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**Frownland** · 11-07-2018, 09:32 PM

Far Beyond Driven>>>Other Pantera>>>>Dog Doodoo>>>>Early Pantera

Nostril Caverns - Sanity's Unnecessary Elaborations

Quote:

guitars written in 2016
- drums and keyboards written in 2017
- lyrics written in 2018
- guitars, drums, and keyboards recorded in 2017
- vocals recorded in 2018
- mixdowns finished on January 29, 2018

I started this album in 2016 when I wanted to write more songs with complex and elaborate song structures where the music and riffs change constantly (like on my "Repressed Memory Games (2016)" album), but for this album I wanted to challenge myself even more, so I added a rule that 3 songs must have "100 sections" and none of the sections can repeat later in the song (meaning, each section only occurs once). By "section", I mean a music staff in Power Tab. The length of each section didn't matter - some sections only had a few notes in them, other sections had so many notes that I had to zoom out in Power Tab so they'd all fit in the staff. The only thing that mattered was that there were 100 of them. As I started writing the first song, I added another rule where each new section had to have a different tempo from the previous section (though, I think there may be one or two sections where the tempo doesn't change).

Writing so many riffs wasn't a problem, it was actually pretty fun, but the really challenging part was memorizing a full song and recording the guitars and drums live in a full take from beginning to end without any post-editing. I memorized one song at a time - I started by playing guitar along to the Power Tab file I created and memorized 10 sections at a time. Once I could play those 10 sections without many mistakes, I went to the next 10 sections, etc. I often had to go back to previous sections for more practice. Once I had the entire song structure memorized, I began writing the drum part while playing drums along to the Power Tab file, section by section. Once I wrote the entire drum part, I practiced it until I was ready to record the drums in a full take. Once the drums were recorded, I went back to the guitar and practiced until I was ready to record. Once the guitars were recorded I started memorizing the next song in the same way. Starting to memorize a new song was pretty daunting. Sitting there practicing guitar along to the Power Tab file while being 30 sections into the song and continuing to make mistakes was pretty discouraging, but I stuck with it and am really proud of my performances on the album and what I accomplished.

Even though I nicknamed this "the 100 sections per song album", only 3 songs follow that theme. Track 1/3/5 each have 100 sections. Track 2/4/6 are ambient synth interludes. Track 7/8/9 have more traditional song structures.

Guitars and drums recorded in a full take with no overdubs, punch-ins, timing manipulation, copy/paste, etc. No triggers or samples were used on the drums.