You both demo separately in home studios. What do your individual setups look like these days?
Sara: I call it "my office." During the pandemic, I started trying to get myself to say "studio." People come over sometimes and ask, "Where's the room where you make music?" I was like, "Oh my god, I need to put guitars on the walls and keyboards out, so people don't think I'm a crazy person." I've always used Apple products. I record on a Mac. I've moved away from Pro Tools and now record exclusively in [Apple] Logic. I use a [Universal Audio] Apollo Twin interface. For all of my demos, I like an old Neumann microphone. That's it. I don't use outboard; I don't use crazy compressors, or equipment that would take up space. I do a ton of recording and demoing. And since The Con, a lot of demoing has ended up on our actual, official, squeaky-clean studio albums. You'd think that I'd be thinking, "Next time, there's a good chance a lot of my demos will be on the album. I'm going to record that better." [laughter] But I keep doing it the same way I've always done it.
Tegan: I use the same setup as Sara. I've been on Logic now since 2007. The other day I was in the studio and had to use Pro Tools. I felt pretty accomplished that I still remembered how to use it all these years later! I bought a cabin on an island off the coast of Vancouver a couple years ago. There's a little writer's shack – what they call a "bunkie" – on the property, which I'm sitting in right now. I have three guitars, an amp, and my computer set up to record if I want to. Which has proven to be confusing, because I'll bring my microphone with me somewhere, and I come back here and I'm like, "Why did I bring the microphone? I should just leave one in every place." So, I leave the microphone there, and I fly back to Vancouver. Then I don't have a Thunderbolt cable, so I can't use my interface. So, I order 42 new Thunderbolt cables. None of them are ever where I need to be! [laughter] I'm constantly calling my managers asking to postpone something because I don't have a Thunderbolt cable. I can hear them thinking, "Are you really a musician?"
For its great software, Mac has not made it easy to plug and play. I don't want any more dongles.
T: The dongles; it's so ugly! Our goal has always been simple. I remember one time I was in the studio with Carly Rae Jepsen, and she records everything on her phone. At the time, internally, I was like, "Come on, Carly." Now I think that's the way to go. Just make a voice memo on your phone.
There are some cool tools for phones these days. You used one in the writing of this album, right?
S: I used the Keezy app on my iPhone to make everything. It's fucking awesome. My partner, Stacy, her cousin was married to the guy who created it. He showed me Keezy almost ten years ago, and I was like, "This actually seems like something I could use." I don't have the patience to learn samplers; but this feels like it's built for children, so I felt I could use it. I fooled around with it a little bit and then I didn't think about it again. Then, when I started working on this album and writing songs, I had a folder on my phone with music-related things – a tuner, a metronome, and so on. I saw the Keezy app and opened it up, and I started making samples and sounds. My hard drives are filled with instrumentals, so sometimes I'd open an instrumental and sit with the Keezy app and make weird vocal loops. I didn't bother to figure out if I could hook my phone up to the computer and use it as a device; I'd hit record and I'd play the Keezy app into my microphone. On a lot of this album, I can hear my finger hitting the screen of my iPhone in certain samples. But at this point, it's all about capturing performance and excitement. Some of the technology I love is fabulous, but I get too in the weeds and it doesn't sound like anything. It loses whatever joy happens when I'm spontaneously writing. The thing I love about Keezy is there're not a lot of options. With less options, I find I have better, more robust, more creative ideas.
Tegan, am I right in thinking you worked in Reason, and that resulted in your first co-write with Sara?
T: Yeah. When we were writing The Con, Chris Walla [#19, #111] told us he wanted to record in [iZ Technology] RADAR. At that time, Sara and I had both shifted away from Pro Tools and were using [Apple] GarageBand, because I loved that it had all the drum loops and sounds in it. We had both just gotten new laptops and were off the road, so most of the songs on The Con I recorded into GarageBand. When [Chris] started listening to the demos, he was impressed. There was one song, "Are You Ten Years Ago," where he heard my drum programming and said, "You should try Reason." His drummer [Death Cab for Cutie's], Jason McGerr, got me a copy of Reason. I probably spent two weeks experimenting, playing around, and watching videos. The first piece of music I created out of it turned into a mess of sounds; I couldn't figure out how to control and stop and start everything, so I was just hitting buttons. So, I sent it to Sara and said, "Maybe this could be a collaboration?" She sent back "Paperback Head." I felt blocked – there were so many things happening at once, because I'd programmed so much, and I couldn't figure out where the melody could fit. Sara was able to hear it and sent it back, and I thought it was really cool. When we got in the studio to record it, I'm fairly certain we ended up starting from scratch and faking the sounds, because none of us could figure out Reason!
How does software inspire the initial arrangement process? Do you start out with programming drums?
S: I almost always start with a drum loop and rhythm. I'm thinking about tempo and the general skeleton of the drum arc. That's why I struggle so much with analog songwriting. I generally want to start with an instrumental first, and that always feels like magic to me. I can open a session and there's nothing, and suddenly there are tracks and tracks. I still find that a wonderful thing, the exploration of moving chunks of sound around, messing with them, and color coding them. It's very visual for me. I like being able to see in real time what I'm making, and knowing that it is somehow part of the alchemy that allows me to make music. Figuring out drum loops and how to make rhythm was mind blowing to me, and that became the exact way that I always like to write a song.
T: I tend to need to start with an organic instrument, even if I'm writing into Logic with chords. Increasingly, in the last ten years, I've gone back to writing on the guitar. Heartthrob and Love You To Death were the two albums where I wrote in the box, and then I went back to the good ol' guitar to see how it'd go. When I come up with a chord progression I like, or a section of a song, I almost immediately record it. I start to remove the guitar and add other instruments instead. On this record, I was really collaborative with Sara. As soon as I had an idea, I would record it and send it to her. We keep using the word "renovate." Sara would take the song and build new production, speed it up, sing it in her own voice, and give me feedback about what she wanted to hear. We'd never done that before. In the past, certainly for me, I spent a lot of time and energy on production. I didn't on this album. I just wanted to write songs. One of the songs on the album was a co-write with Caleb Shreve; he'd sent me a bunch of tracks ten years ago. I pulled up one of the songs and liked the track, learned the chords on guitar, and wrote a song from it. I did the same with a Sultan + Shepard track, and I did the same with a song of Sara's. She sent me a song called "Cynic," and I started messing around with it on the computer. It was industrial, it didn't fit the vibe of the record. It had seven different wild drum samples looping – it sounded ridiculous! But there was something about hearing the track and riffing over it melodically in the room. The second I found a hook I liked, I stopped playing with the track and took it back to guitar. Songwriting for me is not a pencil, paper, acoustic guitar, and a quiet room. It's trial and error. I find Logic helps me, because the second I have an idea I can start to tweak it.
Tell me about your high school recordings. It was such a rare experience at that time for kids to have access to recording equipment. Did any lessons stick with you?
