Evolution of a demo.

Evolution of a demo. Re-recording that

Zombie song 

– again.

This will be the third time I have recorded this song. Its been a evolutional process. The original recording (at Ahmed Latifs Retro Central Studios in Jan 2017) was literally the day after I finally finished the lyrics. I was happy with the version at the time. I had already spent like a year before hand, toying around with drunken dirges and country western bendy wammy bar a-minor chords that made up its composition,  in the fly blown dive bar I regularly performed at.

It was 2016, and The RMA Tavern was a dark and dingy place that lived up to its name: A back street pub on the Cromwell Rd, it had certainly seen better days and I was proud to be part of those precious moments but times had moved on and nobody was really coming to the place anymore. Originally the landlords girlfriend/bar manager basically employed me on the tail end of all that, to run a open-mic night and pay me in glasses of red wine. Of course very few people came and most weeks, I was playing by myself (and getting very drunk) and the only person really listening was her. Then she left anyway and then there was nobody listening.

Sometimes, the wind blew in musicians:  I was at times accompanied on the drums by Thomas Winston or Kristaps or even Kylie Earl but mainly it was me in a dive bar playing to the bar fly’s and the pool relentless team/ None of which took the blind bit of notice of me. And so I played there every Thursday from 6pm till gone midnight (if not more) as I perfected the art of playing drunken dirges, while assembling the basic ideas that made up that zombie song.

I suppose it was originally about my blunderings around Austin Texas, way back in 2010 or 2011 when The Coolness kinda forgot I was in the band and took off without me. It was my own fault I suppose. A couple of hippies I got talking to, invited me back to their place and the band assumed I was going with them but I got cold feet and declined, only to realise the band had loaded up the truck and already split. Leaving me by the side of the road with nothing but my frog shades and my cowboy hat. (Oh and a chocolate ice cream). I then spent the rest of the day looking for a compatible cash point because my credit cards were not formatted for the USA.

            ‘Wondering the city quite aimlessly, I cant quite remember what I used to be…’
But that’sanother story…

So anyway, once I had the lyrics and chords kinda together, I couldn’t wait to record it in the studio and in January 2017, we did it live, in one take, with just me on the guitar and Ahmed on drums. Then we layered up lots of zombie noises etc. It sounded great and I used it quite a lot to promote the band and people liked it. But it was still just a demo, recorded in a studio and as the band evolved, so did the song. No two bass players or drummers, played it the same way. Plus I kept adding ghostly guitar bits to make it more interesting and jiggled around with the lyrics and added starts and stops etc. And we kept jamming it throughout 2017 and had a much more refined version, that we played live at Victorious Festival in 2018.

Anyway, had it not evolved since that initial recording session, I probably wouldn’t have re-recorded it. But I did and felt it was a better song because of it. Much like the extra twiddly bits that Jimmy Page added later to Stairway to Heaven, whenever he played it live or The Doors: Celebration of a Lizard  ensemble. When you compare them to the original studio sessions, you can see how much they have changed, mainly for the better. As far as the Doors are concerned, Jims vocals are more confident, defiant and poetic, Rays keyboards are a lot tighter and just the overall sound is completely overhauled. And if all bands did this process, I‘m sure they’d have better albums for it. However the record labels don’t like it when a band tinkers with their ‘product’. Which is why Metallica will always sound like the records and never deviate from them by so much as a semi-tone or a jazz chord and why Simon and Garfunkle broke up.

            So via this evolutionary process, I felt a new version was now warranted. At the beginning of 2019, I then recorded a second version (in my bedroom) using Logic, basically a high-end demo with all the new ideas. Mainly more bendy ghostly guitar flying saucer sounds and the hectic ending. We then used this as the template to build the music video around and ultimately it was used as the template, for the third and final version, recorded back in Ahmeds studio in October 2019.

In order to achieve this, the demo was laid down as the guide track to which all other tracks would then follow. Then a click track was added: 130bpms - following the demo exactly. It is imperative when recording your demo, to get your studio version to match up to it as best as poss. This includes getting the tempo right etc. It saves time and you don’t end up spending more cash in the studio than you have to. Many a time I have preferred my demos to the final studio session and couldn’t figure out why until I realised that we had not followed the demo to the letter and only done a sort of nicely polished interpretation of it. But the demo is where the real ideas happen and subsequently the studio session is a polished version of that. It should be like making a master mould and now your gonna do your final cast in gold or whatever. So the master mould had better be pretty good. So it was important that I got the demo as good as I could before I went into the studio, as I would have to play all the instruments all over again, bar the drums.

So once we got that demo dropped into the project, I added a guitar track, some bass and some vocals. Now the demo’s job was done. Once we had the new guitar/vocal tracks, we no longer needed the demo. Time to mute that mother and start layering up the rest of the tracks. Then Ahmed got behind the drums once again and suddenly the song came back to life. No longer was it confined to a bedroom demo session with drum machines etc– now we had a rocking tune.

            Then it was the process of laying more tracks: adding ghostly guitars and bells etc. Perhaps the biggest problem was the banjo. I cant actually play banjo beyond my guitar skills. I don’t know any banjo chords whatsoever. So retuned my five string banjo to a sort of A-minor chord and hoped for the best. It sort of worked, a blag at best but a blag that the average listener wouldn’t notice beyond the fact that there’s banjo on the song. Of course, Ahmed couldn’t be bothered to make a click track intro, so I had no idea where to come in. He sort of made a high hat intro on the drums but it was like two taps, followed by a gap and barely no time for me to get ready to play. I should have made a intro track anyway. (Note to self: Always make a intro track). So I’m taking forever, flapping about with this banjo intro for twenty minutes, with Ahmed screeching and roaring in the control room.

            ‘Its your bloody song! What’s wrong with you, hit it on the beat!’ He laughed. ‘Its always the fucking banjo! Its always a nightmare when you bring that bloody fing in!’ 

Its times like these, that you either laugh or cry. I decided to do the latter. Then we were both laughing. I think we did like ten takes of the intro, until I finally nailed it. And even then, the banjo was terrible. But so long as it blended in with the rest of the song, then it didn’t necessarily have to be that perfect. Only on the bits where it had to be perfect. There is this myth or whatever, that you have to be a virtuoso before you even consider recording in a studio. It may depend on the studio but I have heard a solo track of Brian May on Bohemian Rhapsody and his guitar is all over the place, apart from the bits that we all know so well. It’s the same story for the Beatles and so on. Its all in the blag. If the mix is right, then nobody will ever hear that bum note on the banjo. Any more than the haphazard percussion on ‘Gold Finger’. None of which you can hear because its low in the mix. 

            So now its just a question of mastering the tracks and synching it up to the music video, releasing a single or whatever and seeing what happens. Probably it will just be yet another music video, lost in the white noise of You Tube, that people will forget about, who knows. Its about the marketing I guess.

Watch that Music Video here: