John Frusciante’s Creative Explosion
Old Stuff
Frusciante proudly states that his latest CD, Curtains, was recorded at his home. “We used the Ampex 8-track. That album sounds so good. We usually seemed to have enough tracks for the instruments that we played, which were mostly acoustic guitar, upright bass, and drums. We used only one or two microphones to record the drums. I’ve never had such a good vocal and acoustic guitar sound as I do on that album. We bounced tracks where necessary — for instance, with the backing vocals. We’d do three tracks of harmonies, bounce them to one track, do the same again, put one of the two resulting tracks on the right and the other on the left, have a lead vocal in the middle, and another harmony in the middle behind the lead vocal.”
Most would find this restriction to left, right, and center too limiting and would prefer to pan the seven or so backing vocals in a wide spread. But sharp panning is another one of the techniques from the 1960s that Frusciante believes was ahead of its time. The Will to Death is especially full of extreme panning. “In the 1960s, when stereo was first introduced, they didn’t have pan pots — just left, right, and center.
“When I made The Will to Death I didn’t know that, but I did notice that I loved the way, for instance, Peter Hammill’s voice is completely in one speaker on his song ‘The Birds’ from his album Fool’s Mate [Charisma/Buddah, 1971]. That one vocal in one speaker sounds bigger than any of the other vocals on the record, it sounds like a mouth 5-feet high. When you put information on two speakers you’re compromising it, because two speakers are never exactly the same. There will always be the slightest difference and there’ll be some phasing. When you have information coming from only one speaker, it’s not compromised at all. It’s there in its pure form and has a great deal of presence.”
Synth Maven
Although he is known as a guitar player, Frusciante is also an enthusiastic synthesizer user. Not surprisingly, his synths mainly date from the late ’60s to early ’70s. His collection includes a Doepfer A100 modular synthesizer, a Mellotron, a Minimoog, and a 1970 ARP 2500. “For a long time I was using mainly the Doepfer. I was more interested in using the LFO and gates and treating other instruments with it. I wasn’t interested in using a synthesizer’s oscillators. But the ARP 2500 has renewed my interest in oscillators completely, because they sound incredible. It’s the same thing with guitars and recording equipment — the old stuff sounds better, louder, warmer, and more soothing.
“On The Will to Death I used mainly the Doepfer. I didn’t use the oscillators at all. I used a Minimoog for a couple of things. It was important for me not to use synthesizers too much on that album, because I was thinking more in terms of how miraculous the sound of a drum set or a guitar can be. It was more important for me to capture those sonic things that in a lot of ways are simple — for instance, the way you hear the drums dancing around the room and the way that a vocal sounds really late at night in a dark room. Those are the things that keep me interested in wanting to listen to music repeatedly.”
Although there are some interesting synthesizer applications on The Will to Death (see the sidebar “Frusciante’s Production Notes”), Frusciante’s interest in electronic sounds is most striking on Shadows Collide with People, which has a number of instrumental synthesizer tracks that have obscure names such as “- 00 Ghost 27” and “Failure 33 Object.”
“Because Josh and I had done elaborate demos for that album, when we were in the studio it was largely a matter of connecting the dots and getting similar sounds as on the demos,” explains Frusciante. Sometimes we’d sit for half an hour trying to re-create a synthesizer sound that we had two years ago. We ended up taking breaks during recording to quickly record these instrumental electronic compositions that we created right then and there.”
Despite his preference for vintage modular synthesizers, Frusciante is not averse to samples and more modern synths. Frusciante extensively used his Clavia Nord Lead 2, a Casio SK-1, and the Akai MPC3000 on the album To Record Only Water for Ten Days. Other electronic instruments used during Frusciante’s recent recording spree include a Chamberlain, a Moog Voyager, an Arp String Ensemble, a Korg MS10, and a late-1970s Synare analog drum synthesizer.
Although Frusciante recently acquired a genuine Mellotron, sampling, modern synthesis, and programming are clearly not where his heart lies. “There are people doing interesting things with programming, like Aphex Twin, Autechre, and Squarepusher,” he observes. “They use things that sound like flaws to me. I have no interest in programming that strives for perfection. Also, an interesting patch doesn’t make music interesting. That’s not music. Music is a variety of sounds all happening together. And there’s no better random generator than a human being, with all those little inconsistencies, faults, and random things that happen in your voice and fingers. Those are the things that give personality, character, and vibrancy to music, which makes you want to listen to certain records over and over again.”
Perhaps Frusciante isn’t so extreme after all.
Frusciante’s Production Notes
The following are Frusciante’s comments regarding the production of selected tracks from two of his solo CDs (see Fig. A and Fig. B).
Shadows Collide with People:
“Carvel.” “The opening section of that track was made by messing around with the Doepfer A100 and creating what sounds like electronic cueing. I put the Minimoog through an echo and played the melody that you hear on that.”
“- 00 Ghost27.” “I’d been listening to an experimental electronic album at my house. I can’t remember what it was, but two seconds of it stirred my mind. It sounded like a Mellotron choir through a really distorted, screaming, feedbacky synth. I went into the studio the next day to try to re-create what I thought I had heard. I had a Mellotron choir sound on an E-mu module, and I put it through the Doepfer. You take an audio signal and use it to control a filter and dial knobs in a way that creates screaming feedback. It was one of those moments when music descends upon you.”
“Regret.” “I put my voice through the Minimoog on this song. That’s an LFO controlling a filter on the Minimoog. Our normal way of doing things is if I’m treating myself, I’ll usually record the vocal, do a send from the board, treat it, and then send it back onto tape.”
“Omission.” “I put Josh’s voice through a VCA and had the LFO opening and closing that VCA really fast on the Doepfer.”
The Will to Death:
“A Doubt.” “That really distorted guitar that comes in at the end has been put through the Doepfer. That’s the best fuzz tone I’ve ever had. It’s so dirty and f—-d-up sounding, and it’s from playing the guitar through a synthesizer.”
“An Exercise.” “The bubbling, feedback-like, squelchy sound at the end is an example of the ways you can generate feedback by running the audio out of a filter on the Doepfer and then back into the same filter. You get feedback, and you can control it with the knobs to get it just right. It’s one of my favorite sounds.”
“Loss.” “Josh plays organ at the end, which is going through my Doepfer, making it sound like feedback. It’s like the organ has whammy bar and is going through a Marshall stack. We often do this: he’ll play an instrument and I’ll treat it with a synthesizer simultaneously.”
“A Loop.” “The snare drum is going through the Doepfer, and there are also some backward guitars. We just turned the 2-inch tape over, and I soloed over the track two or three times. Then we turned the tape back again, and I soloed over that.”
– Paul Tingen
Loading ...
