Mark Heinz and Scott Randall of Fragile Porcelain Mice hollerin' in unison on stage (photo by Chris Hursey)

I was going to post this on Twitter in response to this tweet from a buddy of mine, but then decided I might as well blog it since I haven’t added any new SwingStomp articles in over a week.

While Scott Randall was recording the vocals for “The Council” (Frostbidding, circa 1996), I was sitting in the control room and had an idea for one of his parts in that he would go straight from an intense, screaming part directly into a whisper for the last word of the phrase, “My tired head will swell.” I even grabbed a Shure SM57 that was run directly into the board and attempted to record a pass of me whispering the word “swell” just for reference purposes.

Our engineer recorded each of my attempts at getting the timing and the whisper right, and I wasn’t doing a very good job at getting the idea out of my head and onto tape; it just wasn’t working. So after a few failed attempts, he once again started playback a few seconds before I was to whisper the word “swell,” but this time I think I was equally parts frustrated, and filled with the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll because instead of a whisper came the loudest, longest, most blood-curdling-est scream that I’ve ever produced. Jamie, our recording engineer who was sitting right next to where I was standing, threw off his headphones in about 1/10th of a second. It was glorious, and we decided to keep the scream.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t keep that first take because I’d pegged out the recording levels so badly which had been set for a whisper, but levels were quickly reset to accommodate its ferocity, and we hit RECORD once again and put it to tape. So, much like the Tenacious D song, the scream that you hear on Frostbidding now is more of a tribute to my best recorded scream ever, as the original version was no doubt so distorted and clipped that it is forever lost to legend.

Actually, I produce many similar hollers and yells during a typical FPM set, but since I never have a vocal mic it’s probably only those in the first few rows (and the rest of the band) that hear them.

Here’s an excerpt of the “The Council” from Frostbidding. I’m the one screaming the word “swell” after Scott’s, “My tired head will…”

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Excerpt from “The Council” (mp3)

 Filed Under: Studio

Got some brand new demos of new Fragile Porcelain Mice material to listen to, and I’m afraid I’m going to burn myself out on these songs before we even record the album!

Actually, that won’t happen. I don’t get burned out on our songs easily. I still honestly like playing all of the old stuff that we’ve been doing for the past 85 (give or take) years now. Those songs are a lot of fun to play–especially with a crowd going buck wild and moving to the beat.

As cool as these new demo recordings are, though, I’m confident that when we put the final versions down it’s gonna be on. If you know what I’m sayin’…

I seriously can’t wait to fully assemble our best record yet and unleash it. [Patience. Paaatieeence!]

Listening to brand new FPM demos in QuickTime

 Filed Under: Studio