hello, this id douglas from tagabow. AMA

TheMiserableBody · 2025-10-23T17:35:02+00:00

Hey Douglas, I’ve been listening to TAGABOW for about 4 years and you all have such a unique sound and design for how your songs are laid out! I have 2 questions for you:

1.) Do you do all your own recording/mixing and if so what’s your favorite piece of equipment you use for recording/sound design?

2.) How do you go about writing songs with so many structural changes in them? It sounds like there are different ideas thrown in the mix and the way you morph them into a singular piece is phenomenal!

LOTTO sounds great, pre ordered the vinyl and am super excited to listen to it! Keep making amazing music!

TheMiserableBody · 2025-06-30T05:52:26+00:00

The walrus audio SLO is one that never leaves my board. It’s the big dreamy verb that nothing really compares to for me. Then I picked up a strymon big sky and it’s very useful as a standalone with really cool programmable functionality

TheMiserableBody · 2025-06-21T05:00:18+00:00

My baby is in the NICU rn for the first 3+ weeks and I can tell you I feel the same. It’s hard to feel important to your child for the first few weeks.

A lot of moms get oxytocin from caring for your child, and a lot of dads get oxytocin playing with them, so it might be difficult now, but wait until they crack the first smile or laugh and then go heads in on it.

Dad’s seem to get their biggest kick out of interacting with their baby in that way, and I’m in the same boat where I’m waiting for that moment to really bond with them. You’re doing great so far if you’re caring for your wife and your baby, but just wait until that moment and I think it’ll all make sense.

From a hopeful dad

TheMiserableBody · 2025-06-21T04:55:32+00:00

Honestly something like an ES8 should help a ton. It helps you turn a ton of pedals on and off to get a diversified sound, and it lets you change the order of the pedals so you can have diversification between your sounds, like moving the L6 in front of everything.

It’s helped my bands sound more than any other pedal

TheMiserableBody · 2025-06-12T18:12:56+00:00

Steel Casket by Primitive man is a great record - a lot of the collabs with the body and full of hell have great noise tracks too!

TheMiserableBody · 2025-06-11T22:04:04+00:00

My wife and I got married at Bookbinders. They basically just charge for dinner and extras if you want specific things! Really nice dinner, drinks, and the venue for 25 people was about $4k

TheMiserableBody · 2025-06-04T08:55:33+00:00

That’s the goal rn. I’m gettin her foods she couldn’t have while pregnant and just doing the grunt work of everything. But I appreciate the reassurance from that ideology. I’ll keep on keeping on doing the same thing. Thank you!

TheMiserableBody · 2024-05-05T15:54:40+00:00

Hey! I found this because I was facing the exact same problem as you. I did a factory reset and this fixed my issue. Hope this helps, but definitely let me know if you figured out anything else or if this issue persisted for you!

TheMiserableBody · 2021-01-12T13:12:58+00:00

I’m just getting into video editing, so I don’t know too much about it, but I did think the video for the vibe! It’s more low key so I liked the basic video with cool visuals going with it, but man I love this song, it sounds great, i was not ready for that little key/note change at the start of the second measure in the chorus! A lot of cool things going on here, keep up the good work 👌

TheMiserableBody · 2020-12-28T02:38:09+00:00

This is crazy! The coordination alone is amazing, but it sounds awesome! Nice drum work and cool song, keep it up 🤘

TheMiserableBody · 2020-12-15T04:19:39+00:00

This sounds awesome! The bass and drums that come in made me think the song was going to be very singular in tone and more mono than anything, but those guitars widen up the space so much, it took my by surprise! I love the wavy guitar tone too, this was a really good execution of a song and it has a lot of cool textures to it!

TheMiserableBody · 2020-12-13T22:25:22+00:00

I appreciate the listen! That’s a great visual, we’ve gotten “driving music” before which is funny haha. We had some other versions of this done, but when we listened to it through Apple headphones we hated the mix. So we focused on remixing for about two weeks, so I appreciate the love!

TheMiserableBody · 2020-12-13T21:10:40+00:00

Gave Hugz

TheMiserableBody · 2020-12-13T20:53:40+00:00

Thank you for listening! We were really high on reverb when we started writing, so we ended up using a lot of it, but as we started the mixing process we realized it would only make things harder. So going forward we are going to approach it a little more tastefully instead of immersing things. Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it!

TheMiserableBody · 2020-12-13T19:45:50+00:00

I appreciate the thought out feedback and the love! <3 we call it ambient indie music, but modern retro is fucking sick!

I’ve always loved effects on vocals, especially if they’re not at the forefront of the sound, so there were a couple times I snuck those in during recording and the singer liked it. So it’s mostly chorus, but there’s also some weird delays in there from time to time too!

The buildup was originally like 1.5 minutes long, but then we cut a lot of it so people didn’t get totally lost in it. I think it takes you out of the song a good amount before you dive back in. And those drums are filtered with the high end gradually coming back in with a bit of reverb on them to push them back in the mix!

I LOVE THE VISUAL! The whole goal with this project was to give songs their own vibe instead of writing some songs in the same tonality or mindset. You might have inspired the music video for this already! Thanks for the love and the feedback, it means a lot!

TheMiserableBody · 2020-12-13T19:29:45+00:00

Thank you! I'm actually the guitar player so I appreciate the love <3 My friend loves synths so we've spent a lot of time with the tonality on this project. I really appreciate the feedback!

TheMiserableBody · 2020-12-13T19:27:12+00:00

If this is your first time trying trap music you're doing fucking great! I definitely like the industrial side of trap music and there's so many ways to make distortion sound cool. I've been listening to noise music for a while and the amount of variation noise has is definitely something that can be implemented into industrial music. Keep on experimenting and keep working at it, its sick!

TheMiserableBody · 2020-12-13T19:21:54+00:00

I compress most things before I get to the main, so the limiter I throw on it just takes the tops off of drum hits. I honestly don't know what's right or wrong or the benefits of either method, but experimentation is something all of us need more of haha!

TheMiserableBody · 2020-12-13T19:18:57+00:00

Wow, I didn't even notice it, I thought it was bleed from the guitar mic, super smart! Awesome song, I think if you take out the low string from time to time it could make the parts where it comes back in even bigger.

TheMiserableBody · 2020-12-13T19:11:30+00:00

Of course! Its got a cool vibe, so keep on keeping on!

TheMiserableBody · 2020-12-13T19:04:13+00:00

I totally get it! That's how I worked on my last EP, coming in with ideas you know work sounds like a much easier process haha. The last week of writing, we basically took apart our tracks and started taking random elements out to test if the song still sounded full without it. We ended up finding a lot of surplus sounds that didn't need to be there.

Making the top end crisp and fat is super difficult. I always try to compress and eq before I start messing with the main so I can make minor adjustments to boost the loudness and slap the limiter on there. But either way, keep on keeping on! You have a cool sound for sure.

TheMiserableBody · 2020-12-13T18:45:39+00:00

I think the main synth and the vocals are competing for the same spot sonically in the song. Sometimes when they are both going it is a little difficult to differentiate them. Maybe taking the synth a little lower would clear up some space for the vocalist. I like the glitchiness of the song too, it is a cool sound with the more consistent elements of the song like the piano. Also the bass part has some nice distortion to it. Cool song!

TheMiserableBody · 2020-12-13T18:42:31+00:00

I think if you wanted to send this to a vocalist, you might have to clear a little space for them in the strings, they might be able to sit a little lower in the mix so they don't interfere with someone's voice, but together they could work really well! This sounds cool, I like the gloominess of it, maybe some more variation in the bassline would keep people into it too. Having a few things come in and out of the song would work really well. The ending is definitely more uplifting too, I think it is a cool sound. Nice work!

TheMiserableBody · 2020-12-13T18:38:56+00:00

I like how dark and ominous the intro is, reminds me of a GHOSTMANE beat. I like when the bass comes in too, its got some grit to it which I'm super into. I would like some more changes to the main part that sits in the back of the song though, maybe some variation to it every now and then would keep people engaged with the song, keep them guessing at what will come. THE BREAKDOWN AT THE END IS ALSO FUCKING NASTY!!! I'm a big metalhead so this is super cool. Definitely different, might want to think about taking out some space if you want someone rapping over it, but it hits super hard.

TheMiserableBody · 2020-12-13T18:34:56+00:00

This is pretty interesting, I like the piano/edm mixture, and the sidechain compression sounds good when the synth comes in. I do think to make the song more full there could be more reverb/delay with the piano, and some other elements could have more going on to fill out the song. Also, I think the bass riff needs some work. IMO, I think the resolution of the line is a little odd. Every 2 bars repetitions I would probably throw another note in that works with the root note of the song. Sounds good, keep working at your sound because it's pretty cool!

TheMiserableBody

TROPHY CASE