New Monday #110
Happy...... Monday......
Yargh! I am starting to get bored. Write me! Send some ideas on the direction New Monday should go for the next couple of weeks. Expand my small Gen Jones mind*. The main dictate is that NM is inspirational. I always want these things to motivate your butt to get into the studio. Even the depressing Ai updates are supposed to be motivational.
Expand Your Library
Your imagination is your memories in the future. I am sure I wrote this before, but my memory is faulty.
In other words, new ideas are (hopefully) interesting combinations of things you already know, or have seen, or have heard. Your brain is a fridge. Your imagination is something you whipped up from leftovers.
Hence, when I find interesting things that I can stuff in my mental cheese drawer, I post them here. (I have no idea why I'm explaining all this, but the fridge metaphors are consistent with me having to rip out my kitchen ceiling last week because of a leak.) But these are more than things to tuck into your head. Pull an idea out of one of them and try it in a recording. Or grab ideas out of all five and make something from them.
Love this drum technique: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DWJffcjDRUd/?igsh=MTdoY2Z1NGJwdWw2NA==
Love the feel, great player, love all the reverb. Steal this groove and write a song around it.
Rub a Gong! Get it On: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoaYn8SA5jA&t=1s
There are alternative ways to play things. Check this out! What strange things can you do to your instrument to get something really different out of it? I once fretted a guitar with alligator clips.
Laugh tracks as high art: https://youtu.be/c3A5YPjjwhY?si=Y2Jo88QNSQPsWd3a
Bonus points: Is that console a customized Quad Eight Coronado? They were used a lot in film and TV. Should we make a Quad Eight channel strip? What do you think? What can you do to one of your recordings to heighten what the listener is supposed to feel? Add a laugh track? A cry track?
Speaking of war in the Middle East, here's reverb in a giant oil tank: https://youtu.be/lLUcOFwZvyY?si=5WLQRhl0yiiazunB
Check out the frequency response diagram as the reverb decays. The decay time is so long that you can easily see how the high end rolls off over time... lots of time. What if you added ridiculously long reverb to a vocal, or the drums, or a bass?
Having a head full of leftovers isn't enough. You need to combine things, and it helps to be daring about it. If you're a creative person, you're generally rewarded by risk. So do something daring. Add leftover steak to the slice of blueberry pie.
Risk.
Ty Segall
Damn, there is SO MUCH music out there. When I find something new that actually isn't, that has been lurking there all along, I'm embarrassed. And then I show you guys, and hopefully at least a few of you hear something new, or maybe rediscover someone you've forgotten, or at the very least have your taste vindicated.
Ty Segall... I find him inspirational. The guy does what he wants to do and screw the world. He makes... psychedelic garage rock, but that's a limiting label: it's all over the place. He does his own writing, playing, singing and engineering, working on 24-track tape with a Trident Series 88 console out of his home studio in California. He often plays with a band, sometimes with little rehearsal. Sometimes he plays everything himself. His recordings are very analog, reeking of drums in a room, mics shoved up close on amps, and leaving the mistakes in mix. Most of it sounds live in the studio.
His brain is adventurous and fun. How can you not love "San Francisco Rock Compilation" Or "Food" Or "Weird Beer From Microsoft" as an album title? Or When Mommy Kills You as a song title? He combines this with straightforward chords and melodies and the result is weird, noisy songs that have a strong pop sense to them.
Ty puts out at least an album a year since 2008, as well as EPs, singles, and collaborations. And he produces and engineers. He's ridiculously prolific. His style changes every few albums, and the result is a bunch of great rock that has something in common with itself while at the same time being highly individuated. It's a family of strangers.
I put together a YouTube playlist. I pulled songs of albums across his career, looking for odd arrangements, strange sounds—something weird to catch your ear.
You can get ideas from music, but you can also pick up the attitude of the artist. That's what hooks me hardest about Ty Segall—that he does so much and seems unstoppable.
Be unstoppable this week.
Warm regards,
Luke
Note* Gen Jones is a "micro generation" — call 'em late boomers or early Gen X'ers but lucky us, we comprehend both Lynyrd Skynyrd and New Order. Some of you are Gen Jones.