we three shirley kids (read: me, joe, ean) spent the eraserheads evening recording new material at joey santos' famed love one another studio. aside from the early acoustic guitar jangle c/o the morris parlor guitar, it was a multi-drive pedal kind of night. we used (in no particular order): a zvex fuzz factory, a vox cooltron duel overdrive, a tech-21 gt-2, a proco you dirty rat, and the beautiful bluberri drive pedal. and instead of going back to the themesongs strat-dominated sound, we used our newly acquired maison lawsuit sg standard, and joe's neck-thru vantage. hooray for new gear hehe.
some interesting moments include:
1) pancho asking - "wala ba kayong mga kanta na may distortion?" leading to a bit of fuzz factory overkill haha
2) the new palm-muted chording in nakauwi na and the lessons learned by engineer joey from his boy elroy recording experience
a less is more approach to words, with the simple G-C verse and the Em-D chorus, then the G-C-Am-C outro. i guess this song is a high point in my songwriting efforts, reactionary output to early comments to my work haha. the story goes like this..
vin dancel of twisted halo and now peryodiko is a great person, and when i was the excited little kid who first got to go watch gigs, twisted halo was one band that stood out, what with that intense drumming on brad, and the mindblowing outro part of hiram, and MAN THEY HAD THREE GUITARS and i was really amazed when vin went up to me after seeing deltajoy play and telling me that i could play bass well haha. then i auditioned to play bass for twisted halo (remember that day ean? hahaha memories) but then they picked some better guy (buddy zabala!!!) haha. and even though we really didn't become bandmates there was this sort of distant mentorship going on between me and manong vin, sort of, kind of. haha. i remember this gig at millenia and he was there and i was there and i was just telling him about how my studies were going (bad) and he was all finish that shit and i was all wow and anyway, when i gave him a copy of the rizal day sessions ep, he said it was good stuff, but it needed something anthemic.
so i went and thought wtf man these are anthemic but then i thought about things and i wrote sa madaling salita, exploring the duality of crippling love and incredible uplifting love in my brain, and realizing that there was no way to put it other than just really saying those words in the song and then that freed me up, anthemically speaking. the riff was a fun thing to play, and it's me studying a wolf parade song and magnificently failing, landing on some other totally different beautiful thing, and the chorus part where joe's guitar is all chicosci on top of everything, and man this song really wrote itself. i remember the practice when we were arranging this, and it was a pretty good time for shirley, getting things in place really fast.
zig's drumming (a lift from dcfc with minor revision haha) and the BASS + SYNTH W/ WHITE NOISE AND EBOW bridge part is what i think makes this anthemic, the outro just riding in like a cowboy and then the song ends with the same killer "chorus" riff except it's slow and jing's harmonizing on bass and that was perfect which was why recording this thing was such a bitch, cause it had to sound really good, and honestly the recording still doesn't sound as good as the song sounds in my head but that's okay cause we got it out. i remember doing the main guitar part and just being totally frustrated, breaking down in the middle of some takes saying "DISBAND NA TAYO GUYS DISBAND" and joe and ean and joey santos just reassuring me hahaha that was fun.
then endo came along and man endo that's a whole different story, crippling uplifting love and if you guys haven't seen it you gotta see it, and if you feel like it changed you afterwards then you're my kind of person, and if you haven't, then you gotta live a bit more i guess? that movie really killed me, i remember reading the script and crying in my room (the early drafts were a lot more hardcore emo haha) and well sa madaling salita just snowballed in meaning
cause i had this meaning X for the song, which is really hidden deep inside, and then since it's so simple and then because of endo meanings Y and Z and A-W also add up and then it's such a meaningful song because it's just about a feeling and therefore you can attach that to whatever makes you feel that feeling so the range of possible meaning only depends on the person listening so everybody can sing along to this and feel like the song is about something about them and i guess that was what vin was talking about when he was saying it was anthemic.
the song opens with a very hetfield-ian RATATAHH, harkening back to that saguijo METALLICA tribute gig, where shirley did a weird set, haha playing our originals, back to back with a sick cover of FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS, sung by jing, and since joe and ean were both absent, i was playing guitar, and manix of gorgoro was subbing for the extra Em droning noises haha (we weren't able to practice with him, but it was still awesome) that was a great gig. and if memory serves me right, that was one of the last few gigs of HOPSCOTCH, where most of the loa engineers are from. hehe. anyway, back to the hetfield shouts, which i think provide that contrast between track 5 + track 6, cause they sort of flow into each other, and both sort of tackle the same idea, but you know how they're different too. Ean's song on the album (not counting our co-write on bato) is this amazing track, especially after the rhythm section did their thing, putting a very dark beatle shuffle into the thing. then the horns!!!
that was a very eye opening recording session, being at loa with the sago horns, finding out how brass really really really makes a difference to a song. sasamahan is probably just the beginning, expect more horny tracks from shirley haha. the supposed "fadeout" outro where everybody still played to an "ending" also worked, since it allowed the horns to pull off that great jam at the end, and letting jing do his talking head-y guitar riff. and the drawbar synth heidi has also shines on this track, and haha i dunno there's a lot to say and it's all circumstantial really, if you like this kind of stuff that i'm typing then it's great, but if you watch debut you'll see video of ean and me and kathy and joey and marc and wacky and that very controversial yeag-vah section of this song and that's all you need i think, haha.
track 7-11 writeups coming this week, tapos na yung album notes before the launch haha
most noteworthy is the amazing snare sound that joey santos gets on this song, the release/decay of that 80's hit is really what makes the song! also, forevers is the selena solo track for this album, and the first of many selena oriented songs. the owel-sung demo version released on the today is tshirt day comp was a take-off point, but where that was a stalker-ish "sigurista" lovesong, this is an out and out guarantee of sorts. and and the outro, where selena and the synth duet into this papapa-fest is this suprise that came about while we were recording. the live version of forevers used to include a "time after time" outro, where we'd sing time after time haha. but the album version couldn't include that, of course, so we had to figure out something, and then amazing amazing amazing selena just pulls out of her indie-pop hat this papapa phrasing and papapa melody and then we were all "do that on the synth!" and then that ending comes out and then we were trying to mix it and then during the final mix of that joey has this miscue where only a few tracks were faded out and then what happened was a gradual fade, leaving selena's voice and the guitar chord, and then that was another OMG moment.
i remember the time when after recording most of the basic tracks for forevers, me and joey santos really considered it the least like-able of the shirley tracks so far, so we kept on figuring out ways to re-do it, but then the gang vocal recording day came along and i guess what we just needed were the "barkada" shouts and the voices of the whole band + melvene (sobrang lamig ng boses ni melvene!) on the sing-along chorus. also featuring the keys (as in susi) in tribute to a song on the rivermaya green album (plus points for whoever figures that out hehe)
i love you ang bandang shirley! see you at our fans' day and debut premiere!
the track opens with a very frustrated zig drumming the ending of the song and then making a mistake and throwing his sticks angrily hahaha. see, themesongs was made differently from most albums (im guessing normal bands use metronomes hehe) because we didn't use any metronomes for the album, all the drums were recorded from zig's memory. honestly that was an amazing two sessions of recording, just watching zig pound away at the drums, with no other instruments. sometimes i'd play along on a guitar, but the early love one another studio setup did not allow for comfortable headphone placement for the drummer, so we had to make do. and then the whole idea stuck, no more metronomes, and we'd use zig's natural tempo for each song, so that if he lags a bit then the whole song would lag, and if he reaches back to his thrash metal roots and then the whole song would feel a bit faster. that and zig + joey's decision to keep the drum level lower than most albums really makes it sound different. early listening sessions with some friends would often result in a few comments along the lines of "pare ang hina ng drums.." or some variation of that. i didn't get it at first either, but then you get it, and then it's a wow thing. haha.
anyway all the drum parts were done in one take ( ASTIG NO? imagine the monster drumming zig did on patintero/habulan/larong kalye, or the triplet break in the bato outro), and theme song was a particularly difficult one for zig, resulting in the gorgeous AAAAAAAARGH growl at the start of the song. haha. mikey amistoso commented on the not so polished cut of that take, leaving an abrupt end to the growl before the song starts. he kept on saying that that moment was a work of genius, or something like that, like "other bands would have wanted to keep that a clean fade or something" but we just left it like that. haha love one another magic.
the song is full of the kind of recording techniques you google and then decide to try and then i dunno something happens. we used a pignose amplifier, the one with the latch that opens and closes the thing, and we close-miked it with one mic in front and one mic at the back of the speaker (phase inverted) and we had a room mic, and then there was this wide open sounding guitar that we got. i love the sound of the guitar parts in theme song, and the pignose amplifier was one of those important bits that just made everything work (i miss you!)
marco's roland jx3p also played a huge part in this song, adding the disco pad at the ending, the vibe at the disco outro, and the arpeggios in the main song, with that wonderful filter just opening up at the end of every phrase. i dunno why i'm rambling on about how we recorded this song, but i really feel happy when i remember how this song just fell into place. hehe.
at 0:17 into the song, i do a wrong harmony part into the right speaker, and then i laugh, and that bit just whizzed by during all the mixing, we really didn't notice that. and then listening to the mastered tracks on headphones it was all like "OMG WHAT A HAPPY ACCIDENT!" haha i love that part.
the video is also very cool, haha. it features marc inting of twin lobster, doing his best to win the hearts of music video channel viewers everywhere. vote for his band twin lobster in the nu rock awards this year! hehe.
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jugs of the itchyworms texted me the other day, congratulating us on the cool video, and thanking us for placing their "self-titled" album poster on the wall of our earnest manliligaw protagonist hehe. if you haven't gotten yourself a copy of that album, buy one now, for your own good hehe.
my mom bought a copy of themesongs! she found it at the odyssey branch in alabang town center, and as she was bringing it to the cashier, the saleslady remarks "bakit ang daming bumibili nyan, sino ba sila?" hahaha
AND AND FINALLY, THINGS ARE GETTING EXCITING FOR THE SCARY DEBUT + FANS' DAY ON THE 25TH! LOTS OF SURPRISES TO COME! (pero secret muna para ma-surprise kayo para pati hindi malaos hehehe)
the first of three "epic" tracks that absolutely had to go into the album. it's a sort of trilogy actually, anchoring the beginning middle and end of the whole concept of themesongs, actual theme songs for set occasions in the developments. p/h/lk is early yearning, sms is the middle intense section and bato is heavy endgame. pretty intense stuff to keep in your head, especially while you're recording the album, thinking about how the songs relate to each other and to you specifically and it's just great that it's out and i can stop thinking about it so much haha. it's a love-hate obsession with patintero/habulan/larong kalye.
it is a 3-segment song, during the writing of this thing i was heavily into brian wilson's smile and the fiery furnaces' blueberry boat and the unicorns' who will cut our hair when we're gone and these albums were all full of ADHD i was really into the whole idea of a multi-part song so i was writing with that in mind: first came the habulan section, which i was originally thought would be the opening part, written late 2004.
the patintero segment was written for fete de la musique 2005; i remember very vividly the practice where i was teaching the guys the song and the new segment. it was at the blue room studio along maginhawa, and janji of aizo was hanging out, and i remember being afraid of what he thought about the song and how we were arranging it as a band during the practice haha. i kind of cheated with the segue from patintero to habulan, nicking some manila sound areglos from vst haha.
the larong kalye segment happened naturally, we would just jam an informal outro, and i guess i just started singing on that. the album version of larong kalye was a pretty fun thing to record, all scratch takes and trial runs that joey santos recorded anyway, the relaxed feel owing to the "nah this isn't going onto the record yet.." and i guess that was pretty cool.
another cool thing about the album version are the SYNTH PARTS!!! i was absent when they recorded the synths, and loa engineer marc de vera did his thing, tweaking heidi's cs-10 and layering multiple tracks of the keyboard to give it this really really warm feel. i especially love the habulan chorus part, "kung ika'y aking mahuli.." with the 16 beat hihat, the palm-mute guitar and the surf rock bass, the synth really really really stands out and i love that part so much AAAAAAAAAAaa haha (self-sabunot moment)
the recording of the vocals for this song is also another conversation point. selena is a studio natural, if she's problematic with the harmonies, she'll just take some time to work them out in front of the mic, and usually most things are one-takes with her. but i am the brute force to her finesse, and this song was particularly amazing because joey and marc were engineering and everybody was playing with these ratatouille scratch and sniff cards, and i remember marc was playing with paper and scissors, trying to make paper dolls. so i was doing the vocal take, and usually when i hit a bad note joey or whoever's engineering at the time would stop me and we'll redo from there, and during this song we didn't have one redo (cause i thought i was singing so well haha) then i guess i just sang it all out. if i remember correctly, the whole segment in patintero where it goes "nais kong mahagip.." until the habulan part was kept as one single piece of breathless song-ery haha. only at love one another.
so many things about this song! jing's bass parts, especially in the larong kalye portion. the ROLAND JC-20 we were using to track all the guitar parts, guitar parts shimmery because of it. and all the history!
attached is the old lofiwithlove demo version circa 2005. that's me on everything, in front of a computer.
"kagabi nanaginip si morrissey na may nagmamahal sa kanya"
xmaslights was recorded first, around november of 2006, with this coming a close second. we were going for a "rivermaya covers goldenboy" vibe, with the prominent acoustic guitar and heidi's analog yamaha doing the bleeps in the background. i remember being really unhappy about how it sounded in the early mixes, so we replaced some of the acoustic guitars with electric guitar overdubs. another curious thing about the recording is the chorus guitar part, where the harmony riff is actually more prominent, the live version sounds nothing like it and i love that.
my favorite part in the song though (aside from the alarm clock intro, which totally makes this song work) is the solo in the middle, 1:30 or so into the song. the guitar doing the solo is actually just a scratch track, to be replaced by another electric guitar overdub (possibly with one of our stratocasters, this album was very stratty, featuring my green squier strat and joe's maya and pacifica strats) but then during the mixing, me and joey santos (i love you joey!) couldn't find the actual solo take. i remember him shrugging and saying "ok na naman yung scratch a.." hahahaha i love loa. anyway the super thing about the scratch take that i recorded is that i make a mistake on the second pass, but it sounds like a deliberate variation on the guitar line haha. as mark villena would say: "that's a very human element!"
if you listen closely, there's also a new synth part that comes into the solo, that's from marco harder's roland jx3p, i love how it just blankets the whole thing without being totally overpowering. i really love the sine wave square wave saw wave synth sounds and cheapo drum machine loops, so this song is an exercise in those things, hehe. plus! the early days of ang bandang shirley saw songs written specifically for loops, we just used my old casio tonebank keyboard for all percussive purposes hehe.
the words came after the riff, like most of the songs i write. inspired by the smiths' (duh haha) song of the same title, but i was going for more of a hopeful pov. wrote this around 2003, so this is 18 year old owel talking hahaha.
Our good friend, wonderful colleague, talented musician (and heir apparent to the santos family fortune) JOEY SANTOS of the love one another sound production network has written the best article about our band ever, with mentions of Geoff Emerick, Ean's 21st century crooner voice, and PHYSICAL EMOTION. hahahaha.
i was watching the smashing pumpkins' vieuphoria this afternoon and couldn't help recalling all the footage we've been collecting so that kathy our super videographer-cum-korean-secret-weapon can concoct a cool documentary for our upcoming shirley album launch. we pretty much have the same kooky slice-of-life stuff as the dvd, though they probably can't hold a candle to d'arcy's tea party segment...
one of the interludes was a behind-the-scenes look at the making of siamese dream. manny chevrolet interviewed the pumpkins and butch vig (drummer of then-unformed garbage), the producer of the album. his sober answers to the questions reminded me of master engineer joey santos of love one another studios and his poker-faced replies to our own queries. he and the other sound engineers of LOA were integral in setting the right mood for the trippy artistic atmosphere that our album could only have been conceived in. discussions on light sabers, the making of paper dolls, and the formulation of alternative "papapa" sounds were just some of their invaluable contributions to ang bandang shirley's creative process. this kind of joyous interaction between joey et al. and shirley members seemed to me not unlike the pig-head dance butch vig and another man performed by the engineer's board at triclops studios, which surely must have directly begun the germination of several of the pumpkins' future works of outstanding craft in their heads and hearts.
chevrolet: how do you guys like working together? corgan: as much as any two men could like working together. vig: (pause) good answer. chevrolet: (to camera) i gotta go. bye.
haha stupid title. anyways i was watching the music video channels, waiting to see the "sa madaling salita" video on tv (i still haven't seen it) when i saw the new "migraine" video by moonstar 88, and it so beats our video. i know it's futile to compare two really different things, lightweight and heavyweight, no budget and big budget, etc. but i can't help but be thankful that our video came out first, otherwise it'd seem like we copied the dance sequence, which would not be cool. and they didn't copy our dance sequence either, ours just came first. and great minds think alike. and all those other disclaimers. check out the cool references to cool things like nacho libre and wes anderson, the stellar performance by mikey "the new mong" amistoso, and of course the pretty song by moonstar 88.
cheers to mr pancho esguerra, director of the best opm music video i've seen in a while. on a side note, he also directed the super great "the herb" video featuring joey santos, our studio engineer, as the bear.
