Point to Point III - Debra Soule

Sat, 01 Dec 2001 00:00:00 GMT

The Tune

All of the production decisions for this song flowed from the song itself. It was written about a man close to us who is an extremely talented actor, writer and artist. Yet he is completely lost and has made a mess of his life. He's 65 years old living alone in an RV on the streets of LA digging ditches by day so he can try to land a role on a soap opera.

So, emotionally, this song comes from the frustration, anger and compassion that arises from seeing someone like that, someone you love, just throw it all away and not want any help. You just want to shake them and say "Wake Up!"

Production-wise, we knew we wanted the song to be noisy, loud, aggressive and musical. We were going for a sort of Sergeant Pepper-meets-Tori Amos vibe, which is kind of what the song sounds like. It's got Beatles-influenced 7th chords, vocal harmonies and a piano that follows the bass line. But it's also got strong, dark lyrics and some serious attitude.

The Drums

Following the pre-production roughs of the song, the drums were the first instrument to be tracked on this song. And we went nuts. To echo the aggressiveness of the song, we decided to go for the trashiest sound we possibly could…while still keeping it musical.

First of all, our studio here is completely digital. And I am a huge fan of drums on analog tape. So we went to a small hole-in-the-wall studio where they have a 2" 16-track tape deck and a nice sounding drum room with very tall ceilings. And an engineer who knows how to get some good tones to tape.

We knew we wanted a very loud and ugly drum sound. But instead of relying on mixing wizardry after the fact, we went to work doctoring up the sparkly green Fibes drum kit so the original source would be very close to what we wanted.

On the kick drum we wanted a strong, sharp attack so the drummer (Scott Metko) taped two quarters to his batter head right at the point of impact. An AKG D112 was then placed inside the kick about 2" from the point of impact.

For the snare we wanted a crashing, noisy tone on the verses and a little tighter more controlled sound on the choruses. Scott came up with the crazy idea of putting 1,500 brass BBs inside the snare drum. We gave it a shot and it sounded perfect…just what we were looking for! We mic'ed it on top with a standard SM57. And on the bottom head we put an old Japanese crystal mic of unknown origin. You wouldn't believe how noisy it was when you solo'd just the bottom snare mic. It was the embodiment of the word "trashy"! You can really hear the BB's rattling around on the decay of the last hit of the song.

Digging around in the basement of the studio we came across a couple big metal discs which we realized must have been the plates of an old turntable. Scott took off his top hi-hat cymbal and replaced it with one of these plates. The other metal plate was hung piggyback on his 20" Wuhan China Cymbal.

In place of a traditional ride cymbal we used an old cracked 16" crash cymbal…one Scott had found years earlier on the floor of a local bar after a gig. But it wasn't quite trashy enough so we hung a metal oven rack from it. This gave it noisy attack and a very quick decay.

The stereo overhead mics were augmented by a mono mic that was actually facing away from the drum kit (toward the control room) so it would catch the room reflections as they bounced back off the glass.

Once all was in place we rolled tape and Scott nailed a keeper track on the 2nd take.

We wanted to make sure that we had some really crazy sounds on this track, so after recording the main drum track, Scott placed pots and pans on his toms and used a metal ashtray for a snare and cut a whole new "percussion" part for the final chorus.

The following day I brought my entire Vegas DAW in the studio and we dumped all the tracks directly from the back of the tape deck into Vegas - via a Swissonic AD24 convertor (at 24-bits) and a Dakota soundcard. Back here at Hypersound Studio a reversed drum loop was added on the final chorus of the song. A couple sampled crash cymbals from the Platinum Drums library were also added throughout the song to augment the live drums.

While we were recording percussion for the album, Ricardo Lopez pulled out a Wah Stick, something I had never even heard of before. It's basically a hollow metallic tube, about 8" long. There's a hole in the middle of the tube and slits cut in one end. When the end with the slits is struck with a rubber mallet the tube lets out this long sustained ringing note. By placing your thumb over the hole in the middle you can adjust the pitch of the ringing. And by quickly covering and uncovering the hole you get that high-pitched wah-wah sound you hear at the beginning of the song.

The Bass

We wanted the bass sound to be tight and dry, so we skipped a bass amp altogether and recorded direct through a Presonus MP-20, with a RNC1773 compressor inserted, and into the same Swissonic AD24 convertor.

I played an Ibanez ErgoDyne bass which was recorded fairly flat with all the processing to come later, though I did use a lot of the bridge pick-up to give it some of that Rickenbacker nasal snarl.

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Point to Point III - Debra Soule

Sat, 01 Dec 2001 00:00:00 GMT

The Guitars

The main guitar riff was played on a 1969 Les Paul through a Marshall Valvestate ½ stack. However, in order to get an extra level of overdrive it went through a Roland GP-100 before it got to the Marshall. This guitar was doubled mic'd in an 9'x6' iso booth with an SM58 on the cabinet and an E-200 in the room about 7' away.

The big dirty 7th chords on the outro of the song were tripled to really make them huge in the stereo spectrum.

To add a new and complimentary layer to the chorus a clean guitar was added here (and on the bridge). This was a Carvin DC-135 played through an Ampeg Superjet combo amp and using a Sovtek Small Stone (phaser) stomp box. One SM58 right up on the grille.

The third guitar plays a triplet figure on the choruses. It's really just one big distorted chord strummed and I played the volume knob so it would sort of "swell" rhythmically. It seemed to really give the chorus some impact when it first comes in. Also recorded with one SM58 right up on the grille of the Marshall.

Another guitar enters at the bridge doing some dry, percussive eighth-note harmonics. This is through the clean channel of the Marshall but cranked so it clips. One SM58 right up on the grille of the Marshall.

The last guitar enters on the final chorus and it introduces a new part to the song - a circular melody that floats underneath the chorus vocals. It's the Carvin / Ampeg / Small Stone line-up once again…with one SM58 right up on the grille.

Keys

A Gigapiano was added doubling the bass guitar line on the verses. It was sequenced and then looped so it would sound more mechanical. And it was EQ'd with some biting mid-range so it wouldn't clash with the bass guitar. On the choruses it switches to a beautiful, almost classical sounding figure on a nice clean Gigapiano patch to add some depth and interest to the arrangement.

We had the song pretty much done but it still seemed to need something to help it all blend together. After experimenting around we found this creepy, mechanical, ambient pad sound on the Alesis QSR. It was perfect. It comes in low for the intro and then we play it almost two octaves higher on the choruses.

To add some percussive, tonal interest, a marimba was added to a few parts of the song using Gigasampler and the Advanced Orchestra library.

On the bridge I wanted to add another distorted guitar but I wanted it give it a twist. I tried a bunch of combinations but nothing was working so I decided to just skip the part. Then, once everything else was recorded, I was listening back and I got an idea. I hooked up my Kurzweil SP76 keyboard through my Marshall stack and it was perfect! Big, nasty snarly - but not quite a guitar tone. This was the very final track recorded on this tune.

Vocals

The vocals were recorded through a Neumann U67 which was powered by an API mic-pre with a Tube Tech compressor inserted. They went from there directly into the trusty Swissonic AD24 convertor.

The verse vocals took a while to nail because Debra knew just how she wanted them to sound. I actually had to dial in some phaser and distortion on her voice as she sang so she could sort of "play-off" that effect. The FX were not printed with the voice, but just used for her monitoring purposes.

The chorus vocal arrangements were made by Debra on the spot and they are amazing. She would just say "let me try this" and "let me try something else" and we recorded a few different options. She needed to figure out how to make it all work on the recording so it would sound like it did in her head. But once she worked out the parts she was able to nail them on the first take.

At the outro of the song we were trying some different bluesy scat stuff - ad libs. On one particular pass she tried something that she thought was pretty cheesy and it made her laugh. But instead of stopping playback and starting over I just let it roll. She looked at me and I just smiled. She eventually said "I know you're recording me right now…aren't you?" Then she laughed and started just doing some goofy stuff that turned into some total belting bluesy scats. At the very end she laughs again and says, "I just had to get my soul out". I played it back right away and the track had some distortion on it and it just sounded too cool and off-the-cuff to re-do. So we just left it as is; talking, laughing and all. Somehow it works.

All the vocals were performed and arranged by Debra Soule. The verses are single vocals, the choruses doubled. Then there are those intricately arranged backing harmonies on the choruses. Altogether 13 tracks were used for vocals.

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Rob Solberg

Point to Point III - Debra Soule

The Tune

The Drums

The Bass

Point to Point III - Debra Soule

The Guitars

Keys

Vocals