Mixed Messages

Things are getting a bit crazy up in here, up in here.

The mixing process has started, FINALLY after waiting for a bleeding month, we hauled our asses once again to Ashfaqs’ to create our first mix of Sultanat.

Once again Yasir and I had to make the trip because OK’s trying to study and Imran is in India shouting "Tendulkar prances around like a little girl" He was always one to stir shit up.

As usual, on Friday when we got to studio we found it locked and bolted. Our new engineer, who calls himself "Vicki" (I kid you not) had gone out to chill for a bit and decided not to come back. Hence I shall now refer to him as S**kDicki.

After the ritual screaming at Ashfaq, he gave us the next session and after running around trying to get harddisks, we got to the studio and started mixing Sultanat.

For those of you who don’t know, the mixing process is the stage where you set the level of each instrument playing in the song. You set how loud the drums are relative to the bass and guitars, you see if the vocals need more bass and treble, things like that. Its done digitally and it is to create a balanced sound for the whole band. Sounds easier than it is, because its all highly technical, in fact there are people in the recording industry who spend all there time just doing this. And here we were, a bunch of wannabe’s doing it without any prior experience. Although I must mention due credit to Yasir whose technical knowledge regarding audio engineering certainly helped to explain a lot to me. (happy Yasir?...)

The hardest thing is trusting your own judgement because most average listeners can’t tell if your song sounds the way you want it to, Its very slight differences in sound and impact that have to be noted. And after 4 hours of listening to the song over and over again, your ears start playing tricks on you. For e.g. I could have sworn that Ashfaq Bhai was singing "My Heart Will Go On" . Okay, so maybe he wasn’t. But I wasn’t sure.

The other thing is that when you create your first mix, it sounds different on everything. So while "Sultanat" sounded incredible in the studio speakers, it sounded really weak and subdued in the car stereo. Drums were too loud, guitars too soft, vocals too tinny. Bottom line: Major depression. I guess it was naïve to think we would get it right the first time. I was so excited about finally having a listenable mix, but then I didn’t make anyone listen to it except a few close people.

It’s just that sinking feeling you get, when you’ve worked so hard at something and when you finally reveal it, and people don’t scream in ecstasy. I honestly had pictures in mind of making people listen to the first notes of "Sultanat" and see them bounce around with excitement. Guess I’ll have to wait a little longer, work a little harder.

On a lighter note, it appears that we will be sharing the studio with ABRAR. That’s right, the man behind hits such as "Billo Dey Ghar", "Majajni" and "Nach Punjaban" is going to be at the same studio as us! Now I don’t care what people say, but I am a bonafide fan of this guy and I cannot wait to meet him and post my picture with him up on the blog. Bhangra Zindabad.


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Days 15...16...man I lost count...

Sorry loyal blog readers I haven’t been updating regularly, a combination of things set me back, most notably my own health. As Lodhi’s recovery got better and better, I got worse and worse with the flu. Plus the stupid comments section on these blogger thingies is down so If you guys get a chance please leave comments on our orkut community page.

We finally got finished with Lodhi’s guitar bits, although it took us forever to get the tones right, I’m glad we spent time on it. Most guitar players have one tone or one style of playing for every song. For example, you can identify Mekaal Hassan or Salman Ahmed almost instantly by the way their guitar sounds. My approach has always been to have a variety of guitar tones to suit every song. To me it’s like using a palette to create a unique mix for each song. Thankfully Lodhi shares my ethic so on the album, you will find a variety of guitar tones and styles which should keep it pretty interesting. The only trouble is remembering each combo for when we’re playing live…

These early morning sessions had really taken a toll on me. I had no days off because we were recording Friday and Sunday morning and then I had work the rest of the week. Intensely intoxicated with cough syrup and antihistamines, I was lying on the studio couch trying desperately to say awake so I could listen to Lodhi doing his vocal takes. I knew I was hallucinating when the music started appearing to me in psychedelic colors and Yasir started appearing to me in a pink tutu. Although I wonder if that last one really was a hallucination. I didn’t want to let the boys down by appearing indifferent but I reached a point where my ears just couldn’t distinguish between sounds anymore. In the distance I heard Yasir calling out "Whaaaaaaaaat dooooooo youuuuuuuuu thiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnk". It was literally just like the movies…with elongated speech and slurred comprehension….

Lodhi was having trouble with his takes. Its tricky recording vocalists because most of them have a peak period where they start to do solid takes. Most vocalist warm up for the first 2-3 takes and peak around the 7-8 take. Anything more than 15 takes and they start to deteriorate. So there is a very small window to get it right. Plus one had to be really careful with criticism, because singing is all about confidence, and the slightest remark, even a joke or an innocuous suggestion can completely throw off a vulnerable songbird.

It’s hard not to get frustrated when we are so close to finishing our recording process. I know the mixing and mastering is the major part of it, but I really wanted to get past this milestone. It just wasn’t happening. Generally our morale was down. I was sick, Lodhi wasn’t performing at his best, Omar wasn’t around and Yasir was doing his best to pull us through with his cheery enthusiasm. This was a welcome change. Most times Yasirs’ cheery enthusiasm has inspired my cheery enthusiasm to call him names such as "ass-queen". But this time it helped to get us through.
To make matters worse, Raza fell sick too and was also reassigned to work with another party. Which left us to work with Ashfaq bhai himself. This slowed us down immensely because we had a really good understanding with Raza by now and he instinctively knew what we wanted when recording. (Plus we suspect Ashfaq bhai of using time-wasting tactics so that we have to book more shifts….bastards)

For icing on the bastard cake, after dragging myself out of bed and fighting through my morning sneezes, we found the studio locked and abandoned this Friday with Ashfaq bhai nowhere to be found. Apparently the strike froze everyone’s activity. But given that the man has his own care and lives pretty nearby, this was just too much to handle. I often try hard not to show frustration or depression in front of the other guys because then it just gets everyone down. But this was the last straw. I still haven’t been able to get to Ashfaq but when I do, I will call him an ass queen…at least.

Days 13 and 14: Noori beats us to a song title.

The weekend was a killer. To make up for last weeks no-show we scheduled morning shifts for Friday and Sunday. I have a half-day at work on Fridays so I was able to make it in the morning.

But it turned out to be an insane day. Lodhi’s approach to playing guitar is very different from mine. When I did my guitar parts, I played basic rhythm guitar first, then added a distorted guitar track if needed and then would play the solo last. I tend to work in layers where Lodhi tends to go at it in parts.

For the songs, “Dhoop” and “Ho Bhi Jahaan”, the first things he did were the little riffs and licks and solos and then he put on the clean rhythm guitar which was sparse. On “Gaata Mein Chaloon” I was strongly pushing for him to use an acoustic to do the basic rhythm of the song but he wasn’t comfortable on it. The acoustic guitar is difficult to record because it has a highly dynamic sound that you cant control through an amp. But I personally feel that it sounds so much sweeter than the electric, it just has so much more, heart.

Eventually we used it to do the opening of “Merey Dost” (A working title for the song which we’ll now have to change because of damn Noori!) The aforementioned “Merey Dost” is turning out to be a complete monster to record. Lodhi wrote it as a fairly simple tune with a catchy and powerful melody. OK did some highly imaginative drumming on it that changed the direction of the song completely. I personally feel its his best drumming on the album. But keeping up with him on bass was maddeningly difficult, and the end result is a song longer and more complicated than the rest. The tempos keep shifting without warning making it extremely hard to dub anything over the bits that aren’t structured. Personally I feel that when people will hear this song, they will either drag us through the mud completely or they will praise us for giving something like this a shot. I just hope there isn’t indifference.

Anyway, to spice it up, we even brought a keyboard into the mix, which Yasir and I tried in vain to use properly. But our lack of preparation showed and we couldn’t use the keys to their full potential, we’ll definitely have to do our homework there. We ended up mucking around with the video game sound effects, including sirens, whistle and monkey hoots.

Yasir and me were discussing album covers. No doubt inspired my attire of a wadera style white kurta, Yasir said we should all pose in similar kurtas on the cover. He apologized as I choked him.

We also discussed how to sell out like Ali Zafar and endorse mobile phones. Here we are pretending to endorse guitar string cleaner. Advertising people please take notice. All that’s left are Lodhis vocals and some more backing vocals. We should start mixing our first couple of single pretty soon, which will be the hardest bit I anticipate. We’ll be working Friday and Sunday mornings for the next two weeks. Aaargh….sleep, sleeep, I miss sleep.

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Day 12: The Lodhi Strikes Back

This was a pretty crazy and eventful Sunday, we were pumped about going to the studio because Lodhi was making his comeback. He was going to attempt to finish his guitar parts on his songs (FYI: Lodhi plays guitar on four songs, while I play bass. We switch duties for the other six ) The poor guy looked in pretty bad shape and he was chugging Energile like it was the only drink on earth. (I wonder how much we could get if ADP endorses an ad campaign for Energile…). This however gave him several R.Kelly type tendencies and he had to go pee every couple of minutes.

We had a lot of fun recording my guitar parts for the album because we experimented with all sorts of settings and weird mic settings/combinations (a closely guarded secret…). Lodhi too had some pretty far out ideas on how he wanted to blend the guitar sounds using a very experimental setup. This had me, the resident mic technician, completely baffled. It took us at least an hour of fiddling with knobs and mic placements to hit that sweet sound but when we did, it was a great feeling. I celebrated this great feeling by pretending do shoot Yasir and dance over his body. (Please note: Yes it’s true, we delight in torturing Yasir. But it’s only out of love. And well…sadism.)

While the guitar sound he was getting was awesome, Lodhi was pretty rusty getting back into the groove of things. We still managed to slap on some guitar riffs for "Gaata Mein Chaloon" and "Dhoop". He was beginning to fatigue and was getting out of sync when we started "Merey Dost" so we decided to call it a day.
I for one was the most relaxed I had been since we went in the studio since I had finished all my bits. With the result that I was acting like a bit of a jackass. There was a mini-keyboard lying around so Yasir and I decided to torture the already frazzled Lodhi by playing cartoony sounds over Lodhis’ playback and making him screw up…(hahaha…ok so you had to be there…)

Despite all the horsing around, I was getting a little tense. I knew it would take extra time for Lodster to get back to the top of his game, but Raza told us that we barely had any booked sessions left. The studio had been booked all the way through January by other artists, so we were gonna have to work over time to complete the album recording/mixing/mastering by January, which is our target. I don’t know how we are going to do this. Gulp.

Day 11: I'm free I'm free I'm free

9 a.m. to 2 p.m.


Lodhi is still in recovery and OK is still an ass-bandit (translation: he had to go to a college thing). They both enjoy breaking the rules. (Please see pic). Also they occassionally attack furry animals together. Once again it was Yasir and I, making the trek to the studio on a Sunday morning.

Today I was extra nervous about the two songs we were doing “Likhta Nahin Mein” and “Sheher key Aansoo” (See stories). Although I was relieved that these were the last two songs I had to sing lead vocals on, I considered them the two hardest ones. Given my ordeal during “Sajna” the confidence wasn’t exactly flowing.

Yasir had gone to see Overload last night and he was telling us about the awesome show they put on at Bahria Auditorium. I must confess I am always double minded when I hear about good concerts or attend them because while I enjoy great music, I always start thinking how awesome it would be if it were us performing instead of them. Then I get all crabby and start flinging poop at people.
I CANNOT WAIT TO RELEASE THIS ALBUM SO WE CAN PLAY IT LIVE ALL THE TIME.

As usual my voice sounded terrible early in the morning but I was also unreasonably cranky today. Early on in the takes Yasir(with similiar expression as pic.) had boldly suggested we change one of the lines in “Likhta”. This resulted in full-fledged diva behavior from me as I cursed him for trying to ruin my precious lyric. Poor guy was not expecting such a spaz attack. Neither was Raza. I could feel the uncomfortable silence in the studio as the two were recovering from my profanity filled outburst and I felt guilty. I guess it’s sometimes hard for me to take criticism over something I’ve created and I’m often tempted to pull the whole “you think it’s easy writing songs? You try doing it!” schtick but I have to remind myself that it’s their song too. Not wanting to ruin the mood, I took a break and offered an olive branch. Yasir claims that he did it on purpose to fire me up. I contemplated beating him senseless to fire him up. (Pic: This is how I look after similiar self-righteous rants)

It was still hard to get into the singing, The song has me singing at a higher-than-normal register so I was croaking a lot. In fact during one of the takes, on a particularly high note, my voice cracked completely and I entered a second puberty. This of course sent Raza and Yasir into fits and much to my chagrin, they kept playing the recording over and over again, while rolling on the floor with laughter. Aargh.

However, it was finally over and much to my relief, it came out quite well. More importantly I managed to harness some real emotion into it.

Emotion was the key element to “Sheher Kay Aansoo”. I wanted it to be a fiery, angry song but with a hint of lament over my beloved city. To channel this I clenched my fists and pressed them into my gut and I belted out the lyrics. I really intended for this song to be an indictment of the law and order situation in Karachi, just to show that not everyone is resigned to accepting it.

This was my best vocal performance yet. I knocked out the song in just under half an hour, and we needed just another hour to slap on some backing vocals. Although after listening to the playback, I still thought I sounded a little flat, but Raza assured me that this was not the case and that I was in fact quite stupid.

I breathed a sigh of relief. I was done! Barring a few mandolin overdubs and some percussion, I had nothing more to play or sing on the album and I was overjoyed with the way the songs were sounding. I know we are still a long way from being over because we still have to record the songs where Lodhi sings and plays guitar. I know he’s raring to go so I hope he’ll be fit enough to do the entire day. But as for me, I’m free…
“I’m free, I’m free! And freedom tastes of reality” – The Who “I’m Free”

Day 10: Sajna Sajna Kya Kiya?

(You guys have probably read this one already, but keep scrolling down for Day 9...i promise the confusion ends here!!)

A Sunday morning shift is never easy, it was extremely hard to motivate myself to get out of bed at 8:30 a..m, pick up Yasir and OK and drive over to the studio, but the spirit of rock’n’roll kept me going (insert devil horns here). So I called up Omar to wake him up, and I was shocked at how sprightly he sounded. I never thought OK was a morning person. So I verbally abused him. Then I called Yasir, who sounded just as cheery. He too, suffered copious abuse.

Picking up OK was the funniest thing, as we approached his house, we saw a tall figure with a full grown beard, tousled bed hair and brown shades, effortlessly dragging on a hapless cigarette. OK’s effortless cool was a sight to behold at 9 in the morning. I think he’s the only real rock star in the band sometimes. But then I decided he was too much of a mela.

Further drama ensued when Raza, our engineer was nowhere to be seen and the studio was locked. Frantic calls to Lodhi were made, who had to be roused from his mellow yellow state (cruel joke I know….) and establish contact with Raza who answered the phone in his customary dignified "Huylyoo?" Laughing and abusing ensued and he said he would be over in 5 mins, which was eventually half an hour. So we sat in my car listening to the radio debating on why Yasir was such an assbucket and what makes quality porn.

The song I was going to attempt to sing today was "Sajna". Now, although I had written it, I wasn’t too fond of this song. It was one of the first songs I had written in Urdu and I thought it was a little immature. But it turned into an interesting little ditty through our recording process and now it was up to me to breathe life into my crapass lyrics. Yasir was the most profoundly affected by the lyrics and despite me administering several stick beatings, he was adamant that we should change them. I grudgingly agreed to change one line.

To be honest, it was a line I was always going to change it but I never got around to it. It goes like

"sajna sajna kya kiya, dil ko kyun barbaad kiya, idhar sey aa key udhar sey jaa key, tera hi intezar kiya".

Crap, I know. What I do sometimes is insert dummy lyrics in songs so that I at least have a tune to sing, then I usually replace them with something a little more poetic. Hence the "idhar sey aa kay" just ended up being one of those things we overlooked, but soon became the object of much ridicule amongst my family/friends. A jirga was assembled as we maniacally tried to fashion one line between the four of us. Missing Lodhi terribly, we called him up, but instead he said, "You choo*****, stop using studio time to write f****** lyrics". He made an eloquent point.

Anyway, getting the lyrics right, I started to do my first couple of takes with singing. This early in the morning my voice sounded uncontrollably bad. I could see Yasir and OK wincing through the booth window as I tried to hit any high/sustained notes. I sounded raspy and quivering, like a cigar smoking rabbit. I prayed that this would sort itself out after a couple of takes. But I was shocked at how horribly out of key I was singing.

Gradually, I became a little more confident and Raza started to record me, verse by verse. But I was still too forceful and high pitched. The guys decided I needed to be softer and sing more personally, ala. "make love to the mic". This was no easy task. You try to sex up a big black pole with wires. (well actually, some of you might be into that kind of stuff...)

I could feel my temper rising up the back of my neck as I failed take after take. I kept receiving instruction from the guys and Raza. Either my tempo was off, or my key was varying, but most of all I didn’t have the right "feel’. Finally OK closed all the lights in the studio to put me in "sexy performance mood". He encouraged me to make hand gestures. I felt silly but I agreed. So there I was in pitch darkness flailing my arms around in the vocal booth trying to remember where the bloody mic was positioned. I remember thinking "So this is what Stevie Wonder feels like".

Raza drove me into the ground once again. I was getting more and more frustrated as each take seemed to be worse than the other one. Yasir kept telling me to sing like I did on "Nazar", but I just couldn’t channel the same emotion. But the boys stuck to it, and kept encouraging me and bit by bit, we got through he whole song. I was relieved and expected some joy from Raza. But all he said was "okay take". I was like "okay take?! That was f***** brilliant!!" I later realized that this was the highest compliment Raza would give anyone.

Yasir and OK were chomping at the bit, desperate to get involved so I thought that we should have a little fun with backing vocals. I worked out a three-part harmony for the outro of Sajna and I had barely finished explaining it to them when they both rushed into the vocal booth like pixies on crack. An amused Raza said that it would probably be better if we did them one at a time because they were at different heights.

Omar went first to record his bit. A lot of people don’t know that Omar has a surprisingly pleasant and melodic voice. He sang the part perfectly and got it one take, but what I loved about it was that he changed the tone ever so slightly from what I told him and it sounded so much better. You can hear him chanting "Aaa bhi jaa, aa bhi jaa" towards the end of the song.
Yasir was a little more difficult. Yasir too has a pleasant voice, but his singing voice is a little high pitched, so it tends to cut through the mix and it’s a little tricky to work him into a harmony part. I was missing Lodhi, who is so much better at organizing harmonies. But with a little bit of echo to round off the sharp pitches, Yasir managed to a breathy chant in the middle of the verse.

I was really happy hearing the whole the thing. He got it exactly how I imagined, I was proud of the little guy.

Backing vocals really do add a new flavor to the song and we were so happy, we managed to work it into "Nazar" as well. It was slightly harder because the song is so sparse, the melodies have to be very precise otherwise they start clashing.

A gruelling days work, but as usual we ended it by listening to our completed mix of Sultanat. It is a great feeling just listening to this wonderful thing we’ve created.

"Where are we going boys? To the toppermost of the poppermost! "– John Lennon

Studio Day 9: Back after Eid

6 p.m. to 12 a.m.

It’s been three weeks since Lodhi got diagnosed with jaundice. I have to admit it got us all pretty down. Smack in the middle of Ramzan, we were all pretty pumped about finishing the songs early and then using the rest of the month for mixing. This way we would release the album on New Years and become rockstars. (Random hilarious fact: if you type “rockstars” in Word, the spell-check corrects it as “jockstraps”…wtf?)
And then we could make unreasonable demands on the public. Such as these.
1) Chocolate covered dancing midgets, provided at all times.
2) These midgets must serve us further midgets. However these must be plain. Or with nuts.

Anyway, having clearly forgotten to take my pills, I tried to salvage some resemblance of getting back to work by asking Yasir to book us for an evening shift. I was unaware that Yasir was smoking unreasonable amounts of crack at the time and had in fact booked us for an all day session on a weekday from noon to 9 p.m. So we had to call Ashfaq Bhai (Studio Owner) and tell him our session began at 6. In the meantime I had attached electrodes to Yasirs’ nipples and was generously shocking him when he blurted out that OK would not be coming either because he was having his hourlies (IBA monthly exams). Shit.

Anyway the two of us decided to brave the odds and go it alone. I was so confused about what we were going to record today, I loaded every instrument I could think of. Here is the list
1) 12-String Acoustic (here's a picture of my baby...)
2) Nylon String Spanish guitar
3) Mandolin
4) Bass guitar
5) 2 Darbukas
6) 1 tambourine, 2 Marocas (Shakers)
7) 2 Harmonicas

These weren’t our main instruments but I basically wanted to use them for overdubs and just adding some color to the basic tracks, add a bit of ethnicity, like final dabs on a palette. But I realized that this was all just an excuse so that I wouldn’t have to start vocals. I was terrified of doing vocals and was trying to avoid doing them as long as I could.

Well basically here’s the deal. Vocals are the most important part of a rock/pop song. Basically it’s the first thing everybody hears. And criticizes. On stage, I could just sing loud and belt out on top of a loud song like “Sultanat” and it would sound find. But here, in the confines of a single, extremely sensitive mic and a dark soundproof vocal booth, I was terrified of a) singing badly and b) not being able to replicate the same emotion and energy I have when singing live.

As if things couldn’t get any worse, we got to the studio in pitch darkness. After 3 weeks of absolutely perfect behavior the electricity had gone. (Incidentally the last time it went was when WE were trying to do darbuka). We sat and prayed.

It wasn’t all that bad, we met a pair of charming young gentlemen who were mixing a live performance of Humera Channa (famous Pakistani singer from the 80’s 90’s, please refer to picture).

Turned out they were also sound engineers, so I happily exchanged information with them, you never know when we need an extra sound guy. They in turn, were fascinated by these two burger boys who walked in with their garish instruments and constant whining.
Luckily we decided to stay for awhile and the electricity did come back, albeit 90 minutes later. It was then decided that I should stop being such a pussy and then go ahead and do my first vocal recording of “Sultanat”

I stepped into the vocal booth nervous as hell. Raza seemed pretty calm. I would have to just rely on his Yasir and my judgement to get it right. Luckily Raza, our amazing sound engineer was an absolute pro. The guy could hear a mistake in pitch and tempo from a mile away. He heard everything. We couldn’t even bitch about him safely.
I ran through the song once and then twice and it was ready to belt it out take by take. Hmm, this seemed do-able. Wrong.

It took us TWO hours to record “Sultanat” vocals. I didn’t think I was singing particularly badly, but Raza was a perfectionist and he made me do every verse, and every line again and again till it was solid. However, around the 35th take or so I started to fatigue and needed a chai boost. Two hours later when we finally got it right and heard the playback, I was overjoyed. There were still slight mistakes in the singing but they glossed over and I managed an emotional delivery.

Riding the crest of excitement, we decided to go in and quickly slap on some backing vocals. I needed a single, high pitched voice to provide a counter melody for the chorus and Yasir had the perfect voice for it. Just for some extra flava, I replicated his very high pitched vocal line with and identical one of mine which was extremely deep and bassy (my friends refer to this as my ‘picking up chicks’ voice).

The song was complete. Yasir and me were hopping around the studio playing air guitar and air drums. It was an awesome feeling! I had tears in my eyes. Finally we had a product. I knew there would still be some time before it got out since we had to mix it properly. But I knew that it sounded shockingly good and I couldn’t wait to have people hear it.
I thought I’d be exhausted once we finished the song but we figured we were on such a high, we might as well record “Nazar” as well.

As I mentioned earlier, we recorded all our songs without a metronome (a beat keeping device for those who don’t know). I guess we were trying to capture as close a “live” feel to the music as possible. But it made recording overdubs extremely difficult as the tempos would keep shifting ever so slightly throughout the songs. With “Nazar”, Raza thought I should record the song completely “live”, the way I perform it with me playing guitar and singing at the same time. However when I tried, my fingerpicking on the guitar was getting a little jumbled, and it needed to be precise. So I ended up using a metronome and dubbing the vocals and Spanish guitar.

The result was a completely different feel. While in concert when I did “Nazar” with and electric guitar, it was smooth and I guess I was trying to channel Jeff Buckley. With the acoustic, it took on a different vibe, being more Spanish influenced and I loved it. This is another song very close to my heart (See the story of “Nazar”)

Tonight was difficult but extremely rewarding. We were so excited we called up Lodhi and some of our other friends to make them hear the mixes. Poor Lodhi, I knew he was happy but I knew he was wishing he was there. Inshallah, he’ll be back soon…

“It’s been a hard days’ night, and I’ve been working like a dog” – The Beatles “A Hard Days’ Night”