktulu" are working up a new album and reporting out and otherwise documenting the whole process through their new website (hmm...where have I heard that idea before...?).

Of course, I don't seriously think they, ahem, borrowed the idea from our humble little blog. But I am a bit proud of the fact we did it first.

Found Via Wired's Listening Post, which offers a little more perspective on what this latest move from Metallica is all about.

Update: It would seem that reaction to this new effort on the part of Metallica to embrace the web as a vehicle for its music is shaping up to be mixed, to put it mildly.

Added "Memory Hole" to Playlist

2008-05-07T22:41:00.000-07:00

I updated the audio player playlist with one of the more recent tracks today, a track I mentioned in passing a while back, called "Memory Hole." This one offers something a little different, stylistically, from the others, taking an especially loud and aggressive turn during the chorus. This version only has my lead and backing vocals currently (yes, that's me wailing out in falsetto during the bridge), but Lori will be recording harmony vocals for this at some point soon, too.

Also, I leaned a little bit too hard on the mastering compression when I was preparing the rough master of this mix, so it's a little gritty in spots, but the extra compression actually sounds pretty decent on a high-fi system.

I probably won't post back with the final version of this one, but I will post back with some production notes, lyrics and a link for the actual download.

Virtual Gain Staging

2008-04-29T20:25:00.000-07:00

When I first began dabbling in producing my own recordings (starting with my first Yamaha MT-120 cassette tape multi-tracker), the concept of “gain staging” seemed like one those esoteric audio engineering topics I should really come back to and learn more about one day. It always seemed like a topic I should aspire to learn more about, but not one I particularly needed to know about right now. But over the years, I've gradually learned a lot about the practical importance of gain staging from first-hand experience, and now, nearly 20 years later, I've finally come to appreciate proper gain staging not as some theoretical audio engineering concept, but as one of the simplest, yet most crucial practices in the recording process.

So what is gain staging? Here’s a link to an excellent, brief introduction to the concept of gain staging offered on the Cornell University website: http://digital.music.cornell.edu/gainstaging.

Put simply, gain staging refers to how you handle the ‘gain’ (that is, the volume) of an audio signal at any point (or ‘gain stage’) at which the signal can either be boosted or attenuated along the often convoluted pathway that a signal follows from its source to a recording medium.

As you might expect, the shorter the path from a signal’s source to the recording medium, the less complicated the process of gain staging is.

For me, the interesting thing about gain staging in a desktop-based recording setting is that it can be all too easy to overlook, misunderstand, or underestimate the importance of the many discrete gain stages along a virtual signal path in a digital audio workspace.

Unlike the gain stages in physical audio signal paths—which are usually pretty easy to spot because they involve some physical connection between different audio hardware components—the significance of virtual gain stages may not always be quite as obvious. But treating virtual gain stages too casually can have very real and irreversible consequences: simply normalizing or compressing the resulting recorded digital audio isn’t enough to undo the damage of sloppy gain staging.

Consider software-based virtual mixers, for instance. In many digital audio suites, the virtual mixer component is designed to behave more or less exactly as its real-world counterpart does: it accepts incoming audio signals through one or more input channels and routes those signals to one or more tracking channels, and this route from input to tracking channel represents a discrete gain stage in the signal flow.

But even before the signal reaches this point in the flow, digital audio interfaces often depend on another software component acting as a virtual mixer to accept the incoming signal from the physical audio interface and to perform hardware routing functions. This likewise is a discrete gain stage.

Each of these gain stages plays a major role in determining the quality of the recorded signal. Proper gain staging of the input signals at each of these points—specifically, routing each signal at the highest possible gain-level that doesn’t cause peaking—results in a higher resolution recording of the source signal than recording at lower gain-levels does, improving the overall fidelity of the recorded audio. Recording input signals at lower than optimal input levels actually decreases the overall resolution of the recorded audio in the digital domain.

So proper gain staging of input signals in the digital domain isn’t just about getting the loudest possible mix at the end of the day. It isn’t even primarily about getting the loudest mix. It’s really more about audio fidelity. Optimal input signal gain levels yield higher resolution digital audio samples, samples that more accurately replicate the shape of the original audio waveforms in the analog domain.

On the other hand, boosting an input signal’s gain levels too much causes clipping and can result in an unusable recording. And too much compression and limiting can irreversibly squeeze all the dynamic range out of an incoming audio signal. So it’s a delicate balance.

And that's why—after many years of trial and error—I’ve finally come to appreciate the real, practical benefits of giving careful scrutiny to every single point along the path an audio signal takes, especially in a desktop recording scenario. There are two very good reasons to be extra vigilant about this. First, because proper gain staging is so critical to accurately capturing high fidelity audio in the digital domain; second, because improper gain staging can result in many wasted hours of studio time (especially when gain staging related problems go unnoticed until mixing begins).

Now That We're out of the Woods

2008-04-28T17:59:00.000-07:00

Since we’re getting pretty close to wrapping up recording the basic tracks for “The Gilded Age,” I thought I might take a little time to discuss what happens next in more detail.

The final track listing is pretty much settled now. We haven’t really given the sequencing of the album much thought just yet, but the listing includes the following (roughly in the order they were recorded):

1. King of Flesh and Bone
2. 1,000 Tiny Knives*
3. Flesh and Bone*
4. Underwater Silent Film
5. Secret Book
6. Left Hand/Right Hand
7. The Memory Hole
8. The Gilded Cage

The lead vocals aren’t finished on the tracks marked with an asterisk (‘*’), but all the lyrics are done, and since Lori sings lead on these stragglers, they shouldn’t take long to record.

Most of the mixes we’ve released so far are still pretty rough—lots of tweaks are still needed to the levels, the effects, the EQ, etc. There’s also still a chance we’ll record a few more tracks of backing vocals and additional instrumentation during post-production. (And you never know when you’ll need to re-record a lead vocal or two.)

As we jump into the next stage of the project, I’ll probably solicit outside help during the mixing sessions, just to have someone else around to provide an occasional sanity check. It’s easy to lose your bearings and get overwhelmed by nuances and sonic details after a while, so it doesn’t hurt to have a set of fresh ears in the room.

Before I start getting too serious about mixing though, I’ll probably invest in new headphones. The ones I use now are consumer-grade Sony’s that have definitely seen better days (the cushioning around the ear cups is coming out and there’s an annoying short in the cable). They’re not at all accurate and they have terrible frequency response, but over the years I’ve learned how to compensate for these limitations somewhat. At this point, though, I think it’s finally time to let go.

Mixing with a decent set of powered monitors would be nice, but since I’ll be mixing with my son Ander asleep in the next room most of the time, headphones will have to do (can’t really afford monitors anyway).

I’ll post some pictures of my setup soon, to give you a sense of what my workspace looks like. It’s cluttered and disorganized right now for a variety of reasons, but at least all my gear is conveniently within reach.

After we finish mixing, the next step will be mastering and finalizing the sequencing of the tracks. I always like to throw in some cross-fades, sound effects and other finishing touches during this post-production stage, to make the whole CD cohere a little more. I know it’s fashionable to think that the album as such is, if not dead, at least dying, but I’m still a firm believer in the format (not necessarily from a commercial perspective, but from an artistic one).

Around this time, we’ll finish (or start, as the case may be) designing the CD artwork and layouts. Not sure if we’ll tap someone else to help out with that chore or not yet. There’s a good possibility we will, but it’ll depend on what our budget permits.

Then finally, we should be almost ready to start offering the first run of “The Gilded Age” for sale here on the site. Before we start selling it here, we’ll send a copy of the final master to our digital distributor for encoding and distribution through iTunes, Rhapsody, EMusic, AudioLunchBox, and all the other major digital retailers. We’ll offer 150 hand-assembled and numbered copies for sale here initially, and I’ll probably press an extra 50 copies to do some targeted promotional mailings, so the initial run will be limited to 200 copies in all. Shortly after that, we’ll also make the CD available through the Cloud 13 Records on-demand store, but that version of the CD won’t be limited to 150 copies, and it won’t be hand-assembled or individually numbered.

After that, we’ll see what happens next. We might play a select number of live performances, or we might even try to pull together a full-band and tour around a bit. We’ll promote the record to college radio and elsewhere. Of course, we’ll also look around for any licensing opportunities we might come across. But those plans are still amorphous at the moment.

In future posts, I plan to devote more time to discussing audio production related topics. Over the course of working on this new record—especially these most recent tracks—I’ve learned a lot more about the practical science of making a good recording so I’ll try to share as many of those recent lessons as I can.

In the meantime, I've got a new track posted over here on MetaFilter Music. It's called "Memory Hole."

The Gilded Cage

2008-04-24T20:18:00.000-07:00

We're living in a gilded cage in the gilded age,
watching shadows dancing on the wall, and rattling our chains
so we feel like something's happening
when we haven't really done a thing.
And we never have to think too long about the mess we've made.

Ain't it strange the sun don't shine here?
I can't see any source of natural light.

There isn't any way to tell the time here,
so no one really knows when we arrived.

We're living in a gilded cage in the gilded age,
watching shadows dancing on the wall to keep us entertained.
So we feel like something's happening
when we haven't really done a thing.
And we never have to think too hard about the mess we've made.

Ain't it strange the sun don't shine here?
I can't see any source of natural light.

There isn't any way to tell the time here,
so no one's really sure when we arrived.

And when the final iron curtain call came down,
the cast of actors all forgot to take their bows.
And all the doors were locked as the stage burned to the ground.
And all the ushers turned their weapons on the crowd.

Living in a gilded cage in the gilded age.

Ain't it strange the sun don't shine here?
I can't see any source of natural light.

There isn't any way to tell the time here,
so no one really knows when we arrived.

© 2009 Cloud 13 Records Music (ASCAP)

Left Hand/Right Hand

2008-04-24T20:14:00.000-07:00

One hand gives, the other takes:
You’re left with nothing either way.
Nothing real and nothing fake,
just space, time, and matter.

Every step defying fate,
while reinventing old mistakes.
A dish best served on paper plates,
or straight from the platter.

And when you come around here,
with all your IOUs and alibis
to pour your poison in my ear
and fill my head up with your pretty lies

I’m going to make you finally understand,
you’ll never end up with the upper-hand

because one hand gives, the other takes:
you’re left with nothing either way.
No point of view, no side to take,
just space, time, and matter.

And as you fell face-first from grace,
crash landing in this empty place,
you smashed right through those pearly gates
and made such a clatter...

But when you come around here,
with all your IOUs and alibis
to pour your poison in my ear
and fill my head up with your pretty lies

I’m going to make you finally understand
Why you will never get the upper-hand.

© 2009 Cloud 13 Records Music (ASCAP)