For the last four weeks I’ve been working on is a song called “Idler Wheel”. Here’s some background on the song because I feel like it and maybe it’ll bring some sort of understanding about me or the project. I wrote “Idler Wheel” at the beginning of last year. It musically was heavily inspired by Queens of the Stone Age because of course it was. I was messing around and came up with it. Lyrically I was very anxious at that time about the future, which is still a relevant feeling. Also for geeky bonus facts, an idler wheel is a system used to transmit the rotation of the main shaft of a motor to another rotating device. Basically it’s a wheel that only rotates because it’s being moved by external movement, which was how I felt during that time and most of that year. Like I was going through the motions that were being exerted on me by life. It’s also a key future of tape machines used for recording music and part the title of a Fiona Apple album, who’s music I love and that album especially.

Enough about that. The song features a lot of technical stuff I got to get out of the way. The song features drums, electric guitar, baritone guitar, bass guitar, and a Hammond B3 organ. There was also a guitar with an Earthquaker Devices Bit Commander which is an analog octave synth with fuzz. Here’s the problems I had: the bass had overdrive on it that muddied it up, the guitar has a weird fuzz thing at the end, organ was quiet. I got rid of the of the Bit Commander guitar because it was either too quiet or too loud so it wasn’t doing anything important and had to go. I tried adding a midi made synth part but it didn’t totally fit. I may still add it.

At this point every single thing has a compressor and equalizer on it and 75% of things have a limiter so they don’t peak (go louder than a channel it’s on has the headroom [room before the signal distorts] for) and get distorted. I also added reverbs to the overhead drum microphones and one of the channels the guitar solo was on. I also dropped the guitar out before the second verse. I’ve also added a lot of small things to make things sound better. I found adding a slightly cocked wah and a bit of overdrive on the baritone guitar helped it cut through the mix a little better and carve out it’s own little area in the song. I added chorus effects ( a modulation thing) on the organ to make it sound lush since everything else is gritty and crunchy. Like a beacon of hope or something. All I’ve got left is a little bit of tidying up to do.