So how did the band start?
Justin Harris: Danny and I played in a band, starting our senior year in high school, for five years. Brent saw one of our shows, introduced himself to Danny; they had a torrid love affair. That band broke up, not as a result of the torrid love affair. Brent was away at college during the time that we were still together, and then once our band disbanded, Brent graduated from college that same spring, and then when he moved back in October, we got together. That was in the fall of 2000.
Brent, were you in other bands while you were in college?
Brent Knopf: No, Menomena is my first band.
J: What about Shamrock?
B: I had this one show called Shamrock — 'cause it was a sham — and it basically consisted of me playing guitar and singing, and people saying I sounded like Alphaville.
And it rocked.
B: There was this drummer I was playing with. He didn't care about the music, and we were getting paid by how long we played. So it was about forty-five minutes into it, and we were kind of finishing up, and he was like, "Let me just solo for a while," and he went off into a ten-minute drum solo. [all laugh] So that was my previous band experience.
You don't have many rules, but now one of them is, "No drum solos!"
J: That's the funny thing. When he [Brent] got together with us, he was always like, "Oh, Danny, you should do a drum solo right here."
Danny Seim: Which is good because I can't. We never have that problem.
J: He thought drum solos were what bands do. It was kinda cute, and endearing.
B: The prequel to us three working together in any capacity was this total alterna-rock song that I wrote, and Danny put down the drums, and Justin put down a bass line for it. And that was way back in... '98? '97?
J: Yeah. We should have realized then that this would never work. [laughs]
B: I realized that then. I was just using you guys. [more laughs]
THE REEL DEEL
IATFBM was recorded using Deeler (DLR — Digital Looping Recorder), a software program that Brent developed originally as a live tool, but they soon found that it lent itself more to their songwriting and recording process. After I had asked a few questions about Deeler and how they use it, they voluntarily gave me a demonstration, which was very helpful. I was amazed not only by how fast everyone was able to get something recorded into the computer, but how easy it was. Once the software was up and running, it was a matter of simply plugging a mic — or an instrument cable, if they wanted to record direct — into the Mbox, then moving the mic around the room. Each of them was very comfortable with the process, and it's also a very simple, intuitive, and effective way of recording.
The software, which was created using Max/MSP (www.cycling74.com), is basically a multi-track phrase or loop sampler. It uses either the Mac's built- in audio jacks or an external card or interface box. There are ten mono tracks, each of which can play or record four phrases. So when one of the band members feels particularly inspired, he will plug in and start by playing his instrument along with the click track. It's always improvised. That person will play four variations (A, B, C and D) of a phrase, in groups of four measures, although the software can be set for a different number of measures. Then another person will go back and overdub four variations of another part, based on the previous person's work. So each track will record four loops, which the band will choose from later. As you can see, this creates many separate but intertwining loops, with the opportunity for many variations. This is how they create most, but not all, of their songs.
After they've all had a chance to go through what they've recorded, each band member will try a different arrangement of the sections, or they'll do it together, plowing through what they have until they arrive at a combination they like. As Brent explained to me, one of the benefits of working this way is that it takes the band's egos out of the equation. Everyone is involved in the process, and they're just choosing what works best for the song, from a bunch of pre-recorded files. He added that the band members are all too stubborn to tolerate taking orders from each other, and they're too impatient to "jam" for hours on end to perfect a song, so this process provides them with the perfect alternative.
Once they arrive at a combination of patterns they like, they learn the song and play it "like a normal band" into Pro Tools. The album was recorded using an Audiomedia III card, but they have since upgraded to an MBox. Part of Menomena's recording ethic comes from having such a limited number of inputs to work with. As Brent explained, "What were we going to do? All we had was an Audiomedia III. We couldn't have multiple mics for doing drums, unless we used an external mixer to get all our mics down to two channels, but we didn't have any of that stuff."
Why did you go to the trouble of creating your own software?
B: Going off the idea that Deeler is a much more flexible and versatile guitar loop pedal, originally the plan was to use Deeler live to get around — well, say we're a three-piece band, and we want to put down twelve layers, how do we do that live? So I thought maybe if we had a piece of software that could record loops on the fly, live, while we're performing, then we could layer stuff on top of those loops and have the computer play back those loops for us and be able to control the flow of the song; like, go from, say, a verse to a chorus to a bridge back to a verse, using the software, and I thought that would be a desirable alternative to the "karaoke" style of just playing maybe one or two instruments on top of a [prerecorded] track. The original purpose of Deeler was for that live performance approach. As it turns out, Deeler has been useful almost exclusively for us in terms of just writing. We've never used Deeler in a live setting to date. We just use it as a way to generate a bunch of ideas that we will, at a later time, assemble into a song. So Deeler gives us a bunch of loops. Several months down the line, we'll piece all those loops together into a song. Then we'll learn the song from that assembly. We'll learn it and then we'll play it live, then we'll maybe add some things, or take some things away, and then we'll go into the studio and record it like a normal band would.
So it's based on the click, which is going all the time. Then you play Pattern One that's four measures long, Pattern Two that's four measures long, Pattern Three and Pattern Four. Later, when you're building up the structure of the song, you choose from all those variations and patterns.
D: Every loop is the same length.
B: Right. The idea is that you have all these loops that will work together in some way.
From all different instruments.
B: Yeah, so it gives us a lot to choose from at the time that we assemble them into a song.
J: And we almost always add something else while we're arranging them — especially vocals — but other instruments too, that we didn't originally use in that Deeler session. We still have the freedom to add or take away whatever we want at the time of the arrangement and assembly.
D: Because at that time we're out of Deeler and into Pro Tools or something.
Into a more flowing, real-time recording program.
B: Right.
J: And then for playing live, we tend to go play the parts that make the character of that song. Those are obviously the ones we'll try to play. That extraneous stuff, like the tambourine or something, doesn't really make the character of the song, so it doesn't need to be played live.
So that's where your live show comes in. You record all the stuff that way [gesturing toward the computer], then you learn the songs [from the arrangements you create], and then you record them in the studio later. So Deeler is really a glorified sampler.
B: I'm sure there's a really good analogy out there, but to take a really bad analogy, Deeler is something that constructs Legos, and then at a later time we build those Legos into a shape, and then...
J: That's a bad analogy. [all laugh] We're more like... refining gold.
