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OutOfPrint
Apr 9, 2009

Fun Shoe
I released the synthpunk album Faustbot - Synthetic Noise the other day. It's my first full length album and I'm proud of how it ended up, especially since this is entirely a solo project, from writing, recording, mixing, mastering, and making the album art. The idea of doing a synthpunk album instead of something guitar driven came from a one-two punch of learning how easy it is to record midi synth lines and ripping a callus off of a finger on a slightly too violent slide on my heaviest stringed guitar.

Of all the songs on the album, I think Origin 2 - The Ritual came out sounding the best, especially during the bridge. This being the first time I recorded my own vocals outside of a handful of one-off songs on my SoundCloud (cough, cough), I learned a lot about how to not record vocals, and that I hit sibilants stupidly hard, to the point that stacked de-essers on a couple songs. Going synth heavy freed me up to use modulation and distortion on vocals that wouldn't have fit on a more traditional, guitar focused punk album, like the heavy chorus and pitch shifting in (All You Have To Do Is Not Be an) rear end in a top hat, which was a lot of fun. All told, this took six months, start to finish, and was a fun and educational experience.

Beyond bragging about it, though, I wanted to give some information on how I made the album, and discuss the process and techniques behind it in a self-indulgent screed. I'll give what advice I can to anyone who asks for it, and will take any I can get.

Songwriting

Music
One of the most important steps of starting a new musical project is laying out the rules for it. Going off without boundaries is fun, but leads to an unfocused result. My strategy is to narrow down my influences for a project to no more than five or so specific acts, then let other, unconscious influences make my take on the style of music unique and cohesive. Bringing unique influences into a project leads to unique results, so feel free to mix and match and see where it takes you.

Synthetic Noise was conceptualized as a synthpunk project. My influences for it were Devo and Gary Numan for the old school new wave sneer, Adult. and The Faint for the more modern take on synthesizer driven punk, and Atom and His Package for fun. I then mixed in my regular surf rock, post-punk, and weird Russian electronica like Messer für Frau Müller.

My first step when writing a song is starting with an idea: a riff, a beat, a lyric, something to kick off the song. Usually, this means sitting down with an instrument and the drum machine software I will link to in the Equipment section. Most of the songs on Synthetic Noise began with playing around with various software synthesizer presets until finding one I liked, then coming up with a quick riff for it which usually became the bass line.

From there, I added whatever the song felt like it needed. I write by intuition, frequently hearing what I want in my head, then figuring out how to recreate it. I know that’s boring and unhelpful for most people, but, hey, not much I can do about that.

Lyrics
The best quote I’ve read about writing lyrics was attributed to the WWII era big band swing bandleader Glenn Miller: “All good lyricists are great readers.”

I don’t read nearly as much as I used to, but the point stands: if you want to learn how to write, you need to digest plenty of examples on how to do so. This is a big part of why two of my major lyrical influences are British comedic fantasy author Terry Pratchett and hard boiled detective king Raymond Chandler. Those guys knew how to write with a sense of flow, style, and humor that hit me right in creatively formative times in my life. Finding authors whose style you gel with is an important part of learning how to express yourself through your lyrics.

As narcissistic as this sounds, another big influence on my lyrics is the music for which I am writing them. I almost always write music first, lyrics second, and even when starting a song with a lyric, the rest of the music comes before the rest of the words. I use the music to guide the tone and general direction of the lyrics to my songs, and, when the music and the lyrics don’t seem to agree with each other, I will happily change the lyrics to something else, even something that doesn’t make much sense with the rest of the lyrics, to make them match the music.

Finally, the biggest source of inspiration for my lyrics is whatever is getting me riled up at the moment. 2020 was a poo poo show of a year, and the reasons Synthetic Noise took such a political turn (winding up far more political than I intended) was a combination of my increasingly leftist tilt and complete disillusionment with the Democratic party over the course of the past six months. Add to that a stint of unemployment and mass pandemic and there has been no shortage of anger to express. This is also why I use more profanity in these nine vocal songs than I have in the rest of my output since I was 13 combined.

Equipment
Hardware
Synthetic Noise was a software heavy album, but I still used hardware equipment when recording it. Here is a list of what I used:

• Windows 10 computer – AMD Ryzen 7 2700 3.2GHz processor, 32GB RAM
• Steinberg UR12 recording interface – I don’t recommend it. The mic preamp is fine, but I’ve had issues with the USB port and for some reason they decided to put the mic preamp phantom power switch on the back of the unit, meaning I had to stack it in a weird spot on my desk in order to record vocals.
• AXI V63M condenser microphone
• M-Audio KeyRig 49 MIDI keyboard
• Various guitar
• Eastwood TB-64 six string bass

Software Instruments
This is a much longer list. Note that all of the paid software I used was purchased on sale:
• Reaper (http://reaper.fm/) - This is the DAW I used to record everything. It’s lightweight, easy to use, and I have no real complaints with it.
• Hydrogen (http://hydrogen-music.org/) – Drum machine software I’ve been using for over a decade now. I used it to quickly create drum patterns and string them into entire songs, exported them as .midi files, then put those midi files into…
• SONiVOX’s Big Bang Universal Drums (https://sonivoxmi.com/products/details/big-bang-universal-drums-2) – This is a midi based VST plugin with a huge number of samples of real acoustic drum kits, is incredibly configurable, and sounds great. Hydrogen’s free built in kits are great, but this sounds and feels more realistic and goes on sale for as little as $5.
• Air Music’s Vacuum Pro (https://www.airmusictech.com/product/vacuum-pro) – This is my go-to synthesizer and is heard on almost every song on the album. Being able to dial in two independent sets of synthesizers with two oscillators each, both with independent tube drive emulation, ring modulation, detuned quad oscillators to quadruple each oscillator and play each duplicated with a little delay and pitch difference, and dials to simulate the effects of dust under the keys and pitch drift due to age and neglect make it an amazing punk synth. It regularly goes on sale for $15, and the lowest I’ve seen it go is $5.
• Air Music’s Hybrid 3 (https://www.airmusictech.com/product/hybrid-3) – This one is a bit too clean and modern for my normal liking, but the sequencer in it is fantastic. (All You Have To Do Is Not Be an) rear end in a top hat, Hunting Season, and Origin 2 – The Ritual all make use of that function.
• Martinec’s Combo Model F (https://freevstplugins.net/combo-model-f/) - Scratch a Liberal would sound entirely different without this free Farfisa organ sim.
• Oberon-8 (https://vst4free.com/plugin/1316/) - Another free synthesizer, the default, monophonic bass sound has a great thump to it and is heard on most clearly on (All You Have To Do Is Not Be an) rear end in a top hat. One of my favorite tricks is to use this dead center in my mix while feeding the same bass line into…
• Twin Bass (https://vst4free.com/plugin/1201/) - ...for an envelope filter effect in the sides. Twin Bass is incredibly powerful, and using this to generate envelop filter effects on the sides with Oberon in the middle gives me a sense of depth and movement while keeping a good, thumpy bass line. This trick is used subtly in The Big Hit Single, and Twin Bass can be heard providing extra movement to the bass line in Scratch a Liberal.
• Ujam’s Virtual Bassist Mellow (https://www.ujam.com/mellow/) - This is the best upright bass sim I’ve found, hands down, and is used in Scratch a Liberal.

I used various other synthesizers as well at random, but the above are all of the essential ones.

Mixing
Technique
I am not a professional mixer. Everything I know I picked up from YouTube and trial and error. That said, I had a few techniques I used in almost every song to make sure they didn’t sound entirely like garbage. This is the list of basic rulesI used for Synthetic Noise.

• Mix in mono – If it sounds good in mono, it’ll sound good in stereo. If it sounds good in stereo, there could be conflicts you don’t hear in the mono mix, so it’ll sound like poo poo from mono sources like a phone speaker.
• Top down mixing - All recorded tracks in a song get merged into a single stereo mix bus. After handling the basics of volume adjustment, I started by lightly EQing and compressing the mix channel until that sounded decent, then worked on instrument buses, then individual tracks. This let me keep an ear on the whole project rather than focusing on it one track at a time.
• Kick ‘n’ bass aux bus – Kick drums and basses tend to share a narrow frequency range. Sending both to an aux bus with a VU meter on it to monitor volume and make sure the combination of the two don’t clip makes both sound clearer and fuller than if they were mixed individually. This bus shouldn’t be sent to the mix bus, as it should be used entirely for monitoring.
• Low frequency mono – Take all sound below a certain frequency range, depending on the song, and set it to mono. Stereo bass tends to make the rest of the song sound muddy, so setting it dead center and narrow helps make everything else sound clear.
• Hi-low pass – Every track gets a high pass and low pass filter to clear off any inaudible sound that might interfere with other instruments and carve out its own space in the mix.
• Stack compression – Instead of compressing the hell out of something that needs compression with one compressor, use multiple compressors at multiple stages to smooth out the compression. My general rule was to use one on the audio track, one on the instrument or vocal bus, then the mastering compressor I’ll get into later on tracks that needed it.

Plugins
I used a lot of plugins for this album. Some I used once or twice, others on every song. Here are some of the most common ones on the album and what I used them for:

• TDR Nova (https://www.tokyodawn.net/tdr-nova/) - Hands down the best free equalizer. I used this for the high and low pass filters on every track on the album, for general tone shaping, de-essing vocals with its multiband compression feature, and ducking synth lines that clashed with vocal lines using the sidechain compression. The free version of TDR Nova easily stands against any paid equalizer available.
• Waves Tune (https://www.waves.com/plugins/waves-tune) – Hell yeah I need auto tune. I can’t sing for poo poo. While there are some great freeware auto tune plugins out there (Gsnap is rock solid), Waves Tune makes a map of each note hit or not and allows manual adjustment of each note. That is wildly powerful.
• Rich Drums (https://www.2getheraudio.com/effects/rich-drums/) - I used this drum processor on the drum bus of every song. It gives the drums a little extra flavor to really gel with the feel of the song.
• RICH (https://www.2getheraudio.com/effects/rich/) - This goes on the mix bus of every song, and goes a long way to pump just the right frequencies to make a mix shine.
• Plugin Alliance’s BX Masterdesk (https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/products/bx_masterdesk.html) – Stupidly expensive and pricey at the 90% one day discount I got it for this holiday season, this gave the songs on the album that extra little bit of polish to make them sound almost professional.
• W.A. Production’s Fundamental Bass (https://www.waproduction.com/plugins/view/fundamental-bass) – This went on every bass track on the album. Being able to separate the bass into two frequency bands, send the low band to pure mono and adjust the high band to stereo, is hugely powerful, and the rest of the effects help balance it out to not be overbearing either way. W.A. Production’s plugins are all worth a look, and tend to go on sale for dirt cheap. I think I paid $8 for this one.

If anyone wants specifics on what I used for a certain part, I'll be happy to list it, but those are the big ones.

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