THE MAKING OF...
man makes plans and God laughs
I began recording the music in April 1997, while I was still living in Wisconsin. The first song
I started was Six Days although I actually finished Olive Grove before Six
Days was completed. I typically worked on two or three tunes at one period. I finished
the 50-minute disc in June 1998, between trips for my job. Between June and August, I
mastered the tracks onto a Sony MiniDisc and burned a bunch of TDK CDs. I also had to
design the inserts and take them to a printer (ColorWorks).
Check out my studio, Clairemont, to see
what equipment it takes to record things that some people are inclined to call -- music?
As far as the title for the disc, man makes plans and God
laughs, thats a favorite saying of mine. I obviously didn't think it up and I'm not
sure where or when I first heard it, but I thought it was pretty clever. To me, it means if
things in life aren't going the way you think they should be, remember, you're not in full
control. It's definitely a testament to God's control. Enough preaching.
CD ARTWORK
CLMT
Olive Grove
Elixir
Foam Tide
Lyrl
Six Days
Pesky Combo
Sans
El Tonto
Kicking
5911
Palo Duro
Chunky Monkey
1 -CLMT
CLMT is a local abbreviation for Clairemont, the community in San Diego I grew up in... growing up, I would see "CLMT" spray-painted around the neighborhood, signifying the turf as belonging to the CLMT Gang... it a weird way, it brought pride to those of us growing up in Clairemont that our little community (over 100,000 people) was worth something... I'm still proud... I have lived over 25 of my 31 years in Clairemont and it's familiar streets will always be my 'hood...
GEAR--I sampled the bass line and the drums are via my Roland PMA-5 sequencer... the keyboard is also sampled from the Roland PMA-5 and the guitar (solo and background) is my Peavey Wolfgang Special... I purposely faded the track in very gradually, so it doesn't actually peak until about 30 seconds into it... I thought that would irritate people who thought they had to 'crank' the volume 10 seconds into it... "It keeps getting louder!"... at one time, CLMT was over six minutes in length, but it was just too long so I cut it in half... the lead guitar part was either a first or second take with no cut-ins over overdubs... I just plugged in and tried to do a bad Satriani... it was the second-to-last song I recorded... I'm not sure why I decided to lead off the disc with this one... I just like the way it faded in with that bluesy, kinda jazz riff with the guitar blowing over it...
2 -Olive Grove
I started this song in May of 1997, the second song I recorded... this, however was the first song I finished and many of my friends in Wisconsin heard this tune before I split in November... the title refers to the city park, Olive Grove Park, in Clairemont that I literally grew up in... it's on Printwood Way, near Madison High School and I grew up next door... so many experiences took place in Olive Grove... that's where I learned to play baseball and football with my friends... we played basketball, hide and seek, and when I was older, drink beers and smoke cigarettes... a lot of memories in that park... it's weird how you can miss something like a city park when you're 2,500 miles away...
GEAR--I programmed the drums with my Alesis SR-16 drum machine... that's me trying my best to hold down the bass on my Fender Squier P-Bass... I used my Washburn BT-5 (silver bullet) guitar with the Carvin pickups for the entire song... probably 'cause I just got it at that point... the keyboard in the background during the chorus is me with my Yamaha PSR-48... I was actually going for a ska-like riff for the verse and I kinda stumbled onto the chorus part... after working on it, I think they fit pretty good... I didn't know what to do for the end, so I just relaxed and played through over the bass and drums, never intending to keep it... I was hoping to work out some intricate solo and chord changes over some thoughtful bass playing, but as I practiced, I kept coming back to the horrendous lead at the end... it kinda grew on me... it's simply someone playing guitar that isn't worrying about being perfect or anything... it's pure emotion and a audio commerical for "TAKE LESSONS!"... the end is a first-take, no overdubbed solo that highlights both my best and worst playing... so I just gave up and left it... I should probably be embarrassed to admit it, but I don't think I could ever play that again...
3 -Elixir
the term Elixir can mean several different things... in my work at the VA Hospitals, Elixir represents a "vehicle for medicines..." it also can mean the "quintessence or underlying principle..." this is what I had in mind... I think we've all had events happen to us or people that we've known that have changed the course of our lives... I had a special 'elixir' in mind... this was the last song I recorded and it is VERY different than the version that I thought it was going to be... more mellow and simplified...
GEAR--the drums are courtesy of the Alesis... there is no bass in this song... the opening classical, nylon-string guitar is my Roland GR-30 guitar synth (Kramer Smithtone), MIDI'd to a violin patch (pan right)... the other keyboard is my Yamaha... the other guitar used is my Rogue Scootercaster... I did play single notes on the Kramer Smithtone dry during the first bridge which kinda sounds like a bass, but it's not... I used the Roland guitar synth at the end to play the sampled 12-string guitar to make it sound fuller... I tuned down a whole step for Elixir...
4 -Foam Tide
I recorded this song toward the end and it was a very fun song to do... the beginning chord progression is from a song Mike and I worked out so I decided to call it Foam Tide... Foam Tide was a semi-clever garage band made up of high school friends Mike, Keith Hall, Colin Hall and myself... we rented a bunch of recording equipment one summer and made the worst recorded music in the history of the world, but it was fun... Colin and Keith eventually got bored, so Mike and I got a cheap drum machine and a even-cheaper four-track and made two tapes of our music under the name of Foam Tide... some of you may actually have those disasters laying around somewhere... I don't know which one of us thought up the name, Foam Tide, but I remember it was a comment on our then-polluted beaches that literally had foamy waves...
GEAR--I used my then brand-new Fender Duo-Sonic that I had modified at Guitar Trader... I had them put on a Bigsby trem with Seymour Duncan pickups and it's a killer-sounding guitar... both rhythm parts, and the solo were played on this guitar... the Alesis provided the drums and I played bass on the Fender... the organ in the slow section in the middle was played on the Roland guitar synth... you can barely hear me counting in in the very beginning (one, two, one, two, three...)... I put that in purely for affect... I didn't record a single guitar note via microphone... if you listen close, you may also be able to hear me laughing at the very end... two things about this song stand out... 1) the solo... it took forever to get the 'squeaking' harmonics down... 2) the middle part where it sloooooows down was hard to program into the drum machine and hard to get a feel for....I think it turned out pretty good... kind of a blues feel to it... you don't realize how fast that song is until it slows down and speeds up again for the end... a really fun song to do...
5 -Lyrl
Lyrl is the middle name of someone I used to know... I wrote a rough version of this instrumental in 1991... back then it didn't have drums, either... it's a cool little tune and I just decided to leave the original name to it... this song was done about halfway through the project and I'm pleased with the way it turned out, but I still hear little mistakes in it that I wish I could've worked out... still, I wanted to keep things fairly raw and with emotion on this disc so everything wouldn't sound labored... it's odd, but I think I acheived both 'raw' and 'labored'...
GEAR--I used A LOT of different guitars on this tune... too many... I can't even remember which ones or how many different ones I used... I know there isn't any bass and one of the eight tracks is my Yamaha keyboard for depth... otherwise, it's a lot of guitars through a lot of different patches to make it sound fat...
6 -Six Days
I originally wrote this song back in 1988 and it was included on the Foam Tide Bovine Madness tape Mike and I did in that year... the title refers to the Six Day War that Israel won in 1967... I must have been really interested in that in 1988... either way, I decided to keep the name... this is the song I broke in my digital 8-track Fostex DMT-8vl with...
GEAR--I used five guitars on this track... the opening sound is my Ibanez Destroyer with a DOD Digital Delay (mounted on the body)... I also used the Ibanez for the heavily reverbed solo... I used my Scootercaster for the main parts of the song (pan left)... my Kramer Baretta made up the flanged and distorted tones near the end... I double tracked much of the song and my Kramer Pacer takes part in that... I triple tracked the bridge and that was my Charvel... the bass was the Fender and the piano is courtesy of my Yamaha... the shaker is a plastic container filled with uncooked popcorn (from the mid-1980s)... this version of Six Days is a little different from the 1988 version in that it's more distorted... the other version was mostly an acoustic piece with a different intro... I actually prefer the intro on the new version in that it sounds quite ominous...
7 -Pesky Combo
for those of you who don't live in San Diego, there's a great chain out here called Rubio's -- Home of the Fish Taco... their Pesky Combo (Pesky as in the Spanish word for fish: pescado) rocks!! one thing I really wanted to do on this disc is go out of my way to get different styles of music... it's difficult to listen to an hour of the same kind of music, much less an hour of bad instrumental music... by throwing in a jazz tune like Pesky Combo, hopefully it makes this disc that much more bearable...
GEAR--I used my Epiphone Joe Pass signature guitar for the lead on this song with my Scootercaster and Ernie Ball Music Man EVH for the clean rhythm parts (panned left and right, repsectively)... the drums and bass were sampled from my Roland sequencer and my Yamaha provided the keyboard parts, including the cool organ solo... if you thought the opening notes of this tune resembled "Jingle Bells" - you're not alone... the hardest part of this song was probably the intro, getting everything timed together... even the whistle you hear before the verse starting was a project... I think I got some really cool chord changes on this track...
8 -Sans
of course, the word "sans" is Latin for "without"... this 'industrial-type track' is definitely sans talent!!! but it was fun to do... I don't own any Nine Inch Nails or Marilyn Manson Cds, but I've heard their music... again, I just wanted to get different styles on this disc... some rock, some pop, some blues, some jazz, some industrial and some country, but ALL bad... HA HA... anyway, I remember I did this song in one Sunday afternoon.... no shocker there, huh?... the chord progressions for this tune are lossely based on a song I did in 1988 entitled Shifting Sand that's on our Foam Tide Bovine Madness fiasco tape...
GEAR--the only guitar used on Sans is my Kramer Ripley... I counter-panned the strings to give it a cool stereo effect and the Bartolini pickup gets a fantastic tone... even though the bass sounds sampled, it's not... it's me killing myself on the Fender through a weird setting on my Zoom 506... the drums, are actually in dual-mono and originate from my Korg Pandora... the keyboard is courtesy of the Roland guitar synth... the faded-out screams that dot the tune also come from the Roland guitar synth... the stereo-phased, shaking, clicking noise is my popcorn shaker live miked through a phaser... I thought it sounded weird... definitely the strangest song on the disc...
9 -El Tonto
first of all, "el tonto" is Spanish for "the fool"... I've done many foolish things in life, so this is track to remember those by... this was the sixth song done and I was and am very pleased with it... I actually, at one time, entertained the idea of opening the disc with this tune...
GEAR--the only guitar used on El Tonto is my Jackson tele with Seymour Duncan pickups... I played on this song via my Roland guitar synth... the keyboard is also from the guitar synth... I believe this was the first song I used the guitar synth on... the drums are from the Alesis SR-16... the funky intro drum thing is also courtesy of the guitar synth... one of the few solos that actually fits the song is found in El Tonto... timing into the solo, was difficult because the drums were recorded faded out... I didn't fade them out in the mix, so it was kind of a guessing game to get all the instruments to start on time for the solo fill...
10 -Kicking
I recorded this song right after I got my Wolfgang in August '97 and I wanted to use the dropped D-tuner on the Floyd... a real sinple song with a lot of bass... I based the main riff on a running joke a friend of mine had me stuck on - some Beavis & Butthead thing... I was originally gonna call this Kick Me In The Jimmy, but I chickened out... probably my best solo on the disc, in my humble opinion...
GEAR--all of the guitar tracks were done by my black Wolfgang, except for the solo where I used my Red Devil II (its only appearance on the CD)... bass by Fender... the storm-cloud noise during the chorus is me humming through some heavy distortion...
11 -5911
this tune is actaully part of a song I did for Foam Tide's third tape (Feu d'artifice), but Mike and I never finished it so I threw it on here... it's a catchy little song and I gotta use my new toy - the guitar synth... no guitar solo in this song, just some chords via the guitar synth... I actually was considering opening the disc with this one... 5911 is the street number of the San Diego home I grew up in...
GEAR--
in addition to the guitar synth, I used my Wolfgang Special for the main guitar parts and my Fender bass... the intro is courtesy of my Ibanez Destroyer and the on-board delay... the intro drums are dual mono from my Pandora and when the tune kicks in, so does my Alesis SR-16 drum machine...
12 -Palo Duro
a strange little song, I wanted to do something "country-ish" for the CD... and this was the best I could come up with... "palo duro" means "hard wood" in Spanish and it's the name of the second largest canyon in the U.S. - right outside of Amarillo, Texas... I was there in early 1998 and hiked in and out of the beautiful canyon...
GEAR--
the "country-ish" lap steel-sounding guitar is actually a patch from my guitar synth which I doubled with my Wolfgang Special... the solo is courtesy of the Yamaha nylon... I purposely end the song with it playing in reverse really fast... I guess that's because you "hike into" Palo Duro, and then you have to "hike out"...
13 -Chunky Monkey
I threw this song together around the same time as Sans, and it probably shows... an easy song for me to record... it's sterero drums, stereo synth bass, stereo guitar and another two tracks for additional guitar synth noises... no overdubbed solos or anything... the name Chunky Monkey is, as you guessed it, an ice cream flavor from Ben & Jerry's... it was also the last thing Nicole Brown Simpson ate before she was murdered... (a little trivia for ya...)
GEAR--
the main guitar is my Hohner ripping through my Pandora... the Hohner has a DiMarzio Norton in the bridge and it kicks butt... the bass? that's me trying to keep up on my guitar synth - no sequencers here... I also used my guitar synth for the high-pitched "bubbles" during the chorus...
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