It’s no secret, a lot of math rockers were born from the punk and metal scenes. Hell, a lot of them think about going back after a few gigs, and we don’t blame them – luckily we’re able to hold space in our hearts for both. But let’s just say hypothetically we’re walking down the street, unsure what to do with our night, and before us lay two different venues holding two different shows: one math rock, one metal. Nine times out of ten, we are going to the metal show, because metal is the hot sauce of musicality.
Maybe that says something about whether or not we’re qualified to be running a math rock blog, but we prefer to think of it as maintaining a ‘healthy and/or professional distance.’ Pretty much between every math rock record we listen to, we listen to a dozen punk or metal records. But it’s not just joy, nostalgia, and devil worship that keeps us coming back – there’s actually a lot to learn from these bands’ gear and various recording processes.
This brings us to the star of today’s article, one of our favorite content creators of the last decade: Glenn Fricker. Glenn’s gleefully loud Youtube channel has taught us so many things over the years, all under this general gaze of not breaking the bank for the average musician, which is so, so appreciated in a world where the newest, most expensive, most important product is marketed to us like it’s the only option. Sure, he gets a lot of shit for ham-fisted presentation at times, but let us just tell you here and now, if you’ve spent time in a room with an actual narcissist, you’d find Fricker a breath of fresh air. Especially if you watch how he handles those Monday Morning Mix sessions, the ones where people submit their demos for feedback – we couldn’t do those half as graciously as Glenn does. Deep down, he is actually supremely nice. Sorry if you’re reading this and find that offensive, Glenn – it’s just true.
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Unfortunately, Glenn is taking a break from content creation after a family emergency. In the video he published here, he mentions the exact thing going through our minds as we’re watching it: “what can we do to help?” Fortunately, Glenn lives in Canada, which is a country where healthcare and finances are not necessarily as pressing during medical hardships. That being said, no amount of money or reassurance from professionals can make those moments any easier as people. We’ve been there. But what we can do to help is continue to watch what’s already out there, and there’s certainly enough to go around: Glenn’s got something like 2,000 videos you can watch whenever you want, and we encourage you to do that here.
That’s kind of how we always do it with his Spectre Sound Studios channel – there’s always so much to look into after watching one of Genn’s videos that it can take weeks before we feel ready for the next one. Well, now there’s no excuse. We’d love for everyone to have the time to watch ’em all, but if you don’t, no worries – here are ten of our favorites to get you started.
10. Can You Play Metal On A Telecaster?
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Obviously, this one hits home for just about every other reader of Fecking Bahamas. It’s probably not an exaggeration to say that 50% of the people reading the blog own a Telecaster of some kind, and the percentage probably isn’t much lower when it comes to Telecaster owners who read Fecking Bahamas that also play a little metal from time to time. The bridge pickup is definitely biting enough, and the neck pickup is definitely good for solos. Maybe you won’t sound like Cowboys from Hell, but sometimes sounding like a cowpoke from heck is good enough.
9. Top Five Rookie Recording Mistakes
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Similarly to the video above, this one probably covers a lot of bases close to home for most of our readers, but perhaps on a more important topic. We know intimately what it’s like to believe your demo sounds amazing, and that it deserves to be more than a demo – it deserves to be heard. That’s why this video made such an impact on us back in the day: even after multiple sessions watching the incredible Marcel Fernandez work the boards at Robert Lang Studios, it was an entirely different beast from our, um… humble Logic Pro X home setup. Glenn was particularly helpful when it came to the hardware: what monitors would or wouldn’t, the treachery of headphones, the importance of hard-drive backups, and so much more.
8. The Truth About Those Fake Drumming Videos
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This one is one of our favorites even though it was only released a few weeks ago. Drums can be… controversial. We don’t have any skin in the game in terms of whether or not someone is sampling a snare or a kick drum, because in general, we literally type out drum parts for a MIDI program the way’s currently typing this sentence. On a keyboard. We’d get a e-set, but we don’t have the money. Or space. And yes, our hearts are somewhat dead inside as a result – the person writing this toured the U.S. as a drummer for a couple of years and was pretty damn good at it, so MIDI kits are painful. Which is why the general discourse surrounding this video in particular has been so educational, even when it’s frustrating. We’re still digesting this one, but we know it’s good for us. Maybe it’ll be the kicker we need to recklessly invest in a $13,000.00 Roland V-Drum set, because all we know is that if we brought an acoustic kit into this tiny apartment, it would likely end in divorce.
7. Only Losers Play Amp Sims
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Truthfully this is one of our favorites, because just like the situation described above with the drums, volume and apartments are just not a great mix, so amp sims / plug-ins are our saving grace. We have a bass amp that we love, but it’s been disintegrating ever since we took it on a Childspeak tour. Messing around with plug-ins and sims from Neural DSP, Kazrog, and Blob Audio can take even the experienced guitarist to totally different, totally unexpected places, and those places are absolutely worth ignoring the haters. All that being said, this video is actually pretty mis-titled, as Glenn cover amp sims for all of about thirty seconds in the intro and that’s it, but what makes it great are the various insights into amps, different speakers, different cabinets, and the hilarious manner in which people pose related questions throughout. Still probably a little too loud for 1B1BA, but we’re still pretty tempted.
6. Pickup Manufactures Don’t Want You To See This
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Potentially one of Glenn’s most provocative videos of all time is also one of his most educational – if you’re open to it. Listen, we’re lifelong Seymour Duncan pickup fans. In some ways, Duncans are easiest to pick out in a mix to our ears, particularly during bends, and it gets easier the higher up the neck you go. We want to say the same thing about Dimarzio and EMG’s, but we do confuse them from time to time. Unfortunately for us, the only standout quality of the ultra popular Fishman pickups is their squishiness. We were working at Guitar Center when a rep came through with a prototype Fluence set (it was the guy from Vendetta Red!) which was fun, but not enough to sway our established allegiance to Duncan. Funnily enough, Keith Merrow’s video going through the different Seymour Duncan pickups almost proved the same point that Glenn’s did, which we remember irking us something fierce because we were so hot to trot for some new Invaders or Custom Customs. We ended up getting Dimarzio Evolutions. But regardless of our personal positions or the passions behind them, Glenn’s video points out important information about what happens to EQ, bloom, and attack in high-gain settings that all of us would do well to keep in mind. Also, if it pisses you off, you should watch the response here from a pickup manufacturer.
5. Tonewood Is A Lie
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Wood… it’s been around for a while. We weren’t present at the birth of the lute, but we’re pretty sure that ever since wood was used to build an instrument, the tone wood theories have persisted. However, recently there have been some experiments that ended up proving that while wood is probably the most traditional thing to use, there are other materials that just might do the job better. Of course, you’re probably not surprised to find that this fact doesn’t just upset the vintage masses, but offends them. Really, who can blame them – back in our Guitar Center days, we would happily help customers pay up to $20,000.00 USD to procure instruments that generally amounted to piles of rusted metal and driftwood.
4. Gibson Tried and Failed To Crush This Small Builder
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This is definitely a great video to watch if you’ve been watching Gibson guitars and their flailing, baby-tantrum wave of lawsuits. Glenn gets in touch with Vicious Guitars, a Toronto based guitar company that puts out less than twenty guitars a year who received a Cease and Desist order from Gibson. Glenn does a good job explaining how and why the CND was filed, but the best part about this video isn’t Glenn’s candor and compassion when discussing all of this with Goran, head of Vicious Guitar: it’s the solution produced at the end of the video, which is easily one of the coolest looking V-style guitars we’ve ever seen.
3. Microphones: The History of Recording Part Two
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While the first installment of the channel’s History of Recording series was pitch-perfect and hilarious, both videos provide a deceptively huge amount of information. We actually found some of the most fundamental facts and theories described pretty fascinating, and it actually reminded us of the rumor that back in the day, Car Bomb used to make their own microphones. Say, we should probably interview Greg Kubacki again…
2. How To Not Piss Off Your Sound Guy
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Hmmm… this video has never applied to us. If you found yourself thinking something like that while looking at the title of that video, you just might be exactly the audience Glenn had in mind. There’s no shame in it… we’ve all got to start somewhere. And for what it’s worth, all venues are different, so sometimes there’s an unexpected learning curve. As long as you learn from your mistakes and act accordingly, things should eventually smooth over. Assuming the sound person allows you back for another performance. Our favorite tip? Once the tech is done adjusting your amp, so are you: there are few things that interrupt even a great shows experience like the tech kneeling down in front of your amp with a flashlight on while the drummer stares at them like a deer in the headlights.
1. Get Your Hands on the Fat Blob: It Sounds Amazing
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As we hinted at a couple place above, the whole real amp versus amp-sim argument is kind of silly. Like if there are players genuinely upset over the way other players produce a particular sound, we can’t stop them, but Glenn’s video on the FAT BLOB was actually kind of a revelation. Anyone using plug-ins or simulated amps would easily fall in love with this thing due to its feature set and tones, it’s way more diverse than the competition. Really, we’re surprised to this day that we don’t hear more about Blob Audio when every other Neural DSP fanatic we know (even ourselves, if that counts) is still waiting on upgrades promised before the launch of the Cortex. It also has a high chance of winning over analogue enthusiasts, but not because it’s a realistic setup – it’s actually due to the opposite. The Blob Audio FAT BLOB suite looks like the kind of things you’d design after healing your inner child during an intergalactic therapy field trip. Almost everything you see and hear drips with originality, but also an organic quality in the low-mid range that seems to be missing from most plug-ins. This subtle oomph is placed in the exact spectral frequency that people seem to crave when they’re playing, not to mention listening back to recordings. Definitely peep this company if you haven’t, they just put out another suite called the Blobnarök, and it looks insane.
BONUS: Do You Need A Direct Box? Test Results!
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Out of all of Glenn’s videos, out of all of his content on all of the cool things, this one is strangely the one we spent the most time with. After our first time recording at Robert Lang Studios, there were so many questions, but most of them could be reduced to unintelligible drivel like “Um… Marcel… what does this one do?” There were so many moving pieces during the recording process for Indulgent Endeavors, all we could do was try to trace a signal back from our guitar and take stock of everything that led up to the mixing board, and one of those things was a Direct Box. It seemed important at the time, all big and black and heavy, especially in that context. But we were lucky to watch Glenn’s video just in time to save us the unnecessary purchase – turns out, for home recording situations like ours, they don’t do much unless you’re suffering from a particular set of problems. But our situation and environment might be different from yours, so even after all this time not using a Direct Box, we’d recommend watching his coverage on them so you can decide for yourself. We’d take Glenn screaming at us through screen any day over enduring so much as a disappointed glance from Marcel. Remember, this is the guy who told airport security in Venezuela that if they didn’t let Billy Gibbons and his guitar through the gate, he would send “President Obama on a fucking eagle” to set things straight.
And that’s why we watch channels like Glenn’s – it’s okay to be a dumbass. If you keep learning, maybe one day you’ll be a smartass.
Unless you’re a bass player.
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