Category: My Music

People often have a preconception on what a home studio should look like.  Spacious, sound proofing, glass partitions, and a mixer that runs from one end of the room to another.  Just like the movies, or the MTV clips.  I am a pragmatic perfectionist.  That is to say, I aspire to attain perfection within my means.  I have a home studio, but a humble one.  Good enough to record our band’s jamming materials.  Good enough to record a demo tape, I reckon.  Above is a photo taken by our band manager Selrol using her brand new film camera that comes with a fisheye lens.  It is amazing what a cute little camera can do.  I said to her: Keep the film rolling and we shall have a montage of jamming photos for our upcoming album.  Last week, I have designed a logo for our band.  My band-mates Jason and Cynthia seem to like the design.  It bears our band name wrapped with a guitar in abstract form.  Jason said to me: What about some candy colours for our logo?  What colours are the candies these days?  I can’t remember when was the last time I ate one.  I am a pragmatist.  What are the benefits in chewing candies?  I like Jason’s idea.
 
Have you heard the b-side song “Do You Believe in Me” performed by the Welsh band Catatonia?  Many ask: What does the music of [your band] No Eye Candy sound like?  It is dark.  But what is dark?  “Do You Believe in Me” is a good example.  During our jamming break last weekend, between our practice session one and two, I said to Jason: I want to write some songs, just like that.  We listened to the song in detail and Jason commented that this is the type of songs to be written by the band, as a whole.  And not I alone, which is the case today.  Fair enough.  We shall have some song writing sessions.  Perhaps after we are done with our practice sessions, perhaps after we are done with our recording sessions.  Our long list of to-do items.  Our multi-year project.
 
In our next gig, there should not be a constraint on our play time.  And since it is an indoor dinning and drinking setting, we have reintroduced the slow song “Feather” into our playlist.  What can I say?  The legacy of our ex-drummer lives on, even after she has [temporarily] moved on.  The song does not have the same level of impact without Wieke’s highly challenging arrangement.  No effort, no risk, hence no glory.  Maybe we shall dedicate this song to her from now on, whenever we perform “Feather” live.  Our band manager loves the song “Jealousy”.  And that too, has been added into our playlist.  The original song lasted close to half an hour during the early No Eye Candy years.  Since then, we have attempted to trim down the song into now a ten minutes long song.  We change the song title to “(A Glimpse of) Jealousy”.  No surprise.
 
We have not jammed “(A Glimpse of) Jealousy” for a long time.  A song that starts with Cynthia’s steady bass line.  Then Jason’s surreal, heart wrenching guitar sound tears the veil of our reality apart, sucking us into the dark void.  Moments later, I join in with my rhythm guitar filling the air with an ambient of that repeated familiarity.  Dramatic as it may sound, last weekend, as we jammed this song, the dark cloud broke open halfway through the song.  And then the heavy rain poured.

Jealousy.  Potent as it’s meant to be.  It is a pretty dark thing, I kid you not.

After the morning Good Friday Mass, our drummer Wieke and I were talking about the popular video game “Guitar Hero” and the Stand Alone Drums that you can buy and play it like a pro.  For our jamming session right after the Mass that Cynthia, Wieke , and I have attended, our guitarist Jason has brought along a tiny drum machine to experiment at my humble home studio.  If you are curious about how it looks like, here is one.

Both Jason and I were quite skeptical on what this tiny machine can do.  Here is our dilemma: Recording at my home studio allows us to have a much better control over the sound quality but there’s no drum kit; jamming at a rented standard studio comes with drums but the recording is lousy.  Besides, my home studio is a more conducive environment to discuss and experiment on the different song arrangements.  And here is another dilemma.  It seems hard to get a live gig that provides a drum set.  Like an upcoming performance that I’ll share more once the detail is finalized.  Jason and I have talked about the possibility of using a drum machine for years but somehow, neither of us has managed to pull it off.  I don’t have the talent.  He doesn’t have the time.

I wish I could share the video our band manager Selrol has recorded as we witnessed the magic fingers of Wieke dancing over the tiny key pads live.  While the band played our usual set, she fed us with the beats that if I were to close my eyes, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the way she plays a real drum set and this tiny drum machine (note: sound-wise, of course I can).  All of us were speechless. Not in a million years can I the songwriter be able do that.  I would love to have that talent though.  I shall start with “Guitar Hero”.  Maybe talents are made of this.  The kind of effortlessness.  My personal thought is that if we put time into nurturing what our talents are, we may be able to do something great.

So all of a sudden, recording a decent demo album at my home studio can be a reality; performing live with live drum beats without a drum set can also be a reality.  I’m excited, on what we can potentially do in a very near future.  We, or rather I, tend to be over optimistic right after our jamming sessions.  Having said that, I have a good feel on this.