In the Marines, there was a saying: “No plan survives first contact with the enemy,” and Mike Tyson is famously quoted as saying, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” This week, my plan for my Sabbath-inspired recording project didn’t survive first contact—and I got punched in the mouth.
On paper, my plan to use my Universal Audio (UA) Apollo, LUNA, and compatible UA plugins made perfect sense. The Apollo’s built-in effects processing would share the processing burden with my aging Mac mini, and all the previous friction I had experienced with the Apollo ecosystem would magically disappear. Of course, this is not what happened. It was all still there—struggling to understand the integration between the Apollo, Console, and LUNA, and an uninspiring guitar tone. My plan did not survive first contact.
The punch in the mouth came when I sat down to write a riff for the project. I quickly realized I’d never intentionally tried to write a riff. All of my previous writing started with an idea. Now I was asking myself to generate an idea on demand. I freaked out. Where do I start? Guitar tone? Drums? Both? And what tools do I use? The Apollo and LUNA were out.
Earlier in the year, during a songwriting sprint I was involved in, I’d used GarageBand to sketch out an idea—not installed. I’d also used Ableton Live Lite for another. Again, not installed. I’d also used my phone’s Voice Memo app, but with no idea to record, Voice Memo was out. I retreated to familiar ground—research.
So started the revolving door of DAWs and amp sims: REAPER and Bogren, Cubase and VST Amp Rack, Logic and Amp Designer, and researching Pro Tools compatibility with the Mac mini. None of them solved the actual problem—how do I write a riff on demand?
This is the question I need to answer next. I need a riff to get the process started. On Monday, with the REAPER and Bogren combination, I did generate an idea, but I didn’t record it. I discarded it as not Sabbath enough. Maybe I should have recorded it and evaluated it later? Maybe that’s the first step—idea collection.
In my initial draft of this post, I blamed myself for not being able to decide on a DAW or other tools, but how can I choose recording tools without something to record? So the next challenge is generating ideas and capturing them for later evaluation. I don’t know what the solution will be, but I’m pretty sure it needs to be as simple and frictionless as possible. This week’s goal: build a riff-writing process.