Nobody asked for it, but it got made.
Earlier this month I put out a new EP from my solo project, And Or Not. If you want to skip the self indulgent dive into making this recording and just go listen to it, you can just go check it out.
And Or Not is an exercise in simplistic instrumentation. It’s only bass, drums, vocals, and some keys for a little added texture. It’s a nice balance to the more complex arrangements of things like Grave Danger. Like last time I started by just writing a bunch of bass riffs, recording them into one big project, and then coming back later to pick out ones I liked to build songs around.
Once I’d massaged those riffs into basic song structures I started putting some lyrics together. I’ve given myself a lot of leeway to write about whatever pops into my mind so I ended up writing about my disappointment around the current state of the internet (Let’s Get Weird Again), Minecraft (Bedrock), and coffee (Top Me Off).
For the recording process, I took the demos I made for writing, mapped it to a click and started by laying down the drums. I think I’m a better drummer than I was when I did the first record but it still took a while to get everything down since I was sort of writing parts while I was trying to record them. I think I’ve gotten a little better at recording drums, too.
The bass parts were pretty straightforward to lay down, but I spent a little more time layering my tone. After seeing ‘68 live I got inspired to lean into a noisier, fuzzier sound and not be afraid to build up a more complex tone. I’m using bass amp models from Logic for my tone so I ended up taking the raw tracks and running them through three different amp setups (resulting in 3 tracks for all the bass parts). One track had a really fuzzy tone, one beefed up the low end, and a third focused on brightening the attack. Mixed together I got a really full sound, which was pretty important when there isn’t much else in terms of instrumentation.
I did add some keys, mainly B3 organ, to thicken things up and add a bit of counter melody in a few parts, but it was pretty minimal. Mainly just to add some more texture to the songs.
Finally, vocals.
I’m still not very confident about my vocals, but doing a solo project means that it can just be whatever I put down so I’ve been digging into it. I had a lot of fun layering and doing harmonies on these songs. I also tried to put in a few more “character” elements (“wooo”s, “let’s go!”s, etc.) to help combat the very “studio only” nature of these recordings (since I’m the band, these songs have never been played live). Doing vocals for this project has very much been an exercise in just laying stuff down and putting it out there with as much confidence as I can.
Even though this is my solo project I always love getting my kids in on songs so I had Elliot come in and record some extra vocals on Bedrock. We’ve been playing a lot of Minecraft lately and it seemed appropriate to get him in that song somewhere.
My favorite little easter egg on this record came from Max. If you listen really carefully at the end of the last song (Top Me Off), you can hear him say “Ok, can we play cars now?”. I had been recording drums when he came down and wanted to play. He let me do one more take, waited very patiently, and after the last hit excitedly asked if we could play now. I thought it was a great little incidental moment so I left it in, isolated it, and turned it up.
The cover art was, somewhat begrudgingly, done with ChatGPT. I knew kind of how I wanted it to look and managed to get a full cover together in only a few minutes. Part of me wishes I had made it from scratch, just out of principle, but I got something I’m happy with and that’s what matters.
Overall, I’m really proud of this EP. It took WAY longer than it should have to complete because I could only work on it in fits and bursts when I had free time (and could be loud at home). It feels like good progress for the previous record and, honestly, I just love putting out music.