Adam Carson

Writing Process

A little over a year ago, towards the end of our touring cycle for Decemberunderground, AFI began the writing process for our eighth album. There has never been a set method to our writing process but over the years we have slowly figured out what works best and most efficiently.

The genesis of a song usually begins with Jade (guitar) and Davey (vocals) sitting down together and working on melodies and riffs. As they collect parts which they think sound good together, a skeleton of a song is developed and at this point the entire band becomes involved. I usually like to have a bit of time to contemplate my approach to the song so Jade or Davey will Email me the track and I familiarize myself with the guitar parts and melodies before we try to work it out as a band. In my head, I try to create drum parts that work with the bass without stepping on the guitar. I also listen to the cadence of the vocals to try to make the rhythm work in and around the vocals or to emphasize certain lyrical hooks.

In rehearsal we run the songs down and each player writes their respective parts. Sometimes the song will take a drastic left turn, sometimes it'll stay close to it's original form. We'll tweak arrangements, rhythms, melodies, and pacing. Basically at this point in the process, there are no rules as we try to explore all possibilities for the track.

Every song's "birth" is different. For this album, we wrote a few songs that took weeks of playing to gel to our satisfaction and we wrote a handful of songs that sounded killer the very first time through. As a band we are ruthless in our ability to throw away songs. Some bands record and release the first twelve songs they write. Not us. Our philosophy is to explore all possibilities but ultimately to let a song go if it doesn't move us enough. We wrote something like sixty..maybe seventy songs for this album, some of which were deemed inferior and discarded before we even rehearsed them as a band. Some we rehearsed briefly and then threw away and even more we kicked around for weeks before deciding to part company with them. We became attached to a select few which we continued to rehearse, refine and eventually love. When the list of songs we absolutely loved grew to about eighteen we knew it was time to head to the studio.

Pro-pro

For us, preproduction is essentially the last few weeks of rehearsal when we give all the songs a final once-over. For this record we set up shop at The Steakhouse rehearsal facility in Hollywood with our producer, David Bottrill. It's our first record with David who came to us with an intimidating resume that includes Tool, Peter Gabriel, Placebo, Muse and Silverchair among many others. In person, David is less intimidating and more down-to-earth friendly. We spent the next two weeks getting to know each other while working over the songs one at a time. David and I went over every groove and every fill to make sure the drums were working with all the other components of the song. A few beats were tweaked and a few fills massaged before we were finished but for the most part I was satisfied that the majority of my parts seemed to pass David's standards. There was one occasion when I was encouraged to change a part that was a favorite of mine but after my disappointment wore off I had to admit that it probably wasn't serving the song too well. I think all drummers struggle with their "drummer ego" from time to time. I would love to have every AFI album show the full range of my drumming abilities but that is pretty unreasonable. My ethos is to play what is required whether that is a simple, static, unwavering groove with no fills for an entire song or a twenty-five bar drum solo. It is more difficult in practice, though. Flashy playing is engaging and fun but when tempted I remind myself that most musicians agree that playing for the song is the mark of an experienced and tasteful drummer.

The most rewarding moment of pre-pro was the unexpected left-turn one of our b-list songs took. It was a great song to begin with but perhaps was suffering from a sort of standard "AFI treatment". For that reason it was a wild card to be included on the record despite really strong chords and melodies. Jade came to practice one day and suggested we try it with different instrumentation. We ran down the song a few different ways and by the end of the day we had evolved the track into a really ambitious sounding song that is now high on my list to be included on the album.

In The Studio

I can't write a ton about the studio experience insofar as we have only been recording for a week but this session began much like every other studio session does. We loaded in to NRG Studios in North Hollywood and the first full day (and a portion of the second) was dedicated to getting drum sounds. For this session we decided to record song by song rather than record all the drums and then all the bass, guitar etc. and so a few hours were spent getting the guitar and bass up and running as well. Day one also reunited me with drum tech extraordinaire Mike Fasano who has worked with me on past records. He brought with him a killer 70's Gretsch kit (8x12, 12x14, 14x16) a 60's Ludwig psychedelic-swirl kit (9x13, 16x16, 16x22) a road case full of snares and two bags of cymbals.

My approach for this record is to have a basic rock kit, in this case my curly-maple DW kit (9x13, 14x16, 16x18, 18x24) for the more straightforward songs and then throw up either the Ludwig or Gretsch kit for songs that need something a little to the left. Each song also requires finding a snare that both sits in the track well and which is also suited to the way I play it. So far, I?ve been happy with the sound we are getting from Mike's '70's Ludwig Black Beauty (6.5x14) and we probably have twenty more really nice snares to choose from.

The tracking room is a beautiful sight. There are drums everywhere. Two kits are set up, another is stacked off in a corner. A gleaming pile of probably fifty Zildjian cymbals lean against the wall next to the road case full of snares. Everywhere you look there is a mess of instruments, cables, microphones and drumsticks. Vater Drumsticks...

I imagine we will be recording this album for another few months. We hope to have it out in the Spring. If you've read this far, thank you, and I hope to see you on the road!

Adam Carson plays the Vater Power 5A and Power 5B both in wood tip.