Blotted Science | Ingesting Blattaria | One-Take Cover

Let's hope this video stays online!

First things first, here's the official tab from Ron Jarzombeks homepage:
http://www.ronjarzombek.com/Ingesting...

Next, here are some of Ron's words:

"This concept started to take shape in June of ’08 when BLOTTED
SCIENCE got together for the first time to rehearse and threw ideas around
for a 2nd CD. We wanted to score some kind of creepy horror film, and so
something was definitely abuzz… "

The idea of writing music that syncs up perfectly with clips of
disgusting insects and other creepy creatures was set in motion.

Now back to me and my words! This whole EP is basically a soundtrack to different creepy horror film scenes. This song was scored to a scene from the movie "Creepshow", which I actually didn't know before. Ron has a link to the synced version on his page. This is where I got it from. The only thing I added was the TV overlay and some effects to make it look like it comes from a TV (scanlines and stuff).

I assume Ron also had some copyright issues with the different movie scenes, which is probably why you can't find them on Youtube. Let's see how long this can stay online.

Soooo, this song has been a sort-of-bucket-list kind of song. Whenever I was listening to the EP, I always thought after the first track "Man I have to cover that song!". But it always sounded like it's one of those unplayable songs due to the arrangement. Lots of layers and back and forth between different guitars. On top of that you have all the crazy harmonies. But I checked the tab the other day and figured that all that back and forth is actually playable with one guitar. With some caveats.

I tried to make a single-guitar arrangements that has all the lines that sort of carry the song. So when I felt that the rhythm section was more important than the lead lines, I played the rhythm section. Like in the early part of the song, where the lead line syncs with the emergency light from the movie scene. Just playing that would've felt empty in terms of playing energy.

The other idea I had was to actually include most of the harmonies, especially those call and response kind of lines in the middle of the song. Just playing them with one tone wouldn't have worked. Well, it actually sounded okay, but still, that was not the intention of the song. And since I try to stick to only playing one guitar track in a video, I did everything with the pitch-shifter of the axe fx. So yeah, every harmony you can hear in the video, is actually being played in the video.

Here was my workflow: I prepared a bit more to make sure everything was on point. Not being on time with like 4 simultaneous guitar tracks makes quite a mess sonically. So it was pretty important that I'm somewhat on time on the harmony lines. My timing is not perfect in the song, but it did work how I imagined it. By the way, I did not try the pitch shifter before recording the video haha. I recorded everything with one tone. (A variation of my Obscura tone). Then I divided my track into all the different sections and lines, and reamped it with the pitch shifter. That took most of the time actually. I saved a new preset for each different harmony and interval. And I was suprised how many different harmonies the song actually had. I think I ended up with over 10 harmony presets. The rest was done in my DAW. I tracked the harmonies with 100% width but decreased that later while I was mixing. All the tone changes were also done in the DAW, so the lead lines were done with an EQ instead of a new preset. Same with all other lines that required additional effects. (Reverb, Delay and some panning stuff).

I think that's all I have to say about the song for now. If I remember something else I'll comment and if you got any question, feel free to drop a comment as well :)

Description is not over though! Here's a short rant:

This is the first time I used the "one-take..." in my title. This is one of the few songs that deserves it. But honestly, I hate that this one-take thing became, well a "thing". Back in the day, and this makes me feel like a boomer, but back in the day, doing a one take cover in front of your shitty webcam, your shitty transistor amp in your shitty room with that shitty camera audio was the only way to go. In fact, there was nothing special about it. It was just what you did back then. But now, now it's something special if people do it. It's kind of sad. And you know what? There's nothing special about a one take playthrough. You'll probably pay money to see a band perform a full set and not just one song. So yeah, musicians being able to play their own songs in full. Wow. I know I know, with all the different kind of playthroughs and music videos these days it's hard to figure out when there's some real playing in a video.

Anyway, enjoy the video :)