When I woke up in the morning, I made some coffee and was looking at my phone when I noticed that there was a missed call from a former IT colleague. We still have a group chat with the team that gets used once or twice a year, but none of the guys ever call me, so this was out of the ordinary. I texted to see if it was intentional or a butt dial. It was a butt dial.
It was a nice excuse to catch up a tiny bit. He’s young millennial/ early Gen-Z, so it all happened over text, of course. I asked about a venture that he’d been working on and he told me that when it didn’t scale, he shut it down to focus on career and family. I said that we normally learn more from the things that go wrong than the things that go right. When I was in the middle of writing today’s track, this exchange was already in my head as to how I would be framing my account of production.
But I was wrong.
- The Face of Adversity Ray Toler 3:35
Just Go With It
Sitting down in the studio, I was ready to say that it was finally instrumental day, and started with the beat. Most of the time, especially when working in XO, I’ll take one of the presets, change the sounds up, then tweak the pattern into something I like. Today I started with a blank slate, chose every sound and created the pattern from scratch. I already sort of had an inkling on the direction things were going to go, so I exported into Digital Performer at both full tempo (170) and half-time to give me two different feels. I liked the “tick tick tick” sound and thought it created some ominous tension.
The Super Bowl is today. A really trendy sound that’s been prevalent in sports advertising and rap for the last few years is the loud, overblown “blaat” sound of brass instruments. Officially, this sound/technique is termed “cuivre.” Most musical terms are Italian (allegro, crescendo), so I was surprised to learn when I looked it up today that cuivre is actually French and means copper or brass. When this term is noted in a score, it basically tells the brass to play even… uh… brassier.
Ok… so we have a hardcore beat, and let’s just hop on that brassy bandwagon, even if it’s likely out of style by now. I used two sample libraries: Heavyocity Symphonic Destruction (a mostly distorted orchestral library) and Spitfire Albion III Iceni, which is focused on those big low dramatic sounds. I wrote the riff to the halftime beat, and it sounded great when I moved it into the full speed section.
Now it needs a buzzy synth in the low end. And a squelchy hoover up top. While I was ready to say that today’s the day the instrumental shows up, I decided to at least make an attempt at some lyrics and wrote the first two verses. The hook line and title came from me doing a search on “Important modern quotes” and ending up on a page full of glurgey crap like “You’re stronger than you think you are,” “Live, love, laugh,” and (you guessed it) “Stay strong in the face of adversity.” Fine. I’ll be the face of adversity.
God, this is stupid.
It’s basically done at this point and I’m realizing that today’s track is just not going to be that great. I’m already writing this post in my head about how it didn’t turn out well, but was a good learning experience. Again, I was wrong, and this is a fantastic example of how you can’t see the horizon when you’re trudging through the valley.
I finished the lyrics during halftime and ran through the loop practicing delivery a little bit. I don’t have the voice for this type of thing, but hey – it’s something, right? After the game, I went upstairs and extended the loop out so I could record the verses. And then things started to crystallize a little more.
Wait, This is Kind of Fun
I added the drops and a second, lower hoover to the hook. This is obviously influenced by bands like The Prodigy and when I was being self-critical about the lyrics, I thought about how so many Prodigy lyrics were not only just as inane, but far shorter. If they could put that out and make millions, why am I beating myself up about this? It started becoming more and more fun and I leaned into it. The final sauce was putting my voice through the appropriately-named Decapitator plugin, then dropping the pitch just a smidge to give it some weight. Holy crap, this is actually working!
Mary went to bed and I worked on the little detail tweaks of the arrangement, bounced all the tracks, and mixed it. For my own future reference, my technique practice went pretty well. Having the deep kick, a distorted kick, the orchestra, and the brass all occupying the same space, I knew the low end would be pretty muddy. I put FabFilter Q4 on the orchestral sounds with a side-chained dip tied to the kick drums. It really opened everything up, and the rest of the arrangement was largely sitting in its own space. I put an EQ on a couple of other small things to get rid of their bass entirely, then put the whole thing through Gullfoss just to get that final cleanup and a bit of sheen.
This is a ludicrous track. When I was doing my last couple of listen-throughs to get the loudness correct, I actually started laughing out loud, hoping I wouldn’t wake Mary up. It’s stupid and fun.
So in the end, this track didn’t go wrong, I did. I assumed it was going to… well, not suck, but not be very good either. It ended up being something that I expect I’ll enjoy in the future, because I kept working and gave it time to set up. Maybe the most important lesson, though, is that I had fun making it, and that’s kind of the entire point.
Lyrics
I’m a trial, I’m bespoke
I’m a god, you’re a joke
I’m a power, I’m a killer
I’m a cut, You’re a filler
I’m omega, I’m the end
I attack, you defend
I’m the nightmare, I’m the fright
I’m the shadow in the dark of the night
I’m the tornado, I’m the rain
You’re the wound, I’m the pain
I’m the crowd, I’m the riot
I am speaking, you be quiet
You’re a henchman, I’m a Don
You’re the atom, I’m the bomb
I’m the face of adversity
I’m the powder, I’m the spark
I’m the gun, you’re the mark
I’m the weapon, I’m the boom
You’re the corpse, I’m the tomb
I’m the predator, you’re the prey
I am death, I’m decay
I’m the face of adversity
I’m the emptiness, I’m the void
You have built this, I’ve destroyed
You are helpless, I am strong
I am right, you are wrong
I’m the acid, I’m the base
I’m the spirit, I’m the face
The face of adversity
Colophon
Instruments & Samples
Hive2, Serum 2, Symphonic Destruction, Spitfire Albion III Iceni, XO
Effects, Mixing, & Mastering
Fabfilter, Valhalla, Panman, MOTU Dynamics, Decapitator, Little Alter Boy, Gullfoss