The Thousand Yard Stare

Hi and welcome to Astro Ink #9. This month, we’re going to continue talking about getting out there and trying to make things happen for your band as best you can. Let’s start by talking about a subject we touched on in the “Getting Down To Biz” section of the last column-merchandising.

Assuming you’ve reached the stage where your band is regularly playing shows and has finally started to make some money (yeah, right-$107) and you’ve been able to set-up some kind of band fund, merchandising is a great way of making your money grow. First of all, if you’ve recorded and packaged your demo like we’ve already discussed, you can sell it at your gigs. Second, don’t forget that people love T-shirts, for a variety of reasons: they’re fun, they’re cool-looking (hopefully), and as your band develops into a “thing,” your shirt becomes symbolic of a whole lifestyle. Next time you go out, try counting the number of times you see the Nine Inch Nails logo on shirts, bumper stickers, etc., and you’ll see what I mean. Badges are good, although not as popular as they were in the Seventies and Eighties. Stickers are very good-they cost a lot to make, but at a dollar or two each, you can sell a lot of them to people who can’t afford the 10 or 15 bucks for a T-shirt.

You can really cut down on costs if you make this stuff yourself by buying your own silk-screening kit, bulk shirts (wholesale!), and sheets of adhesive vinyl (at your local art-supplies store a place that, along with your local Kinkos, you should become familiar with). If you go to high school, check out the graphic arts department; I used to hang out in the print shop at my high school after class and make bootleg shirts of my favorite bands-for a grade!

Last time we talked about how you probably have friends who want to hang out with your band and be cool and how to put them to work moving equipment and selling merchandise for you. You should also put them to work by setting up a mailing list at the merch table. This is a great way of letting people know what your band is up to, and reminds them that you’re still out there doing things even though you might not have played a gig near them lately. If you really want to get into it and have fun, create your own newsletter. This sort of stuff works. White Zombie’s Psychoholics Anonymous Fan club sends out a “Zombiezine,” and a lot of really big bands publish similar types of newsletters. The saying “out of sight, out of mind” definitely applies here, especially today when there are so many acts fighting for attention. Anything you can do to keep the name of your band out there is a good thing.

As I said in my first column, I didn’t start playing guitar because I had aspirations of being a guitar hero. I started because I wanted to be in a band playing music and the guitar seemed like the logical choice of instrument. That’s not to say that I don’t like to solo; I like wanking as much as the next guy, but only if it enhances the song. In my opinion, playing a solo just for the sake of having a solo is boring, pointless and predictable. That’s why a lot of our songs don’t have lead breaks-they either didn’t need them, or something else, like a riff or a sample, worked better. Having said that, “Super-Charger Heaven,” from Astro Creep 2000… features quite a bit of lead work and, as we haven’t really touched on the subject of soloing yet, let’s take a look at it.

Basically, this whole song grew out of a jam. John [Tempesta, drums] was playing a fast beat and I started playing this kinda hot-rod, surf, Link-Wray-meets-Nineties-metal riff. This track is really, really fun to play ’cause it’s got a lot of Chuck Berry-type solos, but they’re all minor and “spy” sounding. When I recorded those leads, we opened up the amp room and put mikes all over the wood floor to try and get a Gretsch-like reverb slap-back. We were really into the idea of this being some kind of rockabilly song from the future. Basically, we were losing our minds at that point.

The backing part, over which I play all the lead work, is the chorus riff of the song. The intro solo (FIGURE 1) begins in the 10th position on the neck with me fretting the note at the 10th fret on the B string (A) with my index finger and the note at the 12th fret on the G string (G) with my ring finger. I pick/strum the two strings together, then immediately bend the G-string note up to the same pitch as the B-string note (A). (This type of unison bend is a typical Chuck Berry move.) I then move down the neck (towards the nut) to the 9th- and then 8th-fret notes on the G string to add some discordant tension to the proceedings.

The second phrase of this intro lead (bars 3 and 4) is almost the same as the first (bars 1 and 2), except at the very end I use the note at the 11th fret on the high E string, (D#) which adds to the skronk factor. We’ll finish this solo and rap about using the Internet to get DIY gigging/touring information next month.

Last month we started talking about gigging and touched on stuff like playing anywhere you possibly can, getting your own soundman, having friends help carry your shit, transportation and networking. This month we’re gonna add more to this angle.

One thing that almost every good live band does is to structure their set to achieve maximum impact. Don’t just go out there and play your songs in any random order. Plan your set out so that it has peaks and valleys, especially if you’re in a high-energy band. Start with two or three “thrashers” and then maybe ease off a little and play something slower so you and the audience can rest.

The science of dynamics, or volume contrasts, dictates that if you come out blazing and then keep on blazing without pause, people will start becoming numb to it. Then, no matter how heavy your stuff gets, it’ll lack impact. But if you play something heavy and then follow it with something quieter, then go back to playing something heavy again, it will seem really heavy (listen to some Nirvana records-they were masters of this art). Also, once you’ve played out a couple of times and recorded some stuff for people to take home, you’ll probably have one or two songs that are your most popular; play one at the beginning of your set and one at the end-in with a bang, out with a bang.

Some bands like to keep things spontaneous and loose by playing gigs with no set list and deciding collectively what song they’re gonna play next while they’re actually on stage. That may be cool and adventurous for you, but it can also be really unfair to the audience if you have a lot of dead space between songs. PEOPLE NEED TO ROCK! Take your audience into consideration they came to see you to have a good time.

Obviously, when you’re playing live shows, something will go wrong with your gear sooner or later. Make sure you bring a spare of anything that could possibly break-you’ll be really, really glad that you did. If it can break, it will. Bring spare strings, instrument and speaker cables, picks, drum sticks, drum heads, a spare snare drum (if you can afford it), batteries (if you’re using stomp boxes), tubes (if you’re using a tube amp) and definitely amp fuses. The latter is something I never thought about until my Marshall head blew up. My advice is to get one of those little metal boxes that you store spare fuses in and tape it to the back of your amp.

Another thing you should definitely have a spare of, if at all possible, is a guitar. Even if your backup axe is really lame, it’s infinitely better to be able to continue your set with a less-than-perfect sound than to have to stop the gig altogether if something goes wrong. There’s nothing as bad as watching a show where the guitarist breaks a string and then has to actually stand there on stage and put a new one on. I once saw that happen to the guitar player in a band you’ve heard of: he snapped a string on a Jackson with a Floyd Rose locking system on it, which was his only guitar. Because he had the bridge set up to “float” (so he could pull the bar up as well as push it down), as soon as the string broke, the guitar went way out of tune. So, the band had to stop playing while he stood onstage, undid the locking nut, took the old string off, snipped the ball-end off the new string, put it on, stretched the new string out, re-tuned the guitar, locked the nut up again and re-tuned again. It took five long minutes and it sucked!

Can you imagine the most super-rich rock star you know of standing outside of a club handing out gig fliers in the middle of winter, freezing his or her ass off? Or running around at four o’clock in the morning with a bucket of wheat paste, putting up posters? Well, they all did it. Flyers for shows are good because they help let people know what’s going on when, where and for how much. It’s good to create some form of band logo (the Kiss and Metallica logos are great examples) or symbol that people will instantly identify with your band. There are countless computer graphics programs that can help make type look cool.

As well as handing out gig fliers at clubs and on the streets there may be guitar and record stores that will let you put one up on their bulletin board. You can also put fliers on telephone poles if there’s a hip neighborhood in your town where a lot of people will see them. Before you do this, though, check your town’s local laws regarding postering: there are a lot of places where it’s illegal!

Having a band is kind of like having a company. Unfortunately, especially at the beginning, you’re going to have to keep putting your money into the band without any return on your investment. No one’s paying you yet, but you have to buy equipment and maintain it, afford a practice space, transportation and so on. It sucks, but that’s just the way it is-it’s a test of faith, really. But, if you stick with it, one day you might actually start making some bucks and at that point you definitely want to have some form of band fund-maybe even a band bank account. This way, you’ll have a pool of money that you can tap into to pay for photocopying fliers, financing a demo, printing T-shirts, stickers, whatever. Decide who in the band is the most responsible, and designate him/her as band accountant. Damn. I’ve talked so much we don’t have much room left for playing this month. To make up for this, we’ll do a lot more playing next issue. FIGURE 1 is the “spy movie theme” verse riff of “Super-Charger Heaven” from Astro-Creep 2000 and is a good example of two ideas we’ve discussed in recent columns octaves and skronking. The octaves occur in bar 2, while the skronk (which is caused by the fretted Bb note on the low E string ringing against the open A note) happens at the end of bar 4.

Hi. Last month we talked about the purpose of recording a demo tape: to get you gigs. We also touched on how to package your tape properly, but we didn’t get into how you can make a decent-sounding demo without going broke-a financial state you’re probably already in.

If you already own a four-track machine, you’ll be pleased to hear that it is possible to record an acceptable-sounding demo tape on it. I’ve heard plenty of clear, powerful demos that were done on four tracks. But, before trying to make yours, you should either get a book on recording techniques or get some advice, because recording an actual band on a four-track is a difficult thing to do well. Let me explain: you’ve only got four tracks to work with and, on many machines, you can only record on two at any one time. As a result, you may have to record several things at once–like, for example, the whole drum kit on one track and the rhythm guitar and bass together on another. You’re obviously going to have to make sure that the relative balance of the instruments is perfect. If the bass ends up being too quiet relative to the guitar, or the cymbals are too loud compared to the rest of the kit, you’re not going to be able to “fix it in the mix.”

It is possible to bounce tracks together on a four-track, but the more you do it, the more you’re going to diminish sound quality. As a general rule, bouncing should be kept to a minimum. Having said that, all those great-sounding Beatles records were recorded with a four-track (it’s all that was available at the time), and they bounced tracks like crazy. You can get good at anything, providing you work on it enough.

You’re not going to have much opportunity to do guitar and vocal overdubs on a four-track. But that’s okay: it’s best to keep things simple for a demo. To do it right, you’re going to need at least two decent mikes. I recommend a Shure SM-57 for instruments and an SM-58 for vocals. These are the same high-quality mikes used by the pros, and you can get them for about 100 bucks each. As for the space, your rehearsal space should do just fine.

If you own a four-track machine but what I’ve said thus far sounds like too much of a hassle, you might want to record your demo at a cheap 8- or 16-track studio. Inexpensive ADAT (digital 8-track recorder) studios are popping up all over the place so you should be able to find one through your local music entertainment paper. There are always ads for cheap recording places on the bulletin board at your local music or record store, so check them out, too.

Before booking time in a studio, make sure your whole band knows the songs you intend to record and can play them together as a band. Even the cheapest recording studio known to man is an expensive place to rehearse in. What you don’t want to do is get there, set up, start recording and then suddenly realize that someone doesn’t have his or her shit together. Treat your recording session like a gig: make sure your guitars have new strings on them and that everyone has spares of stuff that might break or need to be replaced: strings, batteries (believe me, there’s nothing worse than trying to find a 9-volt at 3:30 in the morning), guitar cables, amp fuses, spare tubes, drum sticks and drum heads. Even if there is a music store near the studio you’re using, you don’t want to pay for studio time while someone runs out to get whatever it is you need to continue. If you’re recording late at night or on a Sunday, the store probably won’t be open anyway. Recording studios charge you by the hour, regardless of whether you ‘re recording or not.

That’s enough talk for this column, let’s play . . . The Skronk Chord. In the previous two issues, we looked at riffs that feature notes that “rub” against each other to create an unsettling, dissonant sound. I call this skronking. This month we’re gonna learn a nasty-sounding chord comprised of two notes that, when combined, have a high skronk factor: the root and the diminished fifth. FIGURE 1 is a chord diagram of this moveable chord shape. with the root on the low E string. FIGURE 2 is the exact same chord but with the root note on the A string. As you’ll hear, these two chords sound pretty dark and dissonant, even when played with a clean tone. Adding distortion makes the picture even uglier. To make ’em sound even bigger, you can double the root an octave higher, as shown in FIGURES 3 and 4.

A good example of this chord in action is found in the main verse riff of “Blur the Technicolor,” on Astro Creep: 2000. FIGURE 5 depicts the riff played using single notes, while FIGURE 6 shows the riff with the chord. Play the two versions back to back and you’ll hear the skronk factor added by this simple chord shape. To modulate the sound even more on the LP, I used an MXR Phase 901 bought from a junkie for ten bucks. Try using this chord in some of your own stuff, but don’t overdo it. There’s truth in that old saying about the pitfalls of having too much of a good thing.

Before your band lands a billion-dollar record deal, makes a multi-platinum album and sells out “Enormo-dome”-sized venues, you’ll actually have to book and play gigs without any help at all from the industry (manager, booking agent or record company). Let’s take a cold, hard look at a checklist of things you have to have achieved before you get to play your very first note on a club stage:

You’ve managed to get enough money together to buy a half-decent guitar and amp. You’ve learned how to play. Or, more importantly, you’ve learned how to play something original. You’ve somehow found three or four other people you can actually get along with, who all share the same artistic vision as you, have decent equipment and can actually play. You’ve actually managed to find a place to practice (hint: drummers always have the coolest parents-hit them up first) or are lucky enough to be able to afford to rent a rehearsal studio. You can do this pretty cheaply by sharing a space with other bands-every town has a “music building” and you can usually get a room with two or three other groups on a “lock-out” basis for next to nothing. You’ve stood in said room facing each other and figured out how to play something together. You have a set-10 or 12 songs that you can play tightly as a unit. You’ve made a demo tape that’s good enough to convince club owners that they should let you play (or you’ve rented a theater or community center so that you and your friends can put on your own shows). You’ve managed to acquire a van or some form of transportation to actually get the band and all its gear to the venue.

That’s a pretty scary list of goals-do you think you have what it takes? Because only when you’ve accomplished all of the above are you ready to play in front of an audience for the very first time. How close are you right now? I don’t want to scare you, but it’s one of the most difficult things I can think of, and that first gig is a very distant end result. If you don’t believe in what you’re doing 100 percent, then do yourself and everyone else a favor-give up and go out and support the thousands of bands that are touring across the country right now. They need your help. Anyway, enough doom and gloom. Here are a couple of helpful hints that might help you meet your objectives.

Thanks to modern technology like low-priced signal processors/preamps (try Korg, Zoom, SansAmp or Boss), drum machines and 4-track cassette recorders, nowadays it’s pretty easy to do your own recording at home-you don’t even necessarily have to get a band together at first. If you’re the future resident genius of your band, you can write and record everything yourself and then go into a situation with other players and just say, “Here’s a bunch of songs, learn ’em.”

This approach may or may not work for you. Every band is different. White Zombie writes together as a unit-when it comes time for us to make a new record, we lock ourselves in a rehearsal space for eight hours a day and don’t come out until we’ve written it.

Last month’s column ended with us looking at the octave riff from “Feed The Gods” [from the Airheads soundtrack] that sounds like a motorcycle engine revving. The riff sounds this way because of the way I bend octaves played on the D and low E strings. Because my pinkie isn’t as strong as my index finger, I tend to bend the low E-string notes slightly more than the notes on the D string. This causes the octave notes to go slightly out of tune with each other and this is what causes the weird engine-revving effect. I often refer this type of dissonant “rubbing” effect as “skronking.” Here are two other examples of “skronk” riffs, both from Astro Creep 2000…

FIGURE 1 is the intro guitar riff to “Electric Head Pt. 1 (The Agony).” Because the whammy bar (floating bridge) kinda pulls the two strings differently, the unison E notes skronk as they’re being bent up to F with the bar. I also use a phase pedal on this part which definitely adds to the skronking effect.

FIGURE 2 is the intro to “Blood, Milk and Sky.”

There are a couple of skronks going on here-the ringing note on the B string at the 18th fret (F) rubs against the open high E-string note that follows it in bars 1 and 3, as does the ringing D# note at the 16th fret on the B string in bar 2. I used a Korg G4 Leslie Simulator pedal in the studio to add to the overall weirdness of these two skronks.

So you’ve learned how to play some stuff and you’ve even written a few riffs.  Now what?  How do you play with another guitarist or bassist?  (You probably won’t find a drummer for a long time-they’re hard to come by.)  How do you even find someone to play with in the first place?  As promised at the end of last month’s column, this is gonna be our subject this time out.  I realize that some of what I’m about to tell you will probably seem painfully obvious but it’s stuff that took me a lot of trial and error and wasted energy to figure out on my own.  There are the a few fairly sure-fire ways for you to find people to play with:

•  Put up ads in a local “mom & pop” record store where they sell cool stuff.  (Note: it goes without saying that your ad should list what bands you’re into and also state what you’re looking for.)

•  Try to meet people who are into the same general scene at local gigs and clubs.

•  Put an ad on your local guitar store’s bulletin board.  (Note: this is a place where you should be hanging out all the time and bugging the owners, anyway).

•  Place an ad in a local alternative paper.

Once you’ve found another player or two, you won’t need a wall of 100-watt Marshall stacks to practice together in somebody’s bedroom.  All you need is a small amp (like a Pignose or a mini-Marshall) and maybe a stomp box or two to customize your sound-BOSS or DOD both make pedals that are durable, good-sounding and inexpensive.  My first setup was a 10-watt Peavey Decade and a Pro-Co Rat distortion box and that worked out just fine until I was in an actual band.

A crucial skill to learn early on is keeping time, so one of the first things I recommend you do is play along with records to get used to the feeling of playing with a drummer.  Also, nowadays you can buy an electronic metronome for about 30 bucks and that’s all you need to help you keep your jams solid-you don’t need a fancy, state-of-the-art drum machine.

Playing in tune together is also important.  Bottom-of-the-line tuners by KORG or BOSS will work just fine.  Actually, it’s kinda funny me saying this because I wasn’t able to afford a tuner until I’d been in White Zombie for a while.  I used to just find “E” on records and then go from there.  But nowadays, bands are using so many different tunings you can’t really do that!  It’s obviously not that important to have a tuner when you’re playing by yourself, but as soon as you start playing with someone else you definitely have to have one.

Aside from a little amp, a tuner, a metronome (maybe) and your guitar-the initial stuff you’re gonna want to have in your gig bag when you play with someone else is a cable, an extra pack of strings (you’re definitely going to be breaking them) and a couple of extra picks because you’ll always lose them.  And, if making noise is a problem in your house, it’s not hard to figure out a way to jam using headphones.  Try plugging into your stereo.

Talking of making noise: there’s a good chance that your school will let you and your friends jam together in the music-room after class.  I used to do that all the time, because it was the only place I got to turn up loud when I first started out and hadn’t gotten a band together or found a place to practice.

One other thing: if you find someone to play with and you live far away from each other or you don’t have much time to actually practice together, you can always trade tapes of ideas and work together that way.  When I was in Japan I saw something that really tripped me out: in Tokyo they have this park where all the rock kids go every Sunday.  Because they all spend so much time in school, Sunday is the only chance they get to talk to each other.  Once a week, all these kids from opposite ends of the city turn up at the park with their gig bags, a battery pack and a four-track.  Then, they record guitar parts on each other’s tapes so they can take it home for the week, study it and write songs “together.” It’s a really bizarre sight to behold, but totally cool at the same time.

And now for this month’s playing tip…..

One very cool thing to do to spice up your rhythm playing that a lot of people don’ t think of is to apply vibrato or all-out bend to chords.  It makes your rhythm parts sound much more psychotic.  You can hear me doing this in “Spiderbaby (Yeah-Yeah-Yeah)” [La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume 1] as shown in Figure 1.

It almost sounds like some twisted old blues riff-and it’s one of my favorite moments on that album.  It’s a very simple thing to do, basically I’m just shaking the shit out of the strings the whole time.