Episode 17 - The "Write a Song in An Hour" Challenge

0:06 It is the Write a Song in an Hour episode of the No Cover Charge podcast. I hope we don't have writer's block. That would be. Terrible. Are we on? We are on and now we just need sound. The front of the episode. Hey, dude, this isn't going so well. Yeah, boy. Today we have a challenge that is an age-old challenge of write a song in an hour. I don't think we necessarily have to impose an hour limit we might go over because we're going to demonstrate a little bit of gear, just inadvertently.

0:40 Dude, we're not going to do it. We're going to do a little. More than that, none of this is sponsored, obviously, but. There's no timers here. There is a really big pedal here, the funky vibe that was sent to us from Argentina. Yeah, man, the Sabadia stuff. We'll shout that out, apparently. He'd hook you up with that thing. You get one too, man.

0:57 Oh, for real? Yeah. Oh, that's sweet. This one's actually yours. He gave. He gave us a 68 and a 69. I figured we'd fired up the 69. Dude, you know, here, here at the NCC, dude, if we have the option, you know we're going straight from 69 to the four 20s. Yes, we have an array of stuff here. I'll just go down the line what I'm looking at.

1:15 We have variety of gain options Kwon JHS the. Fender. This is like a fuzz pedal. Yeah, those things look cool. Riverside, Striemann. That's a, that's a OverDrive, yeah. Sweet. And then we got the funky vibe, which is just the Hendrick sound in a box. A huge box. I thought it was a shoe box when I walked. In dude.

1:36 And then we have the wall of amplifiers over here. Glorious Through the OX. For guitars, I strung up some fresh strings on a Telecaster, a Les Paul Strat and an acoustic we got. All of our bases covered. Now what you. Got any ideas? Well, you know, dude, like this is the thing. We both are like everyone watching.

1:58 We're guitar players, we're musicians. There's always going to be a riff for us. Let's pick up a guitar and see what happens. So I don't know if this is cheating or not, but I did dial in tones. Not cheating at all. Listen, I think that that's probably. For the best, yeah. It's always for me, people always ask this with improvising or like writing a song or like riffing or whatever. If I get influenced by the tone and the feel right away, if I hear a tone, it makes me want to play a certain way. Now if you can turn those volumes all the way up, where? On the Marshall.

2:28 Are you serious? Yeah, I'm going all the way up. All right. And then it could go like halftime even. You hold on to that. I'll hold that. With a drum beat here. You're going to be our. Drummer. So is that 1234? Yeah, it's 4, but it's like heavy triplets, right? Sounds good. Get a basic. Little Just get a thing going, dude. Little.

3:11 Basic beat. You're like, give me a second. I'm like just do it now now now. We'll just like loop that. Just loop it dude. Were we thinking? Yeah, now play your fucking stinky riff over it, dude. Like almost don't take this the wrong way. It's like a smoke on the water, that that thing. I can't escape my influences. Listen bro, it's like smoke on the watery dudes, but it's. Cool.

3:59 But it moves dabba dimba. I'm over here going are we close to a toilet because that ribs getting. Danky dude, real sick on that. I think we should do a different tone for your big. Boy, that's what I was thinking, a different tone. Should be this tone. What would be kind of cool though is what if we build this up So like, let's say it starts out with just the drums and your things and then all of a sudden then we're all in, you know what I'm saying? Different tone I think is a must. Could be even cool if we're getting there to maybe get textured.

4:44 It's really important too. I always say this when in, especially in this scenario when we're actually, you know, thinking time wise. You don't have to perfect parts to the point of you get the basic idea and the influence and the inspiration down what it really wants to sound like, then move on. Don't get stuck.

5:01 This is rough demoing recording I. Think it was, Neil Young said once. He was like, hey, if you don't get it in like the first three tries, you're basically just going to be trying to overshoot. All right, let's get you a tone. Yeah, piled in. Should we tell you up still? What do you have? We can change the cab. Oh wow, change the cab.

5:20 So right now is honking silvers. We'll remember that for. One that's for you. I like OK? Sounds great. Yeah. So I think that that could be like a nice little texture. We got a lot going on. Can I see your pic? You didn't see this podcast? We're turning it into something else. Put on that Bender fuzz, feel like we have this really cool and it's almost like a build up, right?

6:10 And then some sort of riff where we could really lean in on that Mage almost Mixolydian thing. There's something in there. I think that we can put some chords behind that and really make those licks come to life. Well, like you said, if we put a harmony behind it too. And a harmony. Harmony and a harmony. Harmony and harmony and harmony.

8:26 So we have the Telecaster still going into the Marshall. Telecaster and with. This JHS Bender, what's created this tone? That's it. Yeah, well, bending. Oh, I'm getting fired up now. Dude, I better not spill my drink on that gold 1. Yeah, we we have drinks dangerously close to the clon. Dangerously. Dangerously.

8:53 Let me tell you here, as a clon user, I've spelled beer sweat. I mean, I've done a lot of really bad things to a clon. It still works. So we have so far these three parts. What do we got? What do we got? Which is. Basically a verse and a chorus. Should we get out of this, Marshall? Yeah. I mean dude. Get that baby on standby.

9:12 Yeah, that thing is going to be running hot. You got 100 Watt Marshall on 10? Do you want to use the Fuchs? The Fuchs is a humongous sound. I don't know, it's like kind of old school. Come on baby. Hi Scared. With the with the one of these maybe overdrives if we like get it a nice clean sound on the Fuchs, let's do it. That'll really tap it in.

9:36 All right. I'm good on that tuning. I can't hear it. I can't hear it. Oh, wait one. 234. 5. Six, you're counting the heads. Dude, number six. Oh my. Look at this guy. You. Should have noise. Oh, the tuner's on. I'm like, where do I got to look now, hey. Dude, I've had it before where the cable's laying on the ground. I'm like I got no signal.

9:57 Nothing like hello. I love that that huge cord is just literally one finger. So what's the tuning? So I dropped my low E and my high E so it's like I got 3DS going. Oh. We did 3D tuning. I remember 3D. You introduced me to 3D tuning. I did, yeah. Well, look at me. We're going through the phases of everything in our player's life.

10:54 I. Forgot about that, but this is kind of cool in this scenario because literally you can get all that overtone. Now back to your part. I'll do that. We'll knock that out later. Let's keep it writing, OK? Because we got, we're building the skeleton here. We got the bones going. This'll be a great chorus riff. I think we should put some chords behind here. I mean, we could do something really cool like a, Or we could if, if it sounds, if we are getting to a point where it feels a little monotonous, you know, we could change around that.

12:10 Like, we could go, dude, that's kind of a fatty riff. I know it needs it needs some harmony to make it not as like straight up the. Straight up the middle. The middle go. Ahead, what are you feeling bro? Let's. Like that? Dude, let's plug in a guitar tone and I'll Yeah. Start start riffing on this. You want to Strat up.

13:36 Stratter up. Oh yeah, switch to Speakies the Speaky. To something a little more. Stratty, why don't you put in more Stratty, my boy? Let's say. I'll, well, there's a lot of stuff on there. Yeah, there really is pristine clean still on that Fuchs, right? Yeah, OK, one idea. Don't even hit the low string because when I'm going right, it's it's almost like it's smashy.

14:35 So if you come in with that guitar and it's a little more chimy up top, it might be better. Yeah, dude, let me sing it to you really quick. You can say, Jared, you're an idiot. Play that. Go ahead. Like, almost like you're just singing I. Don't count mixing as part of the hour. No, no, no, no, no.

16:24 Hey, we don't count final takes or tones or mixing or fucking tweakies. And I'm thinking like, I'm going to just show you something real quick. I think we got that. Yeah, that was good. We'll fix. We'll. Fix these little pieces, but we're just trying to move quick, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Next, we need This is still like the drums are throwing us off because we're just trying to get time.

17:15 Yes, but what this groove will feel like might help us dictate kind of a bridge getting out of this. So it'll be more like we can honestly go like this. These are Butch Vig drums. Oh cool legend. So he has like built in. Oh wow, 6. But these are going to be fast because we're at 1:40. So what we could also try is something like this just to get.

17:46 You always cut it in half. Well, we can do this with Logic. You can do a halftime, so you can pull this guy in. Funky songwriter. No, we need it. We need a. We need a. Hard Rock. Come on, baby. Hard Rock and we'll just say we want the details to go halftime or that's where we were, so we want to go standard.

18:09 Yep, standard it. I would say just boom cat. Yes, way closer for sure. I like that, yeah. It's cool. So can we just hear what we have? We got to. Go to a bridge chorus too, I think, right? That's a chorus. For sure, that's great. For sure. And then we need a bridge. Which do we want though? I imagine there'll be some face melting solo over this chorus so we could go down for a much needed break in a bridge. I think so.

18:47 So. Let's I feel like we should do something weird on the bridge. Let's just let's go somewhere else. Yeah, we'll just get literally a tempo. 3 4 Christmas shot. It is like a few days before Christmas, so that kind of course also everyone's like you guys are doing this Christmas Day. Yeah, dude. Yeah, man, what other?

19:14 What else are we going to do? We're going to play music. Playing with our toys we got. Santa brought Tyler strap. All right, so let's just get a tone. You want to keep using the Strat we can use. Yeah, let's just kind of get like, maybe we can flesh something out with this. Get an angry sound for you, but it'll be very delicate, so the Mesa has a great clean sound.

19:37 Oh cool. What you think of a Mesa? What do you think of mesas? Clean. Well, mesas do that heavy crutch. Yes they do. Oh, hello. What the what could it be this time? You know what's so crazy about all this is what's that like? I checked all these amps moments before you arrived. And yeah. Nice, Sounds really cool. It's like Allison Chainsy but Pearl, not Pearl Jam sound. Yeah.

20:55 No, but it's not, it's not Soundgarden. It's like a tempo of the dog. Yeah. Oh yeah. Chris Cornell's first band. I like that band. With the B maybe like this? Kind of cool. I hear Chris Cornell saying we're honestly you, dude, you got that, That grip. Except he's singing it in full voice. Yeah, we do a lot of really cool determinates on the.

21:30 Chord. That's that rhythm and we'll build around it. So I'll count. That's seven. You got to feel out where it is. It's sweet too, 234567. Oh, I got it. Don't. Go don't go F# 12345671. Oh fuck. It's a it's like the same. So right there Boo. Do nano keep the same like the tool thing? Yeah. 123-4567 yeah, I'll feel that. 1234 hang on it. Bang. 1-241-234-1234 Hang on it.

24:11 1-2 three, yeah. All right. We're tracking it like this, OK? 341-234-1234 Hang on It one 23412341234 Hang on It 123. Four, I think we got it 2. 341234567123412345678910111213. I think you got it, Mother. Yeah, dude. There you go. So we can just. You're a wizard, dude. Now we got a sweet little bed. But we got a little Betty boy dude decorate. Yeah, now we can just have some fun, dude. That funky vibe is massive, brother. It sounded pretty cool.

25:04 First, what are you fucking? Cool, it's. Very cool. We can do this ostinato style where we just stack parts and then I'll mix them together. And build it's great build the. Suspense later. So right now we have parts wise, we got our verse, we got our chorus, we got our bridge, we need anything else.

25:25 Probably a guitar solo or 7. Dude, OK, we have all this. Just put on every pedal and we're going to shred it. Let's keep on with the bridge. Yeah, let's. We're on the bridge. Because all we need really left is the solo. This is sweet. Dude. Bro, I don't consider us started yet. Like we still have 15 to 20 minutes. Yeah.

25:44 Yeah, yeah, we're killing it. Grab something else Spacey for the bridge. Why don't you come back? You were you were kind of telly Manning. Telly man. I think so. Or you could Les Paul, but I feel like I want to use that on my solo. Yeah. Dude, you know what? I'll pull up, I'll pull up the Ribia plug in, OK? And that'll give us some real atmosphere. And you?

26:06 Know what we can actually. I'm having fun. Ribia Ribia has some really cool messed up sounds cool as you know, big fan. Oh yeah, dude. Of messed up sounds. We love it. And Ribia, he's a cool guy. Arielle. Hey, Arielle. Guitar. Yeah. So what am I looking at right now? All the artists. These are all artists who made. Oh dude, that's sick.

26:28 I don't. Fantasy arpeggio from Jack Gardner. Hi, Jack. These are all artists. Did you even play anything? No, this is literally. I've never used this one. This is the first one I turned on. There you go my friend. This is crazy in headphones right now. I know. Dude this is crazy. All right, maybe we won't use this one. I'm just, I didn't even make that sound, dude. Oh boy.

27:30 The C4 is already in there. This is mean. bridgy, you were doing something around this which is in seven, so kind of repetitive to emphasize the seven. Maybe I'll just do that one little bit of mood in yeah thing at the end. Maybe there's a way like to like I think that actually might be cool if I do this pick up. Yeah, get a little chime here.

29:42 Yeah, I'm getting some mic vibes and. Am I getting? Am I getting influenced? Yeah. And keep pissed. You're getting bussed dude. Trying to do without a click. Yeah, who are you, Some sort of boss dude? So we're good on that. All right, now you need to maybe put. I got something like. Some more astronautics. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

30:08 Because this is, this is all we're basically what we're recording right now is the. Kind of the layers. The build what it's going to all end up as. So you're doing that line, which is really cool, dude. Something that you were kind of on, something ethereal like that Rabaea. Oh, OK. Yeah, like that. And then on the end, but instead of those chords come up with the little line, little line.

33:02 It's like a little fleeting. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Anything like, you know, like Al Di Meola when he's like, like a Manko kind of thing. Not even that much though. Like it it, really. I'm going to sing what I heard. Yeah, see what you hear. You were doing, you know, these are chords. Yeah. Yeah, that's yeah. But only at the end there.

34:02 Yes. Yeah. OK. See what I'm saying? Like to get back into the the groove. Dick, get better. Chilling, chilling, chilling, chilling. I see what you're saying. You think it's good on one riff or should I do like? I like just that one riff. It sounds like hooky. Like honestly, like a hooky. Hit me with it once.

34:32 Yeah, just whatever that kind of vibe of it, but find one riff that sounds good over and over. Maybe it's just do that. That's the rhythm, though. Oh, I see. But in your style, let me see it now. That's the that's where you come like that idea, but it was whatever the same notes I just played in a different.

37:52 That's so nice. It's going to be such a beautiful, gorgeous bridge with all the nice little tricks. Do you got anything else you want to? Throw on that, I think honestly with bass and drum, percussion type stuff, I think we should move on to guitar. Move on. Guitar solo time song in an hour doesn't mean recording it in an hour.

38:09 No, we're just writing, bro. Can everybody get that memo? Yeah, you guys got that memo, right? Writing a song in an hour. I say we solo over that and take out the top the top bit. Honestly, the solos will go over whatever the base is going to be on this. So maybe we should just. I'll lay down some chords here.

38:35 That's a good idea that'll fatten this up. Yeah, give it a fatty. So the Mace is on. Mace is on. I got you in the Is that the orange or the yellow channel? Yeah, that's sick dude. I feel like that Strat suits you. This this thing sounds incredible I think. I kind of feel like that's like. You. I know it might be weird to say, but like when you pick it up I feel like you're getting on with it real good.

40:25 I really like it, it's the first time I've really played it. Yeah, it's great. Chicago Music Exchange Shout out 89 birth year guitar. You're sure? To come on this guitar later. But Oh yeah, this is the first preview, I guess. Sick. So we have these chords. Let's riff some solo games over because we're running out of time.

40:42 Oh, here we go. You want to kick us off bro? Let's I want you to set the tone over this because you said you had the an idea to do something over the other parts. Uh huh. So you're going to go into the marsh? I'm a marshy bueno Doo Doo. Might be cool to put an acoustic over it too. It's a cool ass idea bro. I think this is the best version of this idea that we could have. Possibly done just having fun.

41:07 So it's not like we're sitting here, you know, a lot of people. Stressing out. No, no, no, no. We're just rolling with it and see what we have, Yeah. I do. There I am. Is that the? So that'll be if you hit two up there. Just click this down. Yeah, yeah, dude. And it might be on standby. Oh yeah. That's like my favorite tones.

41:58 That's exactly you. That's it. OK, let's go. Let's see what comes out of you. Let's see what comes out of you, boy. I'm going to also extend this loop loop loop loop. You're going to be a little more. This is going to be like you guys are going to say, you guys wrote like a verse chorus, kind of like a bridge.

42:17 And then there was like a 9 minute solo. But why is this song 17 minutes? You know, yeah, I hear you down there. on. Hell yeah. All right, I'm going to hit record and you just fucking. Wait, you didn't get that? I'm just kidding. I didn't get it dude, I'm sorry. Bro where were you? Here we come.

43:53 None. Hell yeah, dude. Dude, I had fun. Some really good shit right there. I think so. I should probably play over something different and contrast, yes, because that'll be a certainly a climax. What do you want to play over? We could always do. We could always come up with like a booty. Yeah, like the same feel as this.

44:13 Yeah, so. Just to give you some sort of total contrast because I'm ripping over this, maybe here it goes to like AF to B flat. Yeah, it's like the same kind of like a. Dude, I got this guitar all out of the team, dude, she went. What did you do to me? What happened to me? Because I'm down for years to be like the climactic solo and I have like A tag or something.

44:41 Well, dude, if you did like this B flat to C and then maybe A well, well. And that goes back to the main risk. Sweet. We got a SEC. Do you want to record those chords? Yeah, let me just tune this thing, huh? Dude, I just. Don't tune it. I want to make your solo sound as horrible as possible. Thing I don't want you to tune it. I want to challenge.

45:06 You know, it's funny a lot of people. If you are playing with someone, this is obviously a joke and you want to make sure they sound as bad as possible when they go out for their solo. Just tune your strings just a little sharp. Yeah. And then look at them and. Go. You don't like some? What are you doing?

45:20 Dude, you're a little out. Dude, you were so out bro. You screwed up that whole section, all right? Am I on? You somebody's outside drilling? I thought the Marshall was taking it. Living in the city, baby, We'll pull off the plate. Sounds so epic dude. Literally you had me like for like 3 minutes I felt like I was flying.

45:45 Yeah, man it. Was so sick. That was a magical. What's that tone, Yep. How do you feel? That's perfect, dude. Cool. Because The thing is like, there's going to be so much tension from this whole thing, and then also you get back to that D and just build it up. It's huge. It's huge, man. I wonder what kind of listening experience this is for podcast listeners.

46:54 You know what I mean? They're hearing all the textures and tones. Surely this is Edison. I just failed that one. Surely this is edited magnificently. Well, here's the thing. I think what everyone's hearing is, First off, you guys, by the way, this is the first time that we've done anything like this together. So us sitting down or a normal pod or doing a jam, that's one thing, but now it's like we're actually collaborating, which obviously I feel like we're doing awesome. This is sick, but.

47:23 It's funny, I'm sure people hearing us banter back and forth. We'll see what makes it in the. Final, yeah, we'll see what. We'll see what happens, but I feel like this is just like, it's like the process of like creation. It's so cool. You want to use a relamp? Yeah, OK. You're like, yeah. I think we've learned that.

47:41 Listen. I'm not going to hate on any of those tones because there's some cool stuff, but man, when I hit the Marshall with that JHS thing. I think we might need to move to. OK, let me stand by the Marshall. Yeah, OK. And go to three. I think to the Mesa. Yeah, got you. Now do you want it on the clean? I think we'll go with the red channel for this one, I believe is that one, yeah.

49:41 It's pretty fucking sick, dude. That guitar has. Crazy cool. I'm getting like that Mark Nofflery thing or like like it's got that harmonic overtone thing. I liked when you were doing the and then you went up and then all of a sudden you came in. You did like the. That was like that, dude, honestly, what I think we should do.

50:01 I think we have everything that we need you to record, OK? Right. Yeah, I think so. Unless you sing over the courses and the verses, which I don't think we're going to get to today. No, that's fine. But honestly, this song structure, what I'll do, I'll mix it. I think we've accomplished the idea of this.

50:18 All right, So what you're going to hear now? Is put it together. The final version that has not yet been mixed. This is the process that we went through to create whatever you're about to hear we took. The rock and carved it down. Took about an hour I would say to make something out of nothing.

50:34 It's really, really fun and it's also like an awesome challenge almost to feel a little bit like under the wire, you know, trying to get it done. But this was so fun and it it kind of took me out of my comfort zone a little bit, which is great. Oh, yeah, There was moments where it's just like, this is the dumbest idea.

50:51 And then there were moments where like this is a good idea. That's what we live for though. It's like that pole. I think if there's even 1 moment in a collaboration or a video or anything like that where it's like you get that little thing, I think that makes the whole experience worth it. Dude, we should do this more. We're doing it like super rock now and we should do like, you know, later on in the pod where we do like, we should try like a jazz one.

51:14 A. Country One. That's a good idea. Like like we should try like stylistically. Like when we when we do our jazz one, we like wear our monocles and our I'm going to have. A door on. I'm going to come in with a little bad tie. We have our 330 fives and everything. Yeah. Well, that was that was really an experience and we had some good times. We hope you enjoyed it.

51:32 And I guess if you just want to scroll to the end of the episode, if that's what you just did, this is the final version of what's the name of this song? Doctor Death. Doctor Death by Jared and Tyler.