The Making of “Haunting A Ghost”

The Song

“I had several guitar ideas and a very rough sketch of an arrangement for what eventually became Haunting A Ghost, the first song off of the Spylacopa Debut EP / Spylacopa Redux. My plan was to work those ideas out in a rehearsal space with my friend and drummer, the late, Troy Young. At the time, Candiria was renting a space from a long time friend, Joshua Lozano, of the band Fashion Week, in South Williamsburg. It seemed at the time to be the most logical place for us to work. So we scheduled some dates and started working out each section of the song. Troy was a great drummer. His level of energy behind the kit gave the song a major jolt of intensity and after a few sessions we had something really solid to send to Greg and Jeff. I don't remember hearing any demos from either of them for this song come to think of it. From what I remember, we just booked dates that worked for each of their individual schedules and just went for it, starting with the bass.”

 The Bass

“Jeff Caxide is a very unique player. From a rhythmic perspective he is a solid-as-a-rock player but there is another aspect of his bass playing where he takes a more melodic approach and that is in my opinion, where he really shines.
A great example of this is in the ending section of the song. From a musical perspective, for me, the melody he came up with makes that whole section of the song. I couldn't imagine the song without it and yet in hindsight I never imagined anything like it being in the song before he played it for me for the first time in the recording studio.”

The Vocals
“Greg’s vocals were the last thing to be recorded for Haunting A Ghost. I was really excited to hear what he had planned for it and Greg really delivered. He is a great writer and a monster singer. I was really impressed with the verse idea he had but what he wrote for the chorus completely blew me away. Lyrically and melodically, he just knocked it out of the park. The vocals in the end of the song are really powerful. It sounds like Greg is purging or exorcising some unwelcome demon. It's heavy and really emotionally charged and it is one of my favorite moments on the album.” 

The Mix
“A mix can make or break a song and it was an imperative step of the process to get this mix right because it would set the tone for the rest of the recordings we had lined up. Having recorded and mixed many a session with Michael Barile, I knew he would come up big for these recordings and mixes.

When Mike finished the first pass of the mix, the level of the vocals was right where they needed to be. The overdubbed keys and additional guitar feedback tracks were sitting in a really nice place. The bass was filling out the bottom end nicely. The only thing that I felt was lacking a bit of aggression and edge was the drums. It's interesting how huge drums sound when you first begin the recording process. You think you will barely need to work on them at all in post-production, but once all of the guitar tracks are laid down, the bass has been recorded and you begin the mixing process, the drums start to sound really small. Mike added more compression, limiting, fine-tuned the guitars and bass, EQ'd the drums more and made the song rip! Besides some minor adjustments here and there, once we locked the drums in place it was pretty much done. We all put our stamp of approval on it and we were on to the next song.”

Pick up a copy of Spylacopa Redux HERE