Friday, November 18, 2005

The vocals are done!

simpsons1


The vocals are done on “Smells Like”. All I have to do is record my bass part and I’m going to do that tonight. Last night, we just had to record the last chorus where Joel really sings out. We tried it with the pad on the mike but it didn’t sound right so we took the pad off and Joel had to step back when he really hit it hard. It came out pretty good. We comped together two different vocal performances: one with the verses sung and one with the verses more conversational. You can listen to them here – Sung verses and Conversational verses. I’d be interested to hear what you think. Getting the snare to crack has been a bit frustrating but I think I have it figured out. I took the snare out of the kit and put it on it’s own output with a delay rather than reverb and it is starting to stand out now. I just have to work on the eq to get the ring out.
I’ve been doing some posting on some the Internet message boards relating to music and recording and I discovered something interesting – the guys in the Usenet groups are unmerciful when it comes to critiquing things. It was very helpful because I was able to accept their criticism and apply some changes to my site. I am also very careful when I throw something out to make sure that I don’t embarrass myself. “Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger”. Anyway, I’ll post when I do the bass track

Saturday, November 12, 2005

Are we snake-bit?

Lost

Are we snake-bit or something? We were supposed to go on at 10 last night. I called the club owner -– who happens to be a customer of mine- and asked him if that’s how things were still going to be. He says, "“Well, The Gunshy brought someone else with him so we have to make room for 4 on the bill. I'’ll call you at 7 to let you know how it's going to go"”. I thought, "“Ok, so we go on at 11 instead of 10, no big deal"”. I didn'’t hear back from him at 7 so I called him back and he said they were waiting for us to do a sound check. That meant we were going on first. So I had to call Joel to tell him we were going on at 9 and rush over there. It gets better. We did our sound check and had about 30 minutes to spare before 9 so we played a game of pool and generally hung out. There was no one there other than the band that was going to play after us - "Bitter Hearts"”. 9 o'’clock came and nobody was there. I asked the guy working the door what he wanted us to do. "Wait until 9:30"”. So we played another game of pool and when 9:30 came around still there was nobody there. The sound guy says wait until 10 so we went on at 10 and there was still nobody there. We played our entire set except for 2 songs and still nobody showed up. In the middle of all that, Joel starts playing "“Caroline" in the wrong key and I couldn'’t figure out where he was. I was able to sing along with him but I couldn'’t get the right key until the song was almost over. “"Sex and Candy"” went pretty well considering we just learned it this week. I was flabbergasted that on a Friday night, there was nobody out. Scary! Well, I don'’t think we're going to play there unless we can get a better guarantee or something. I don'’t mean money, I mean people -– maybe they ought to sell tickets or something.
Anyway, we'’re going to get together Tuesday and figure out a game plan. I think we ought to concentrate on trying to play in Lafayette about once a month or so. We still have to finish recording the vocals and bass on "“Smells Like"” and start recording some new material. Funny thing is that I had a bad feeling about last night, I don'’t know where it came from but something kept telling me that the gig was going to be a flop. I found a cool guitar instruction site-Click here This guy says he can unlock the guitar in one weekend -– check it out. Any way, I'll post the results of our next recording sessions as we do them and maybe somebody will notice that and want to sign us or something - Yeah, right and monkeys might fly out of my butt.


Tuesday, November 08, 2005

I Lied






I lied - the previous post was supposed to be posted yesterday. I'm not going to make any excuses, I just didn't do it. The Colts WON !!!! I really think this is Peyton's year. He seemed to have a swagger last night I've never seen before. Practice tonight was pretty good - the vocals are coming together nicely. We're the second band on the bill so we should be playing in front of some people. Zack's got a new mixer so I'm hoping we don't have to use our monitors. Anyway, we'll be getting together again Thursday to rehearse - I'll try to record something then. Oh, yeah - I got news on Google today with my press release - check it out here

Monday, November 07, 2005

It's been almost a whole week

Wow, it’s been almost a whole week since I posted. We didn’t practice Thursday like I thought we would so recording the acoustic guitar part for “Smells Like” had to wait until Saturday afternoon. It came out great – I recorded two tracks – one with my Shure KSM27 pointed at about the 12th fret and the other with a Roland DR-20 emulating a U-87 as a room mic placed behind Joel and to his right with the capsule pointed at the top bout of the guitar – a beautiful Gibson J-150. I recorded two passes and combined the KSM-27 from the first take with the emulated U-87 from the second take – you can listen to just the guitar here . I’m going to try to record the bass track this evening – before “THE GAME”(Indie vs NE) , of course. I'll post the whole song with bass after I complete it. Brandon came over about 3:00 and we rehearsed for about an hour and a half. Sounding great – maybe I’ll post a live song or two from rehearsal later this week. Also, our gig at Joe’s is Friday and I can’t wait to actually play in front of some real live people. The last gig was fun but there was nobody there.

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Smells Like - Live

Banner      The rehearsal last night was amazing. We were all on headphones with Brandon in the isolation booth on drums and Joel playing his guitar through my GT-3 straight to the board. Being able to hear yourself makes a huge difference. We went through the whole set list and then recorded “Smell Like” as the last song. The drum track with the scratch guitar and vocals are located here. I would love to hear your thoughts on it. I think the snare needs to crack a bit more during the chorus. Some compression and EQ may help a bit and I may end up replacing the snare via midi. I wanted to record the bass track as well but I screwed up and didn’t sync the Yamaha and the computer together properly. Not a big deal – I can record that part in about 10 minutes.
     In other news, the newsletter came out and seems to be pretty well received. You can view it here. I learned a bit of internet protocol concerning email addresses. If you’re sending out something to a number of people, you should but the addresses in the BCC field and send the email to yourself so that no-one can see each others addresses. I kind of pissed one guy off and another guy was kind enough to tell me how to do it. We’ll be getting together Saturday afternoon to rehearse and do some more recording. We’ll probably record the acoustic guitar part and I should have the bass part done by then. I’ll post the results of that session as soon as I can