The Eternal Exhaust MySpace profile often features the new recording efforts of myself, a lone musician working to establish a solid sound and create songs that I can personally be proud of. Many other people share a similar aspiration. Of the thousands of fans that are on this MySpace profile, I would make a guess to say that more than half of them are unaware that when they hear a song from Eternal Exhaust, every single musical portion is created by a single person. This means that on songs with various string instruments, drums, guitars, and vocal elements – are all done by one person, and that person is me.

But how do I do it? Obviously I’m not sitting there and playing all of the musical instruments at once, and obviously I am mixing together separately recorded elements. But there is another part of it that might also be a bit more puzzling – virtually every single portion is recorded with an early 1990’s computer microphone, not designed to output anything near studio quality. Yet, some of my songs sound fully polished, mixed, mastered, as if they belonged on a commercially bought compact disc.

My first secret is my software. I use Adobe Audition 2.0, an audio program that allows you to mix more than 50 audio tracks simultaneously, apply effects like delay and chorus, and do live digital recording. This program was famous among internet users prior to its release from Adobe Systems Inc. when it was known as Cool Edit Pro. Adobe Audition is not the only great piece of software to use, however, another great program that I would recommend is ProTools from Digidesign.

To get a sense for what the song creation, recording, and post-recording process is like, I’ll explain a tiny bit about my musical background. For one thing – I have none. That is, I have no official background of having been trained by a music teacher or music school. In fact, between my ability to play guitar, drums & percussion, my limited singing ability, and my luck with a piano – I’ve not ever had a single music lesson for any of it from anyone!

The great thing about music is that since the start of its existence it has always been a natural thing for a human being to take part in. You are born with the elements necessary to make music. The terminology, the ability to communicate skills and other processes, however, does take some instruction and time. I began learning how to play the drums when I was just 10 years old, where for a year or two before I even sat down to play at all I had been watching my brother play. Purely from watching him and taking a hint or two here and there I learned the essentials of rhythm.

And rhythm is the first step in the creation of any song at all. During my time living in limited living spaces, I was not able to set up my entire drum kit to record it live. So I had to improvise. I use a piece of software called Reason, from a company called Propellerhead. Reason is a music generation program, but it allows you to use a sequencer to create drum licks that sound totally natural, and there are also studio quality. I would not recommend going straight to software to put drums into your songs if you’re a serious musician, because when you leave it to software to fit drums into a musical composition, you can run into serious problems.

To record the drums live, you have a number of options. If you are recording everything with a single microphone, then the first thing to mic is snare drum. The microphone needs to be facing the snare drum itself, but be positioned at a slight distance of about a foot and a half or two feet from the snare and high hat. This single mic is capturing what will most likely be your most important drum elements – snare and high hat. You record your first portion, playing the same pattern again and again without silence or interruption. Separately, you will want to record a mic that is right next to the bass drum.

The real secret to doing great sounding drums in a recording with a single microphone is to record small bits and pieces separately, then take a single lick and put it into a loop with your software. You want to add the different portions into the loop to get the recording sounding more refined and multi-dimensional. You then re-encode to get your final, polished drum loop. If you do not want to do loops, you can do the same process for each individual beat, but if that is your course of action I hope you have plenty of time to spare!

Often times, since I do not have a band to play different portions, I will practically write the song as I’m recording it. In a sense, it’s like having a jam session with myself. A rough version of a song will come out in recording, and then if the song has potential, it goes into individual practice sessions by myself where it will later be re-recorded and re-polished.

After I have drums and rhythm to work with(always recorded using a metronome, by the way), I then move onto getting some solid guitar riffs into the work. I will sometimes do more than 50 takes for my first guitar riff, primarily because your opening riff is something you want to play with a lot. If the song is intricate, I will start with something simple and then slowly add more and more in as I play an evolving riff or verse, over and over again, recording it to the drums, being played through headphones, each time. Each guitar portion is recorded twice, then doubletracked. One take of the guitar being played can be heard in the left speaker, a different take of the exact same thing can be heard in the right speaker. The result is a symphonic, depth filled tone and sound for the guitars and their distortion/crunch.

Piece by piece, a song is made. If I had a bass, the bass would then be recorded to the guitar, with the same basic process. An intro, chorus, verse, another chorus, another verse, and a possible outro are all recorded more than once. The final, finishing touch, always, is the vocals. Vocals are also the most challenging. In my article, Getting Started as a Singer or Vocalist, I talk about some things you can do to get started. Vocals recorded into a mix are challenging. After you have recorded everything, you will then want to adjust decibel levels, equalize frequencies, and make other tweaks/adjustments.