New Music from VMS: Carlin Guthrie - Chaser

VMS Receptionist Carlin Guthrie released his Chaser EP early this month, featuring 6 original songs recorded here in our studio.  He told us about the writing & recording process for these songs.

 

“I write the musical beginnings of all the songs by myself on a guitar or bass guitar, with some idea of the finished song. Then, I play with Brennan (bass) and Ian (drums) and we work out the finished version, usually over multiple rehearsals. I then usually write lyrics to fit the music at the very end. Chaser definitely has an overall story and theme for me, but I like to leave it open-ended for listeners.”

 

We asked VMS engineer Matt Hagberg about some of the interesting recording techniques he used on the EP.  He told us about an interesting guitar sound from the song “Chaser”.  “I had read recently about Jack White sticking amps into odd places around his studio to experiment with room tone results and so I decided to try out the acoustics of the building's upstairs hallway. I stuck Carlin's Blues Deville on one end of the long curved hallway and we cranked the volume and gain up to a ridiculous level.  The resulting tone was really sweet though, lots of slap, really muddy, it was a beautiful mess. As a final touch we reversed the entire solo and that really brought the tones out in cool way.”

  

Chaser is available to hear/download on iTunes, Spotify, & Bandcamp now.  Give it a listen!