"Don't Look" - The Recordings

On our last two demoed songs (Devil May Care + Rose in Dreams), we recorded everything the conventional way - setting up a click track, recording drums with demo guitar, then bass and guitars, and finally adding vocals and synths.


Now this is the easy way of doing things - you can polish up everything separately, and it's simple to add and take away things before and during the final mix. There's a lot of room for experimentation, and the engineer is always happy to have a clean and tidy project to work on. You can also easily fix up mistakes afterwards.

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However, this is not without its drawbacks. For one, the entire beat of the song is anchored to the click track, and I've really come to hate the hell out of how that sounds. It literally sucks the life out of any band. How the band plays together becomes a minor consideration; if the band is shitty, using a click track can make it mediocre. If the band is amazing, they are brought down fair to middling. Many of the Pro Tools crimes rampant nowadays are because of this click track dumbassery.

(Admittedly some genres like electronic music may require a click track - in my opinion, rock'n'roll definitely does not)

Furthermore, recording bits and pieces separately takes the band out of the performance. When playing with a band, at the best of times you can get these wonderful moments where players communicate and react together, creating something from the moment that changes and elevates the song. No room for that in piecemeal recording.


Also, some songs simply do not work on a steady beat. Sometimes a song requires for the tempo to breathe along, speeding up and slowing down when needed. Don't Look is definitely one of these songs: We knew from the get-go that it would have to start quite slow, and then gradually speed up for the last chorus. So early on, click track was out the window.

Pekka, really exploring the studio space (sans cowbell)

Consequently we tried to look for a place that would accommodate live playing for this five song session. Fortunately Jaakko, as a student of recording engineering, happened to have an excellent location for us at his school in Orimattila, about an hour drive from Helsinki.


A big, pro-quality recording studio. We booked it for a weekend, and proceeded to set it up for live recording - bass, guitar and drums together in one room, no click tracks.

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And what a room it was; I think I've never recorded in such a large space. Sounded great, though. We worked to isolate the amplifiers reasonably well to still get reasonably clean drum recordings, but of course there's always some spillover. No matter, the main thing was to get us all in the same space, playing off from each other.


It took us the first half of the first day to set things up, and then started feeling out playing and recording together. There was some slight nervousness at first, because we knew that if any one of us was having a bad day, it would affect everyone's playing. Also, we'd never played live in front of an audience with this line-up, only at rehearsals. After a few tries we started to find a footing. Withing an hour, we were recording for keeps.

Jaakko, chained to the mixing console.
The hard price of DIY - there's a lot of DIY to be done.

For myself and Pekka, this was probably the most enjoyable recording session so far, ever. I knew that nothing would sound as polished this time around as when recording separately, but everything felt immediate and fresh. Playing together was fun, and even though every song has their fair share of missed notes and mistakes, this sounded like a band rather than a computer.


Poor Jaakko, though - he had to pull double duty as a bassist and an engineer. On the next session, we have to get him in on the fun and have someone else to worry about the mics and cables.

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In the end (and despite all my recording rants) a lot "Don't Look" was still recorded afterwards. I'm just not good enough of a musician to play and sing at the same time sufficiently well, so we booked later times for committing vocals. We got the verses of the song in with a couple of takes, but the chorus was a bitch to sing - I had to take time to look for the right approach in the confines of my vocal dungeon (bedroom), until I finally got it sorted out.


The last additions were brought to the song on Christmas Day, when I added some synths, and especially the piano melody that became a crucial part of the song. This was done in between excessive Christmas eating binges, wearing a wifebeater and my trusty long johns, sweating on a couch and doodling on my laptop. How's that for rock glamour?




All in all, there were only probably a few hours spent recording the song. I think we can do it better and faster in the future, especially once we get a better hang of playing live in a studio.




Personally, I'm not looking back. The click track is dead to me now :)




~ Markus

Listened and enjoyed:

- U2 - discography on shuffle

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"Don't Look" - The words

These days I try my best of being intentionally specific with song lyrics - not just blurt out phrases for the hell of it, but to actually focus on what I'm trying to get across. Most would probably think it's a given that anyone writing words for songs automatically has this quality, but I'm afraid I acquired it rather late. For the longest time, much of my words were just there - no specific idea or purpose, but because the melodies needed some lyrics on the side. Not very subtle or artistic, but it did teach me to understand the tonality of different syllables, and how the emotion of music changed with the words you sang and how you sang them. I sort of learned the ropes by just playing with the building blocks.

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In some ways, "Don't Look" is a throwback to this old way of mine of doing things. The name of the song was a working title I cooked up for what I felt fit the chorus melody, and it just stuck. Then I proceeded to write words that suited it and the song, waiting anxiously for them to reveal what on earth I was writing about. Notes upon notes. Eventually this did happen, and when I was nearing completion I (fortunately) had a very clear idea of what I wanted to say.

However, one thing the song's not is specific; I wanted to leave a lot of room for interpetation. Some people do an excellent job in putting many layers of meaning into a few song lines while at the same time keeping a narrative going. I really admire this ability, but what I personally sometimes love to go for is to have a thematic thread, but to keep the song indefinite enough for people to project their own stories on it. I think this fit "Don't Look" quite well.

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In the end, the only thing I think counts is whether or not the lyrics can be felt. Getting there is always a bit tricky - not all themes resonate with all people, and some of what this particular song uses may be a bit too unwieldy for their own good. I think "Don't Look" is definitely not the best lyrics I've written - it's technically not very polished and perhaps somewhat simplistic - but by now they're tied to this song to the extent that it's unlikely for me to go back to revise them. Flaws and all, to me they're complete.

Furthermore, I really feel them when I sing them, and that's all I personally need.

~ Markus

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Don't Look

son

you're old enought to know

there's more to fear

than what is shown

I've seen

a world outside these walls

it will lift you high

and let you fall

when the dark is creeping up

I hope you'll turn and run right back

and the sins you carry in your blood

I'll share and cradle in my arms

don't look

your hand is in the shadow

one step

and you are sure to follow

your heart

would lie

would weigh you down

take mine

'cause you can't make it without

I taught you kindness

taught you doubt

and still you wanted to find out

I nursed you close

kept you in shelter

yet you went looking for another

but when your pulse begins to race

remember that this is your place

and those you've met

the things you've seen

don't matter here

alone with me

don't look

you're standing in the shadow

one step

and I can't surely follow

your heart

would lie

would weigh you down

take mine

'cause I can do without

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"Don't Look" - The song and how it came about

This one is actually the newest one out of the five songs we chose in late 2010 for recording. There wasn't much of it when we made the pick - just the basic verse bassline, the chorus and a loose idea about how to string it together. But it's a simple song, and the key ingredients were already there, so we decided to record what we had anyway and make more up as we went along.


As new as it is, "Don't Look" includes a lot of ideas that have been brewing for quite some time now. It has the kind of stubborn approach for rhythm section we like to use a lot, ie. "never do it like it's normally done". As far as I'm concerned, I guess I just never really got over that severe boredom for the standard rock beat.


Or, as the late, great mr. Cobain put it, "moderate rock".

* * *

The basic verse bassiline has been around for awhile. I loved the simplicity of it, although at first I found difficult to come up with any good vocal melodies for it. Initially the riff was meant to be used as an intro for a fast song, but as soon as the chorus came about the song became something different, a kind of a slowly growing mood piece.

The Harbringer of Artistic Inspiration

I've always been amused with how the good stuff seems to come when I just pick up the guitar for a few minutes before heading off to do other things, almost never when I'm taking my time to really do it.


The chorus was one of those things, although - similarily typically - I didn't regard it as anything special at the time of writing. However, good ideas often have the tendency of sticking on to you, so I hummed the chords during long walks with my dogs. I was delighted to come up with a vocal line I would normally never make - and that, as a knee-jerk reaction, I always regard as a very good thing.


Although I do come up with a lot of riffs and song ideas for the band, I never bring in finished songs. That, in my experience, is not especially wise - telling the band exactly what to play denies the music of the creativity you can have in a group. And at the best of times, the song evolves into something else when the band starts to work on it, and you may be surprised of how much different and better your ideas become once you let them grow freely with talented people.


"Don't Look" was one of these cases - when I brought it to Pekka and Jaakko, it was barely a sketch, but in the space of one hour we had a song with a specific direction as all instruments were beginning to find their footing. And, as I was very happy to discover, it promised to be much better than I had thought. So we followed our typical modus operandi: Build and rehearse a song sketch, record it on the spot, add some tracks and ideas later on top of the recording, and then let it sink in during a couple of weeks of listening. And that's pretty much what we took with us to the studio.

* * *

At the time of writing this (26.12.2010), the song is now 99% ready, with almost all the parts in. I'm listening it on repeat, and I'm quite happy with it - to me it really represents some of the strenghts we have as a band, and as our latest recorded song, it's a good example of the direction where Sestina is heading.


Or, as Pekka succintly put it: "At first I thought it was shit, now it's one of my favourites."




Can't wait to unleash this one in a live setting!




~ Markus

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The song listened during writing:

Sestina - Don't Look (work sketch)

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