Prompted by a question in next week’s episode of Dat Fury Radio, I went back and reminded myself of the production timeline of my current massive project, “Jam My Wave / Don’t Jam My Wave / Jam Those Squares.” As I’ve been mentioning in passing for probably more than two years, “Jam My Wave” is my current full-production, rock songs, one man band project. I typically only have physical space to work on one live instrument project at a time (and within that, usually only one instrument at a time!).
Following the release of “Fight Songs” in November 2022, in late ’22 or very early ’23 I decided to commit to doing a big guitar album. (Before researching this I had thought there was a year where I wasn’t working on a guitar album, but it turned out there was no break at all, or a couple of months at most. Time continues to be weird!) I thought I had enough song demos collected to make it work, and I wanted to do something with huge, rich, bi-amped, detailed-sounding electric guitars (kind of as a contrast with or next step from the bass-focused and Motown-inspired sound of “Fight Songs”). The imaginary mood board included bands like Spoon, Smashing Pumpkins, and Tom Petty. I had one specific riff I kept playing over and over that I was absolutely sure I wanted to include, working title “Mid Phase,” that will be the first track of the whole project.
Definitely by April 2023 I had a folder of mostly instrumental demos on my phone, and had a good start on writing melodies and lyrics. The oldest of these demos was from 2015 (through the idea might have been older; I think the idea that has become “Ritual Destruction” might be from the mid-00s, and I remember working on “Keep Crushin’ It” and “Dream Frag 2…” at various houses of Cory’s. The memories are jumbled but feel like they’re from before 2015, maybe as early as 2009). There were a few demos from every year between 2015 and 2023, spread roughly evenly. There wasn’t a big, productive writing period for these ideas; they were collected over time.
There were a small number of complete song demos with lyrics and everything, like the one that became “Keep Crushin’ It” (working title “90s Jam with solo”). Most were just a couple guitar riffs, like a verse and a chorus, maybe a bridge, maybe a wordless melody idea. I basically spent all of 2023 working with these demos, writing melodies and lyrics, choosing which to include (and I ended up picking 22, which is how the project became two albums plus b-sides), and even working on the track sequencing. By October I was close to finishing lyrics.
In November ’23, right before Thanksgiving, I booked a little cabin retreat, took my guitar and 404 mkII out to the woods, and recorded fresh demos of everything to a click track. These became the bed tracks for the Reaper sessions, and I started roughing in the drum programming, basic kick/snare patterns and accents. I kept listening to these demos as they developed, making small changes to tempo, arrangement, etc.
In December ’23 I set up the big guitar recording rig. I knew I wanted to use two amps; my favorite Orange AD30, and I had gotten a little Peavey Backstage II that’s a decent old practice amp on its own, but has a real spring reverb. That made a perfect pair, with the Peavey mixed 6 dB lower than the Orange or so. I got the close mics perfectly placed and in phase (here’s a trick; using a synth set to square wave makes it much easier to see phase relationships down to the sample level, rather than testing with guitar!) and set up an X-Y pair of small diaphragm condensers for the room sound.
I spent most of 2024 tracking rhythm guitars, January through early fall. (I have a note that specifically by March 17, three songs were down, including “Why Worry” and “Dream Frag 2 DEN Omelette #14er.) “Rhythm guitars” probably totaled 35-40 parts, since a lot of the songs have 2 rhythm guitars. Each part got its own pedal set-up, most of which I have forgotten, though I have favorites of course, and can pick some pedals out by ear. I finished in mid-October.
(On a personal level this is deeply intertwined with adoption failure in August ’23, Mom’s death in December ’23, and Miles’ death in April ’24. Having a project that required an hour or two of complete focus and flow to make progress on – performing and recoding a guitar part – was pretty healthy.)
Two days after finishing rhythm guitars, I hit that moment in a project I’ve hit several times where I need a piece of gear that doesn’t exist, so I stop to create it. This time it was setting up the bass right, and I needed a parallel loop for clean and distorted signals.
I designed and built a new pedal, the “SHORTY,” in a shocking-for-me nine days. It is a parallel loop with a low pass filter on the dry signal, and a high pass filter on the wet/ loop return path; the main use is for distorted bass, with any type of distortion pedal in the loop. The filters allow for a clean low end and distorted mids/treble, with adjustable crossover, blend, and output boost. So that was October, and got integrated into the bass setup.
The pedals went into a Motown-style DI (heavy in the lows) and my main amp, a solid state Quilter Interbass (Ampeg style), and the Interbass’ powered output went out to an Ampeg cab with a mic. So there’s 3 bass signals captured; the direct Interbass signal is the main one, and then there’s the DI to blend in for extra lows, and the cab/mic to blend in for extra bite/highs. And (coincidentally) I had 3 main bass sounds; clean (no SHORTY), drive (DIY overdrive prototype in the SHORTY loop), and fuzz (fuzz in the SHORTY loop; my BYOC triangle-spec Muff clone). Bass went pretty fast, just November and December, finishing on December 30. (I think I then did the bass for a separate project, “Let’s Drift,” in the first weeks of January.)
Right as I was finishing bass we had a unit inspection that required me to totally rearrange the studio, so I lost like a month to that. The timing wasn’t bad, I was able to finish bass, pass inspection, and then set up for both acoustic guitars and lead/texture electric guitars, which I’ve been doing since February. Acoustic is done, lead has one big song to go. (As I add some details to this post on June 28, all the lead guitar that remains is the intro to “Everything Compounded” which I can probably record tomorrow!)
Next will be keys, mix of organ and synth. Not every song has keys. Then vocals, so I ought to be doing vocals well before the end of the year. I’d be surprised if I finished vocals in 2025 though. It’s probably realistic-ish to try and release the first LP in the back half of 2026, and the second LP and b-sides in 2027.
Cory has been quietly executive producing and providing feedback throughout. I kept “Fight Songs” an almost complete secret from him except for the song he worked on, so after it was out I asked him what kind of process he would enjoy for “Jam My Wave,” and he said he’d like some little previews of specific songs and stages in the process, but would also like some surprise when it’s complete. I’ve probably shared 6 or 8 different songs with him at different stages of completion.