THE MAKING OF DOOM LOOP

January 16, 2014

For all you gear/process nerds out there, here are some notes on the recording and writing process for DOOM LOOP. As you will see, the album was recorded for pennies and was primarily recorded in a studio apartment (rather than an actual studio), and I hope that helps inspire you to go make something of your own.

The recording of Doom Loop wasn’t constrained to a defined window of time. Writing morphed into demoing morphed into recording, with a lot of tracks from the demos making their way into the finished product. The Economist was the first song written, in the spring of 2011, but it looks like the first recorded tracks that made it to the actual album were the synth and drum machine parts on Two Suits, recorded in August 2011. We recorded the final stuff in January 2013.

All guitars, bass, and synths were recorded at our apartment in Capitol Hill in Seattle, WA. We obviously couldn’t be too loud, which had a deep impact on the recording of the album (ie no loud amps). You’ll notice a general theme of the recording process was to accept and encourage cool sounding “mistakes”, and to not be too precious about the whole thing. We tried to aim for good performances and a certain “magic”, even if it meant using stuff from demos that wasn’t recorded particularly well. Since the line between demoing and recording was so blurred, drums were recorded after all the guitar/bass/keys at Fifth Street Studios in Austin, TX, on Jan 2-3, 2013 with our drummer John Momberg playing drums and Jim Vollentine manning the controls. It was a bit of a gamble recording drums. We sent John MP3s of the rough versions with electronic drums on them that I had mapped out, we talked on the phone about what we thought they should sound like and be played like, and then they just went in and recorded it without Robin and me present whatsoever. Thankfully, they did an incredible job. Here are Jim’s notes on the drums:

The drum tracks are:
Hat (good old 57)
Kick (blend of u67, aea, re20)
Snare (top and bottom together)
Overhead L&R (coles ribbons)
Floor tom (421)
Kit (Beyer distorty fun mic)Played around with "stereo-izing" this with two short delays panned out on the roughs.
Room L&R (aea ribbons all squished)
Sidechain (blend of the kick and snare through a compressor, usually do this when i mix, but figured i'd just print it).

All through 1940-60's tube pres. kick, snare, and toms summed through the neve. Kick, snare,floor and overheads are uncompressed. Recorded audience perspective.

Had all the faders pretty equal, maybe floor up a bit and rooms, kit, and hat down a bit. L&R stuff panned all the way out, Floor at 8:00, hat at 3:00. Kit and room mics to taste…

One great thing, although it was another gamble, was that they made a lot of decisions as they recorded, so when Jim sent the drum tracks there weren’t a million different tracks (e.g he had already mixed top and bottom snare together, etc). This really helped create the sound of the record and made it a lot easier to mix. It’s always better to make decisions at the time rather than put it off till later.

Basically every other track was recorded through the following chain:

Shure SM7 mic (sometimes a Sennheiser K6, the occasional SM57)
Warm Audio WA12 preamp (I got that after a lot of the demoing was done, so some of the early tracks went through a Groove Tubes Brick instead)
RNC Compressor
MOTU Ultralite mk3 Interface
Logic Pro

The guitars are all my 1998 Gibson Nighthawk or my Fender acoustic. The Nighthawk has a lot of switches and pickup options, so there are a lot of different sounds available. This is nice for keeping it from sounding like one guitar the whole time. Because we couldn’t be loud, most of the guitars were recorded direct without an amp. Sometimes this was straight from a pedal, usually a Proco Rat or a Big Muff, sometimes it also went through a Fender Super 210 and direct from the amp’s lineout jack. Some stuff, especially cleaner parts, were recorded through the Super 210 with the SM7 or a Fathead at very low volume.

The bass was Robin’s 60s Egmond bass, either direct or through an Orange Bass Terror and Ampeg 2x10 at very low volume. The Brassmaster and Bass Big Muff were the usual go-tos for pedals.

Steve McDonald mixed the record, and I believe he did it all in the box in Pro Tools (but could be wrong). That process happened off and on from Apr-June 2013. Once again, we weren’t present for this part, but he sent the songs as he worked on them (usually one at a time) and we went back and forth until we were both satisfied. Right away he got the vibe that we were going for and really took it to the next level.

Climbers

Bass was doubled with a Bass Big Muff and a Brassmaster for full on fuzz. Initially this was intended to be panned left and right, but ended up working better straight down the middle. The lead pretty guitar at 2:10 sounds like I was using a MXR Dynacomp. Rest of the song is the usual tricks for guitar- Rat and Holy Grail. I remember trying to write a “lead” guitar part for the choruses, but the basic chords seemed to work best.

Flowers In My Teeth

Piano is sampled from the piano practice rooms at my old college. The first take of vocals were whispered because Robin was in the other room and I didn’t want her to hear me (they were still a work in progress), but the vibe totally worked so we kept it. Bass is a Moog sample on a Korg Microsampler, running through a Korg Monotron filter. The high guitar part thing at 1:10 was the last thing recorded for the record, and I love it but have no idea how it was recorded. Maybe playing with my fingers? The noises starting at 1:55 were a bunch of wilderness sound effects compiled and run through various effects, including delay pedals and the Monotron. The lead synth from 2:23 on is an Alesis Micron, probably through the Rat.

Two Suits

I was working on a different song and accidentally made that opening chord. I have no idea what it was, but I loved it and immediately recorded it for the beginning of Two Suits. It’s my homage to the beginning of “Across the Sea”. The first half of the song is acoustic doubled with an electric going through the Dynacomp. The little synth pulses are from the demo, on a Casio SK-1. The loud vocals were recorded in the back of a car when we were demoing because I needed a place to be loud. The were recorded with a terrible mic from Goodwill plugged straight into the laptop, and the tone is terrible and there’s tons of noise, but we were never able to beat the performance so they stayed. You can hear a lot of the noise in the first chorus. Bass has a Brassmaster for fuzz. Guitars in the loud chorus as heavily layered at different octaves to make it sound as big as possible. Guitar solo was originally just meant to be noise, but compiling a few takes somehow made a coherent solo. Sounds like my Jordan Bosstone clone maybe combined with a Rat or Big Muff. The feedback was totally unplanned and makes no sense because of how quiet the amp was. I remember it started feeding back and I was like “oh my god this is perfect don’t fuck it up” but the feedback sounded so much louder than the actual playing had been that it was so hard to let it keep going, but totally worth it and we didn’t get kicked out of the apartment. Total magic moment. Bloopy drum machine is the SK-1 and is taken from the demo.

La Dentista

Atmospheric thing is a guitar through Holy Grail, Memory Toy, and a Rat. That was the part that really glued the song together. Chorus synth is the Micron imitating a Moog, same with the bridge synth arpeggiator solo (although we didn’t have an arpeggiator, so it’s just played by hand). I remember having 2 different ideas for the verse melody. We couldn’t decide between the two, so we just did both.

Out For Blood

This was was tough. We tried a ton of different versions in the demoing process, and the song almost got cut along the way. For some reason just small changes to the tempo and/or arrangement made it feel totally different, but eventually we somehow stumbled across something that worked. The staccato opening section was a late edition, originally it was all much more subdued. Bass synth in the first verse was the Micron. The big synths in the chorus were very inspired by Gary Numan’s “Cars”, and were a combo of different Micron sounds. The high background vocals were me (Christopher) singing falsetto. I think originally I intended to have Robin replace them, but we liked it so they stuck. More Micron for those swells in verse 2. The solo is a bunch of guitar tracks, some heavily filtered/processed by the Monotron, which also produced those weird sounds in the little break. The low synth in the end section is one of my favorite synth sounds on the record, the Micron again. The ending was always intended to cut off.

The Economist

One of the first songs written, so it went through a bunch of different versions before taking a more minimal approach. I remember there being a kinda electro version heavily inspired by “Watch the Throne”, and I think that’s where the overall groove came from. The subtle keys in the background were from an early demo, the SK1 through the Monotron. Jangly guitar after chorus1 sounds like a Rat with the Holy Grail, probably direct. Lead guitar riff in verse2 is an MXR Blue Box with some delay. Weird vocal sounds are a lot of Logic plugins. The quiet bridge part came very easy- I remember just sitting down to write a part for it, and it came out fully fledged probably in under 30min, which is rare for me.

If You’re Leaving

Bass synth is the Micron. This originally had electro drums for the first half and bridge, but instead they got a really trashy live drum sound that worked great. Yamaha PSS keyboard does the stabs in the first verse. Loud rock guitars in the second verse are almost a joke, in that they’re totally like a cliche Pete Townshend rawk thing, but they were absolutely what the song needed. Speaking of jokes, the falsetto in the bridge was something I did to be funny while we were rehearsing for some shows, but to my surprise to one laughed and instead were like “yup that’s what you should do.” Synth solo was one-take on the SK1 just messing around.

Last One In

I think every synth we own got used on this one, and most tracks were from the demo. The weird guitar thing in the middle of the first verse was a happy accident. The chorus vocals were another experiment with falsetto. The electro thing in verse2 was a drum pattern from the SK1, the keys were the PSS with one of my favorite sounds. In the demo, the drums dropped out in that little break before the bridge, but instead of doing that Momberg did that roll and it blew my mind. Reverse guitars going on in the bridge, trying to keep it from being too predictable. For some reason the bridge makes me picture a marching band.

100 Degrees

Acoustic guitar going through a Tube Screamer and Memory Toy, from the demo. Lead guitars going through a lot of delay and are from the demo (couldn’t quite recreate it no matter how hard I tried). This was the first song mixed, and helped set the standard for the others. Bass is through a big muff and delay pedal, and is probably the one sound I wish we could go back and make it sound better. As a whole, this one is incredibly close to the demo.

Falling Down

The last song written for the album, wanted to do something with a little more groove to it, which felt unnatural but fun. Brassmaster on the guitars, PSS for the verse synth. Originally going into the verse there was some lazy chugga-chugga thing I always do, which Robin called me out on, so i tried to do a Nirvana-esque bendy thing that was almost too over the top but I think worked. Weird synth sound in verse2 might’ve been the last thing recorded. I think it was the micron just holding a note and playing with knob. Steve also did some great effects on the vocals there, I think he said he was “playing” a Moogerfooger delay. Delayed vocals in the bridge are an SM7 plugged into a rat and memory toy, taken from the demo. I have no memory of recording the big synth going on in there, but I love it and it sounds like the Animoog iPad app.