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Billy Corgan The Future Embrace Zip5/3/2021
WOW When that album initially came out, for some ignorant reason i just couldnt stand it.Then a few months ago i gave it another listen and it just blew me away.Ive actually learned alot from it,some of the stuff you said,like losing one snare.etc.Ive met Billy a few times but i never had a real chance to ask him about songwritingcreativity and the different ways to get the magic flowing.Your a very lucky man That wouldve been a dream come true to work with him and get a look behind the wizards curtain.The record really did change the way i look at using the guitar.That slithering bass on The Camera Eye is tops.What equipment would get the kind of drum beats and synth sounds he has on that album.Im in no way trying to cop a sound,im just curious as to what equipment can produce those sounds.I actually use to hate his solo album until i finally gave it another go and spent some time really listening to how he used the guitar more as color.Billy has a rather large collection of vintage gear, so its a guessing game on what could have been used.
Not sure when this album was made, so cant really say if Ichabod was used. It was quite the process Billy has a tremendous amount of vintage analog synths, drum machines, fx, etc that we were using. We could use anything in the room, were not allowed to use samples (from outside sources, we could resample what we had), because he had a real demand for authenticity. A bulk of the sounds on the record were made with a custom huge Doepfer modular, which Bon Harris put together, and programmed like noone else you have ever seen. We had four different setups, bon with most of the modulars in one corner, and matt walker and myself with use of everything from the whole roland jupiter line, to all the crumars, solinas, oberheims, moogs, etc you can imagine. Billy was setup in the control room (we were in the live room, since we werent using real drums, and only a portion of the live room was set up for billys vocal and guitar rig. It was fortunate for matt walker at the time that ALL the drums were programmed, as he had just torn his acl in an onstage accident, and was in a total leg brace for most of the recording sessions. We used every drum machine made up until about 1985, and the bass sounds mainly came from the doepfer, roland system 100, some came from minimoogs or oberheim xpanders, etc. Most of the synths if i remember, were either amped and recorded back into our DAWS, usually through millenial, neve, or the ssl. Billy is the best guitar player i have ever worked with, and his attention to detail and sound sculpting abilities were labored over with love, as every song has only ONE take of guitar, with one sound, and one pass only. I am not sure if he wants me to divulge his signal path right now, but to give clue, it was pretty much made out of one device, and on occassion we threw one of his huge huge collection of vintage pedals. He, Bjorn and I would sometimes spend a whole day making one guitar sound, tweaking until our ears bled, but it was a fun adventure. Thanks so much Lestermagneto In a recent interview i was reading(from around the time of the solo album) and in the interview Corgan had said I also learned a whole new way to write songs, which I wont divulge; its a good secret. ![]() Slowly, a new picture started to emerge from all of this, largely because I had yet to record the guitar parts. I wanted to make songs work without any guitar, and then put a single essential guitar part into each of them based on what was already there. On every song but the last, there is just one guitar track; the last song has no guitar at all. Billy Corgan What is that new way of writing songs that he wont say How did the initial tracks get started I really love the drum sound on that album If there was one drum machine that figured prominently,what would it be Ive always wanted to know how that album was done,so any more info you can give the more i can jump for joy. What was that one device Im more interested in the bass and drum sounds,although Corgan was right when he said the guitar playing would blow your mind.Ive always had a huge interest in Corgans songwriting process. On A 100 at 0:23 something really badass kicks in and i LOVE IT. Thanks soooooo much That picture is soooo awesome.Thanks for taking the time to email him,Id love to know how he went about that new way of writing.My friend and i always joke about how Corgan is a songwriting machine.I remember around Siamese Dream he talked about having writers block and i wonder what he did to get over it,cause he sure in the hell hasnt had a problem writing since. Approximately how many songs were recorded for The Future Embrace The whole reason i asked about his methodology was bc im always looking for new ways to go about songwriting,And i love the work hes done.The more i listen to TFE the more subtle things i hear-different little riffs going in and out of a song,double vocals,different drums on the same song at different points.etc. I think at one point we worked 56 days in a row without a day off.
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