Merry Christmas, Hanukah, whatever

Merry Christmas, Hanukah, whatever - We only recorded Tuesday this week as we got together last night to exchange gifts. Joel and I got Brandon an Itunes gift certificate that said "Brandon, you're the cutest drummer we've ever had". We kid him a lot. My wife and I got Joel a couple of CD's - Wilco's A.M. and "The Essential Johnny Cash". Joel got me some wireless controllers for my PS2 (all I play on that is Madden with Joel) and Brandon got Joel and I gift certificates to Hollywood Video. Joel got Lorraine a James Taylor DVD that was the same tour we saw him on a couple of years ago. Not too shabby.
Anyway, Tuesday when we recorded, we recorded the rhythm guitar part on "I'm Doin Fine".
Joel is going to work on another guitar part for it that will be something like the guitarist from CAKE would play. We also recorded the rhythm guitar part for "Too Late". We will also have to go back to rerecord some of the drum fills as Brandon got carried away on a couple. Other than that it was pretty damn good. That one was recorded strictly off the cuff with no rehearsal at all. We played through it once and then recorded it 3 times with the last one being the best. The bass part will be rerecorded because what you hear is what's coming through on Joel's vocal mic and if you listen, you'll hear me hunt for the last note.
I'm going to be working on the website newsletter over the Christmas Holiday so I can have it ready for January 1st. I still haven't had any questions for this issue so I'm probably going to answer the second part of W.Gay's question as to whether or not a mixer is necessary in this day and time. I'm still working on the drum parts on "Smells Like" and I hope to have that finished by New Years Eve. It's going so much faster since I got that new monitor.

Too Late

We've recorded the drums, scratch guitar and scratch vocal on another original - "Too Late" - since my last post. It was originally intended to be much slower but I'm glad it moves a bit better. Putting out the website newsletter for December was a bear. I decided to do a Holiday Shopping Guide and I really didn't realize how much was going to be involved. It turned out well, however. You can check it out here. I'm still working on replacing the snare and kick on "Smells Like". The job got way easier since I got a 17" monitor for the studio. The old one was a 15" and I couldn't believe the difference it made. I got up early Saturday morning and worked on it for about an hour and a half. I'm almost finished with the kick and then I've got to put the snare in. Next time I'm going to put triggers on the kick and snare just in case I have to do it again. We're going to be practicing/recording tonight and Thursday this week and then not again until next Thursday. We have two guitar parts to do so I would imagine that's where we'll start.

I'm Doin' Fine

I'm going to try to post just once a week for a while with everything that's going on with the holidays. Tuesday we got together and listened to the tracks we recorded with Joel's J-150 for "Smells Like". The technique is to tune the guitar to the key of the song and then put it right in front of a speaker. Then you play the song and record what the pickup in the guitar hears. What you get is some really ambient sounds that are kind of like a keyboard pad. We had recorded 4 tracks and two of them just didn't work so here's what the other two sound like together - Click Here .They are going to move a bit more in the stereo field to add some emphasis and I'll run them through a reverb. I'm also replacing the kick and snare hits because Brandon's snare just doesn't crack like I need it to and I just not happy with the kick sound on this song. This is what is sounds like so far - Click Here
Thursday we set Brandon's kit up again and recorded an New Song - "I'm Doin' Fine". It's a bit more upbeat and you'll get to hear me on the background vocals. The drums sound a lot better on this one. I used an SM-57 on the snare instead of one of Brandon's drum mikes and the kick sounds lots better. The guitar part may stay but we've got to record Joel's vocal, the other guitar parts, background vocals and maybe we can get someone to play a keyboard part - probably a B-3 sound.

2 weeks

Wow, I can't believe it's been over 2 weeks since I posted. Thanksgiving got in the way and then Brandon couldn't practice for about a week. On top of everything else, it was the end of the month and I had to do the weekly and monthly bids for the casinos we service. And I had the Holiday Shopping issue of the newsletter to get out. We got together last Tuesday and did a preliminary mix of "Smells Like". You can listen to it here.
The song is kind of of empty without any background vocals or any sort of keyboard pad so we decided to record Joel's acoustic guitar pushed up to a speaker. We will use the output of his pickup running through a direct box. I've done this before and you never know what you will get. I'll post that as soon as we get it done.