How My Band’s New Album Unlocked My Ipod’s Hidden Powers

First things first, here’s our first “official” (meaning, on Bandcamp) release, Best of Year One: http://trialofthegoldenwitch.bandcamp.com/album/best-of-year-one

This is a collection of the 22 most listenable songs that my band has recorded in the past year. I think it’s quite a fun and cool collection. I’d have released it for free, but Bandcamp won’t let me—not that it matters, since who wants this shit on their computer(?), and also the streaming is the same quality you’ll get for downloading.

Nonetheless, I actually bought the damn thing, because I wanted to put it on my ipod and was too lazy to hunt down/convert all the songs to mp3s. And through doing this, I discovered a new function on my ipod touch!

See, when I uploaded the songs, I filled in their lyrics, which you can see on the individual pages of the songs. Unexpectedly, when you play one of these songs on an ipod touch, it shows the lyrics on screen while the songs is playing, and you can scroll through them and it’s pretty awesome.

I don’t know how to even put lyrics on a regular mp3, and clearly it’s not a normal practice to write lyrics to song files, since I’ve never seen this before. I gotta say it’s pretty fucking cool!

Is This How You Demo?

I don’t know exactly what a “demo” is supposed to be, I’ve seen context that it’s a thing you send to labels or what have you as a demonstration, and I’ve also seen it as sort of a “working” version of a track, usually without all the instruments yet figured out. This is the latter.

My band made an album of demo songs. The idea here is that lyrics-wise, these songs were actually written beforehand. The guitars are still pretty much all improv, but the idea was to record it, then all of us have to listen to it for a month or so and actually learn and practice the songs so that we can later record a better version.

Importantly, even in demo form, these are easily the best songs we’ve recorded yet. Working around pre-written lyrics makes a *huge* difference. The question is, will the guitarists actually be interested in learning the songs, adding to them, perfecting them, etc? I certainly hope so. I’d love it if these became “real” songs and we released them as a “real” album. (lol I can tell just from the number of plays on purevolume that they haven’t even listened to these songs since I released them on like Friday).

You can here the “I Just Wanna Folk” demos here, though I have FLACs if you prefer: http://www.purevolume.com/TrialoftheGoldenWitch/albums/I+Just+Wanna+Folk

Some Things About “Are You the Cool Kids?”

After an expectedly lukewarm reception of our first album, I haven’t advertised Trial of the Golden Witch releases very much. After all, we aren’t playing pop music by any stretch, and the recording quality is less than good. I also don’t feel that we’re putting so much effort into our music that it begs for recognition. Nevertheless, *I* really enjoy our music. We all do, but I actually listen to it regularly. I don’t want to push our releases on anyone, but I do want to talk about them. There’s just no one to talk about them with since no one’s listening to them. The obvious solution: talk to myself (in public).

Despite the fact that we’ve put out ninety or so songs in the past three months, Are You the Cool Kids? is only our second full-length LP (not counting the cover album “Vague Covers”), and by far our longest release at 52 minutes. That makes it the hardest album to listen to yet, not only being particularly long, but particularly experimental and esoteric, without the catchy pop riffs of some of our earlier releases. Still, I think that musically it’s my favorite of our releases. 

To date, Trial of the Golden Witch hasn’t fully written any songs. All of our music has been improvised, though some of the riffs used were at least thought up by the guitarists some time before their recording. Only a handful of songs have had multiple takes done, and most of the time we don’t even listen to them back because the guitarists are just like that. We have, however, gotten better and better at improvisation, with our two guitarists synchronizing ever better as they play together a lot. I still really enjoy the “live” sound that we make, though I do wish there were fewer mistakes in the playing. 

Are You the Cool Kids? is all improv with the exception of the vocals on the Intro song. When I first released the album, there were no vocals, but they were added later. I think this was a great decision, partly because the vocals mask some of the mistakes made in the song, and because it’s a more lively way to start the album. It has the strongest vocal presence on the album, as it’s the only song with clean vocals (this isn’t counting the spoken-word songs).

NO QUIPS is my choice as the “single” from the album. Aside from sounding unpracticed and having some mistakes, it actually sounds like there was some planning involved in the way the song builds towards a big climax. I think I utilized the functions of my I Am T-Pain microphone to the fullest here.

Knife Gangbang might be my favorite track, as a trippy instrumental piece that guitarist George came up with. The whole album was recorded on the day after Christmas, for which George had received a new amp, and a lot of the songs (this one in particular) were driven by his experimentation with the amp settings. Interestingly, the title of the song comes from a very intense narration that I was giving from under the bed (the computer was on top of it), which is almost entirely inaudible in the track. I like that this song feels minimalist, yet like a lot is happening. 

I like This Always Happens primarily for how it leads into Billy Maes. This Always Happens is short and instrumental and stops and starts a couple of times. Because of this, it can be difficult to detect the moment when it transitions into Billy Maes, especially because the riff at the start of Billy Maes is similar to the one that ends This Always Happens. 

My favorite moment on the album is when the Billy Maes monologue begins, suddenly cutting out from the long period of off-vocal instrumentation along with a heavy guitar riff. The Billy Maes monologue is bloody hilarious, too. 

Things to be Known About Time and Space didn’t come out quite how I’d like, since I think the monologue is a little annoying without being able to understand what I’m saying. The style was inspired by having listened to early Butthole Surfers and then realizing that I could create a similar effect with my I Am T-Pain mic.

Promiscuous Street is nice, especially because of its sassy bassline. I think with some drums and stuff, this could be a “real” song. 

It’s Canon is a silly song, done because one of the guitarists wanted to make a “four chords” song. The chorus goes, “one, two, three, four, it’s four chords! Pa-cha-bel-a, it’s canon!” which is dementedly catchy even through the annoyingly high-pitched T-Pain mic wailing. I don’t care for the song, but George likes it.

Big Ass Pyramid is my least favorite track on the album, and I’m thinking about removing it. It came about when George was experimenting with an amp setting that sounded vaguely Egyptian, and I started talking about the band Nile. George said I should record myself explaining it, so I did. However, I find the meandering song and explanation boring and don’t care to keep listening to them. The song might be gone already when you read this.

Long Tucked In is a decent song that doesn’t particularly stand out, and I think was weakened by coming after Big Ass Pyramid, so hopefully it’ll do better with that song removed.

Put the Cookie Down! is just silly and retarded fun. 

World Falls is one of my favorites on the album, sounding almost post-metal-y (would need drums to really sound like that, though). I would very much like to make a video for this song. 

I’m Gonna Be A Fat Fuck And Eat All These Goldfish is clearly silly and alright—I think its saving grace is the catchy titular chorus. I also made a silly video for it wherein I fulfill the title promise.

Facial Silhouette has its moments. I released the song in a way almost determined to piss myself off, by purposefully not cutting it at all, but it came out better than I expected.

Giant’s Dialog is weird. I think it somehow works coming at this place in the album, but I would’ve liked the actual dialog to come out better.

How the Fuck Are You Still Awake is quiet and nice. It’s very slow and calm, so I put it at the end of the album as a sort of outro piece. It got its title because I actually nodded off while listening to it back, having been up all night recording the album.

All in all, I like this album and think it’s rather inimitable of a moment in our career. It’s something we’ll probably never quite do again, so even though it could be improved, the way it is now is something that only it will ever be. And I enjoy it a lot. 

Making Music Is Like Writing On Tumblr

Early this year, one of my best friends (we’ll call him George for the purpose of this post) joined and introduced me to a band called The Friday’ers. It consisted of George on bass, a guy we’ll call Arn (lol that’s his name) who was the leader and played lead guitar, a guy we’ll call Kanon on second guitar, and a guy named Herbert on drums. At first, they wanted me to be their vocalist, but they didn’t have any songs or ideas together, and Arn, who’s incredibly irresponsible, never managed to contact me about practice or shows that they did in their hasty, disorganized fashion. However, I still jammed with them from time to time, and importantly, Arn and Kanon are both really excellent guitarists. George wasn’t a great basist at first, but he got much better over the course of the year. Even moreso, however, he got better at guitar, and for a long time he brought his acoustic guitar every time he came over, and we’d make up songs together.

My interest in making music soared at the time, but I became increasingly frustrated as Arn, still claiming he wanted me on vocals, would never contact me for shit. Since I didn’t care much for the style of music he wanted the band to perform anyway (something between punk and classic rock which was sometimes okay), I invited my brother, who we’ll call Battler, and George to form a side band with me called Trial of the Golden Witch. (And now the Umineko theme comes together). Battler had been learning guitar and was obsessed with playing dark-metal riffs, and I tried to get George to follow on acoustic guitar while I sang. In the end, though, we only recorded one or two songs that were anything like dark-metal, instead following our more eclectic interests to the pursuit of acapella songs. We’d sit around my shitty voice recorder and make shit up on the spot, usually utilizing quotes from video games and MSI songs. This was a lot of fun, but it wasn’t really going anywhere. 

Things picked up again in September when I became re-acquainted with The Friday’ers, who finally wanted me to sing with them during a live show, which they’d be dedicating to my mom, who’d just been hospitalized with cancer. During this time, I became better friends with Kanon—something I should’ve done a long time ago since he’s the only person I’ve ever met with a broader musical taste than myself. I started trying to get him to record some stuff for me to use, since he was mostly interested in shoegaze and experimental stuff over the kind of music Arn wanted the Friday’ers to play. 

We finally did play live, which didn’t go nearly as well as we’d hoped thanks to technical issues, and around the same time, I managed to trap Arn, Battler, and George in my room with Arn’s Blue mic in order to record a full album’s worth of songs. Arn played acoustic guitar, while the other three of us improvised acappella melodies. The result was a full-length album called Phantasmagoria of Improv Bullshit. I love this album.

I was so excited about having made this album that a week later, I trapped Kanon, Battler, and George in my room again, this time with Geroge on acoustic and Kanon on electric, to record the Improv 2: The Beckoning EP. I didn’t like it as much as the full length, but it was still fun and I felt like we were getting somewhere—like if I could keep trapping these guys together, we’d refine these improv jams into something awesome. 

The next week, I was lucky because my friend Mike came over. Mike is a guy who does nothing but play guitar all day, and as a result can play with extremely technical proficiency. The problem is that Mike doesn’t write songs, and neither do I, plus he’s mostly interested in playing technical death metal and playing fast, rather than my more experimental style. This is why we never got any music recorded on our own (except Tidal Wave of Black Suffering lol). But that weekend, I had him, Kanon, and George, all three of them with electric guitars and amps, in my living room, along with myself and Battler using anything from a shitty acoustic guitar to a tambourine and bamboo sticks to add to the sound. The result was a fairly chaotic but definitely interesting EP called Sandalgaze (a play on shoegaze). 

In the time since then, however, it’s been increasingly difficult to organize any kind of session. My bandmates are bogged down with work and school, and don’t necessarily want to record music every time we get together. Additionally, George and Battler aren’t really interested in recording to begin with, favoring the experience of playing random shit over having to hear it back. George actually posts random guitar playing on his youtube account en masse for no reason and doesn’t even watch any of it back. It’s only Kanon who shares my enthusiasm for actually releasing some halfway-decent music at some point. I still got some releases out where I could work alone, such as Inverted Sandalgaze, which is the songs from Sandalgaze edited and played backwards. 

In early November, I managed to capture Kanon and George again, and we recorded the very short Friendship EP, which instantly became my favorite thing we’d done. In spite of still being improv, it felt much more held-together than our other work, almost as if we’d made the songs sound the way they did on purpose. Also at this time, Kanon became the official fourth band member, what with the Friday’ers basically being dead now anyways. I got really excited by this, but unfortunately, it’s the last full recording we’ve done as a band together.

In the meantime, I’ve been recording copious amounts of dark ambient music, which seems to be a thing I do in the wintertime lol. I’ve been building up to an EP called Night Winter Noise, which is what happens when I’m alone in my room all night listening to my open window and the sound of my refrigerator (I now have a mini-fridge in my room). I enjoy doing this, and I think I’ve gotten enormously better at it than I was a year ago. In addition to the dark ambient, I’ve done a track or two of chaotic noise, which I also like, but Battler hates all of it. He considers dark ambient a bullshit genre he wants no part in. Thankfully, Kanon disagrees entirely.

The other day, Kanon sent me a melody he’d put together, and I laid down atmospheric tracks over it to turn it into a soothing ambient song that I find good enough to genuinely believe we could sell. It’s only a matter of time before he and I put together some more tracks and I’ll finally set up a bandcamp account or something.

It’s weird making all this music, because I like all of it. I actually listen to all of my songs regularly, and even know the lyrics to a lot of the improv songs. I’ve burned several CDs of our music for my car. But it’s weird, because it’s like posting on tumblr: I put out something that I care about in a forum where no one’s really going to see it. The only people who listen to my music are my friends, all of whom are already in the band itself. After a rather negative reaction to the first two albums, I gave up on posting my songs on google+, and I don’t know what kind of place would be fit to interest anyone in the songs. I mean, who would even want to listen to this stuff? Most of it is unpolished and underwhelming. Would even people who love weird indie and atmospheric shit be interested? I can’t figure out how to figure it out. 

I do know this: I may be proud of my music, but I’m at the same time a little too ashamed of it to present it. As soon as I’ve made music that I’m really, truly proud of and find presentable, I’m definitely going to make sure it finds an audience. then I’ll just hope that the people I find might take interest in the rest of the Trial discography.

And now, if anyone actually read all of this and is interested in hearing some of our music, here’s my personal Best-Of:

Souls in Tandem (acoustic folk-rock improv)

I’m Your Favorite Number, You’re My Favorite Letter (ambient mathy thing)

Shaughmboughaleigh (weird-ass, badly recorded acoustic improv epic)

That Ass Is So Clean You Could Eat Off Of It (weird-ass acoustic improv comedy)

Abduction (dark ambient)