house (demo)

i'd been wanting to sample house fire for a long time. that was an important song back in the mid 00s, one of those songs forever attached to a moment in time long passed, a memory both fleeting and unending. i finally got around to it sometime last june, procrastinating while preparing for a live show opening for white ring at the end of the month. i was testing a little gator case mobile rig with my interface and tascam ta-1vp in a makeshift setup in my garage... i plan to do some gear/studio tour videos in the future for the penumatic tier if you want to hear me ramble about that more.

i started to piece together the lyrics for this while dialing in the settings on the tascam, not intending to write or record. i hardly ever sit and write things down, but rather loop sections and mumble melodies until the words come out of the ether. i started recording pieces at a time, building sections out as needed, semi-consciously forming some kind of structure. the vocals were tracked through a beta 58a into the tascam into an apollo x8 with some processing baked in, only a few takes per section until i figured out a sufficient placeholder - i intended to rerecord all the vocals with a proper mic and chain when i found the time (again, more of that gear talk in future posts). there was something there, but it didn't quite feel like i'd done the sample justice, so this sat as a demo on the hard drive in a folder with hundreds of other unfinished ideas.

it's in that perpetual stasis of good enough but not quite. the beat needs another finishing pass for structure and detail. the vocals have a lot of ground noise due to the makeshift setup in a shitty garage and the takes aren't as polished as i'd normally shoot for - the hardware tune is much less forgiving and versatile than recording dry and processing later. i don't think i'd done any real mixing other than the usual beatmaking process things. definitely not much of a master on this, probably just a stock limiter (don't worry, i've since reinstalled fabfilter). nevertheless, there was something there. proof of life if nothing else.

this is the first patreon post for the higher tiers. do you hate how much i wrote? were you expecting more? i'll be figuring this out as i go... let me know how to improve, i'm listening.

more soon. thanks for being here.