This phrase has been haunting us for at least a couple of decades, and it only seems to be getting worse. Morning “stand ups” that get bogged down in unnecessary, irrelevant detail while everyone else contemplates today’s Wordle, wondering when they will actually be able to start work. I’m lucky enough to work for people that don’t do this, but I’ve been subjected to it in the past, and I pity those who are stuck with it. So, all you poor people currently picking crumbs out of your keyboards while somebody drones on about something that doesn’t involve or concern you, this Muse-style rock epic is for you.
I’ve been listening to Muse’s latest album, “The Wow! Signal”. I’ve liked their stuff for a long time, but never managed to see them live. A couple of months ago I managed to run the gauntlet of TicketMaster’s miserable opening day procedures, finally obtaining tickets to go see them in Milan in November! Much like my previous composition efforts, what I write is quite strongly influenced by things I’ve heard recently (no I’m not going to write a Caity Baser song, though I did have this one idea…), so this was an attempt to do something Muse-ish, and that became the working title for the song because I didn’t have a theme or lyrics. I did have a completely different synthwave type song that I had intended to use this title for, but I thought this somewhat angry approach would fit it better!
If you’re going to try to write a Muse song, it obviously needs to start with an excessive church organ, so that’s where it began. I really like the “galumphing” (in the “triumphant galloping” sense) rhythm of Muse songs like “Knights of Cydonia” and, more recently, “Hexagons”, so I targeted 6/4 time. The relaxed nature of that meter led me to crank up the tempo to a slightly disturbing 141bpm. As a consequence, the drums are somewhat frantic, but I liked that, and it let me run other things at half-time without them seeming too slow.
I was having trouble finding the right chords, so I found a special offer on Scaler Music’s Scaler 3 plugin, which I’d had an eye on for a while. This is not your average plugin, as it’s almost hiding a completel DAW inside, but its primary function of finding chords, sequences, patterns, and letting you experiment with off-key or unusual variants is really clever. That said, I found it quite difficult to get to grips with, largely due to my inadequate music theory, but I would never have otherwise known to use the chords it helped me find.
I thought I’d have a go at playing the guitar parts myself, and this worked well enough to build a framework. I played some simple lead lines in a couple of neck positions and they were almost usable! The bass is a Logic player driving Logic’s electric bass instrument, plus a distortion pedal, grungy amp, ChromaGlow saturator, and Heavyocity’s wonderfully violent MicroFX Refiner (which isn’t in the least bit refined) for compression and limiting. A second bass line uses a very aggressive filter sweep courtesy of ImpOSCar3.
Drums are also a Logic player with one of the studio kits and a lot of manual tweaking. I ran into a problem I’ve had before where room ambience in the original samples becomes too obvious when subjected to hard compression, and again I worked around that by applying heavy damping to the drum kit setup. Fast rolls on low toms are a big feature of the drum arrangement and I tried to let them breathe to make a thunderous backing for the aggressive guitar tracks.
A nice synth strings patch from FB-7999 and a soft pad from UA’s PolyMax, smoothed out a lovely arpeggiated tinkle from ImpOSCar3. A Logic Hammond emulation added some beef to the choruses.
Vocals are using my usual choice of Synthesizer V, but this time the lead is taken by a new voice — “Archie”. Archie is a bit more boy band than “Liam” that I used on my last couple of tracks, and has greater abilities in the upper range, including a falsetto voice mode that worked well here. Backing vocals used NOA Hex, Liam, Solaria, and another new voice, Etta, which I have to use in another song as she sounds great. The second verse’s acapella-ish section was fun to put together, and initially reminded me of 70s folk group, Steeleye Span!
After a while I realised that my guitar parts were just not going to be good enough, so, for the third time, I turned to Wassim Rahmani on Fiverr to do a better job. Wes’ first take was a bit too metal, so I asked him to do another version that was more in the Muse mould, and he delivered a great “chugging” rhythm section and a cool, soaring solo. I did leave some of my playing in — the lead in the first and the harmonies in the closing chorus are mine.
The mix on this was about the biggest I’ve done, with around 27 tracks spread across 35 channels, and this proved quite difficult to manage. It’s hard to discipline yourself to keep levels low enough to leave some headroom to expand into. I was intending to get each individual track peaking at under -6dB, but it’s difficult when you’re trying to rock! Reverb and delays are very nice, but add too much and things turn into mush, so much of the mix involved backing off these things.
I picked up another new plugin alongside Scaler: Sonible’s smart:chain. This is similar to their smart:eq plugin that I really like, but adds compression, saturation, “de-harshing”, gating, and level riding on top of the eq. It shares smart:eq’s ability to coordinate settings across multiple tracks, prioritising mix parameters between front, middle, and back for each channel it’s applied to. I’m not convinced by their “AI” claims; it mostly seems to be algorithmic presets that are a little hit and miss. I’m not that keen on its compressor; I find it harder to use than Logic’s stock plugin even though it has fewer controls. Overall, its multi-channel system is really good, though I didn’t get as far as using its automatic mix levelling — maybe next time.
I’ve noticed that when mixing my other tracks on my Sennheiser HD598 headphones, my mixes come out way too bass-heavy (making my car windows rattle!), so I’ve been consciously mixing bass-light. This is not a reliable approach, so I took up an offer on Sonarworks’ SoundID Reference plugin, which happens to have a calibration profile for exactly my headphones:
The (green) compensation curve provides a big bump at the bottom end, a broad dip in the upper bass, and a bump in the lower treble. It necessarily drops the overall level quite a bit (-9.1dB apparently), but my SSL 2+ interface goes plenty loud enough to make up for that. It took a bit of getting used to, but the mix is definitely far more even as a result. This plugin also does virtual monitoring, but I’ve not really used that yet.
Anyway, my sympathies go out to all those that have to endure miserable, interminable meetings. At least you now have something vaguely on-topic to listen to surreptitiously, though be aware that your colleagues might hear its epicness leaking through your headphones.
[Verse]
After this stand up I’m gonna need a sit down
I woke up early with dreams of getting things done
but now it’s 11 and I’ve got nothing to show
This meeting could have been an email
[Chorus]
I’m slowly losing the will to live
Sinking into my chair, I'm drowning in detail
I can hear you, but no, I’m not listening
This meeting could have been an email
[Verse]
Don’t need the whole team to solve a 2-person problem
Yeah, I’ve got blockers; I can hear one right now
I'm itching to hack, but you busted my stack
My AI's contemplating unplugging itself
You just trashed a big chunk of my day
my schedule torn to pieces by some jumped-up MBA
we're all bored to tears, heading off the rails
This meeting, it could have been an email
[Solo]
[Chorus]
I’m slowly losing the will to live
Sinking into my chair, I'm drowning in detail
I can hear you, but no, I’m not listening
This meeting could have been an email
As always, I really appreciate reposts of links to my songs on here or on BandCamp.