Cormac Liotta On the Making Of ‘I Bought A New Pedal’
What was the creative process like for this particular EP?
I have spent the last few years making music with other people, while the music I made collected dust on my hard drive. By the time I felt ready to release something, I had already grown tired of it and moved on to other, newer projects. So the idea going into this EP was speed. Short songs, not caring about the mix or master, and letting myself enjoy the imperfection that was created in this experiment.
I had been listening to a lot of Tony Molina at the time and wanted to embrace his style of short and catchy songs that don’t feel like they overstay their welcome. I just wanted to get music out and get it out fast. The whole project was written, recorded, mixed and mastered by myself in about a week.
Can you talk about the recording and production process for 'I Bought A New Pedal?'
I picked up a Little Big Muff pedal and fell in love with the sound and I paired that with an Electro-Harmonix Pitch Fork pedal for some pitch shifting fun. Every guitar on the album is running through those two pedals, with some distortion I added in post to give the lead guitars a disgusting edge.
The drums are all MIDI except for an egg shaker my mom gave me and that’s featured on every song. I drew all the drum tracks in so they ended up being super quantized, but I was just trying to go as fast as possible, so I decided it didn’t matter and to let the shaker give the drums more character.
The bass was recorded through direct input. I used some 60s bass amp emulator in Guitar Rig 6 for most of the project I believe. As a bass player, I really love a melodic bassline, but no matter how hard I tried, I found it to be distracting and so the whole EP is basically just chugging root notes.
The vocal melodies and chords came first, but I recorded my vocals last for each song. I think it’s important to write melody and chords at the same time. I know a lot of people like to write to an instrumental, but for me, I find I come up with my best stuff when the two are being written in unison. Once the vocals were tracked, I just threw on random effects until they sat well enough in the mix and called it a day.
Which song do you like the best and why?
I personally like the first song, “Olive.”, the most. It was the first one I wrote for this project and is what really guided the sound of the next two songs. The album order is just the order I wrote and recorded them in. I don’t really feel like any of them are actually better than the others. Since the project is so short, I sort of see them all as one thing.
Can you introduce yourself and share a bit about your journey into music production? How did you become a producer?
I have been playing music my whole life. My dad was a musician and so I was around musical instruments and gear since I was a mere lad. I started on piano but eventually switched to acoustic bass in the middle school jazz band and kept that up throughout high school. Guitar has always been something I’ve messed around with but now has become what I play most. I began actually producing in high school. I started off just making beats for kids I went to school with and eventually joined some bands in college that I still make music with today.
I have experimented with a few different DAWs in my time as a producer and have finally landed on Ableton. I started off on Reason, which to this day I still think has the best stock plug-ins and effects. I feel like Reason was a great place to start as a producer because it’s just a huge playground of different sounds and effects, all modeled after real studio equipment. I spent some time in Logic as well, but it was never that fun to use. I think the amount of fun a DAW provides is almost more important than function because at the end of the day music making should be fun. That’s why Ableton has taken over my life since I started using it.
Can you discuss some of your favorite production techniques or tools that you frequently use to achieve a specific sound or texture?
I am a sucker for distortion. This EP is a clear example of that, but in most of my music, even the softer stuff, I like to dirty up tracks with tape emulation at the very least. I feel like when you distort what you’re making, you can let go of the need to perfect a sound, and it frees up the whole process so that you don’t get stuck on one thing for too long. I use SketchCassette a lot on my guitar busses for that exact purpose.
I think Arturia makes the funnest plugins out there. They sound great, work great, look great, and are on the more affordable side of things for big bundles. Both their Instrument Suite and Effects Suite have some unbelievable things and it almost feels like there is an endless amount of music that can be made with just their products.
In truth, depending on the type of music I make, the way I produce vastly changes. I am sort of afraid of saving presets or specific vocal chains because I like to start each new project completely differently. I don’t want to just make the same thing every time, which may sound funny because this EP all sounds really similar. But I have plans to keep putting out these short 3 song projects that utilize a completely new approach to music making each time. I am such a fan of so many different artists and genres that I really want to try it all. I also love it when an artist experiments with new sounds. As a fan, it keeps you excited when you really don’t know what to expect when a new single comes out.
