Archive Page 2
the pain of vooooooxxxxxxxxx
Argh I got like four hours of sleep last night and I think I am going insane.
Sarah and I slacked off on recording bizness last week due to social obligations and general sloth but then we kicked it up a notch this weekend. Thurs. and Fri. we went through all the solid instrumental takes that I had earmarked and picked out the no. 1 solid gold takes of each song. Then on Saturday and Sunday we went to the practice space and started recording vocals. And let me tell you man that it is difficult stuff recording vocals, especially if you are a not-so-hot singer like me. We only got through like four songs on Saturday and then my voice was shot, cracking up if I aimed for anything melodic at all. I think I’m doing something wrong, like forcing my voice way more than I normally do, because I don’t normally have these difficulties.
Anyways, I think we finished the weekend with completed vocals on seven or eight of the eleven tracks. We did a lot of doubling of vocals, especially back-up vocals, which is funny because if you mix them right it sounds like a chorus of alien insects singing along in the background. Then on Sunday Ben came in and we worked on trying to record this crazy faux-free jazz saxophone solo that I wanted to try on one of the songs (thanks to Jody for letting us borrow her sax). But uh I don’t think it really worked out so it will probably hit the scrap heap or will maybe just be subliminal.
We’ll probably take a little break from recording over the Thanksgiving holiday and then try and wrap it all up after that, just FYI.
Here are some pictures:
This is Sarah listening to instrumental tracks.
Tapes, 8-track.
Recording notes.
Sarah recording vocals, duh.
Apparently I make really dumb faces when recording vocals.
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It’s Alive
Nick is the Ears. He’s heading up this recording. He’s the one that hits the buttons, the one that fights the 8 track when it tries to be a 7 track, the one that sits at home for hours listening to overblown Fictions on his fancy headphones. He’s a Tape Op enthusiast, an I Make Music-er, an Analog purist surrounded by 10 tapes of basic tracks.
He is also the Mouth. He’s our Point Man, our Show Man, our “HOW’S EVERYBODY FEELIN’??” go-getter.
Ben is the Eyes. He’s the Artist, the Designer, the man with a plan. He’s a Brainstormer, a Creator, a Visionary. He sees colors and dimensions that have not yet been invented or explored.
He is also the Hands. And from these hands come a tapestry of beats.
Sarah is the Nervous System. She streams nervous energy, a frantic enthusiasm, an overcaffeinated hyperactivity under the guise of a laid back attitude. She’s the fuzzed out feeling pumping through the veins, the groove thickening the blood.
She is also the Legs. She is the towering sass. The better to stomp out these rhythms.
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Fri 11/9 + Sun 11/11
Last week: listen to approx. 150 minutes of FF instrumental tracks, trying to evaluate them for competence, completeness and that certain je ne sais quoi. Kept extensive notes in my classy black notebook (pics to follow?). Identified five songs that needed additional work.
Fri: Lentil soup and stuffed grapeleaves at Sultan’s Market as we discuss possible CD packaging solutions, then I am a dick and ruin everything. “After Hours” breaks my spirit and brain. We still manage to get a couple of decent recordings (of “No Attraction” and “Esperanto”) but the mood is dark.
Sun: After a tentative start, we get into a “groove” and bang out hot versions of “Krakatoa,” “After Hours,” “(I Cannot Get Any) Satisfaction,” and “Soiree.” The world celebrates.
This week: I listen to the tapes from Fri. and Sun. and locate the good takes. Then I listen to all the good takes from all the tapes again and identify the best takes, hopefully with the assistance of Sarah. Maybe do my guitar overdubs (the solos on “Satisfaction” and “Esperanto.” Maybe start working on recording vocals.
In any case, we seem to be done recording the basic instrumental tracks, huzzah!
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Fri 11/2 and Sun 11/4
Oh man this is like the super-summarized version of the weekend, but I can just say that after a frustrating start to Friday’s recording session (technical problems, had to rearrange mics (finally gave up on the overhead mic, it was just picking up too much noise) and get sounds again), we finally got into a groove and recorded good takes of most of the songs. I think part of what helped is Ben and Sarah cracked down on my plan of recording like we were playing live, i.e. just playing each song once and moving on, even if it was less than perfect. Instead we moved on to a more traditional recording process of picking a song and recording it a couple few times until we thought we got a good take.
Crazy trivia: On Friday, Ben realized he had no drum sticks at the practice space, so he found some broken sticks, patched them up with duct tape and used those for the whole recording session. On Sunday, we added a surprise ending to a fast version of “Esperanto.” (This may or may not have been on purpose.) On both days, the eight-track had to be inverted to work properly.
I brought the recorder and the tapes we have so far home with me to listen to, so we can find out which songs we don’t have good takes of yet. This will allow us to focus our efforts. So I have roughly three hours of instrumental tracks I have to listen to in the next week. Of course, I’ve been listening already, and the sound is HOTTT. Again, I feel like my standards for a “good recording” are totally different from the rest of the world but I like what I’m hearing. It sounds abrasive and explosive and LOUD.
Photos to phollow later.
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I honestly don’t know if we got any good takes on the First Night, but we did achieve a beautifully raw, crunchy din, feeding in the highest levels so as to create too much distortion for the seasoned ear. Also, if nothing else, we got 3 solid hours of practice in, which is quite a feat for us. Under normal circumstances, we might have dissolved into useless plodding jams by then or maybe puddles on the floor. We were lulled by the early darkness seeping through our big windows, but fought off zombie tendencies by playing faster and harder than ever before. It was a battle fueled by greasy pizza fingers and cheap yellow beer.
Saturday, we practiced in a 13 foot square plexiglass room at the Museum of Contemporary Art as part of the Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967 exhibition. We went from the haunted practice space building to the super bright lights of a museum. Our practice doubled as a performance art piece, Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Untitled 1996 (Rehearsal Studio No. 6 Silent Version). The instruments were not amplified. Everything was fed through headphones. Thus, the ‘Silent Version.’ Those without headphones experienced something quite different. Our shouts could be heard on the other side of the museum. Krakatoa disturbs the peace:
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We started recording the basic instrument tracks for Krakatoa on Friday right after work. Sarah and I picked up a pizza from Pizza Metro and a sixer of High Life from the D&D and we headed over to the practice/recording space to meet up with Ben. Basically as soon as we got there, I realized I had left my headphones at home so I had turn back around and pick them up. Dumb.
When I got back, we assembled a totally DIY snare mic baffle, which Sarah and I made out of the top of a tonic water bottle , an old t-shirt, and some Elmer’s glue. I also MacGyvered a kick mic stand (see previous post) and a guitar mic stand made out of a wire coat hanger:
We did some quick soundchecks and surprisingly didn’t have to change much from the work I did last week. So then we started recording and trying to forget that we were recording.
Not really sure how productive this recording session was in terms of actually getting good recordings of our songs. I think there were some red light nerves and self-consciousness about knowing that the tape was rolling, plus we were kind of rusty after not practicing for a couple of weeks. But I think it was productive in getting comfortable and relaxing and practicing the songs. I’m pretty sure we got a good take of “Lasers + Mirrors” and usable takes of a couple of other songs. And hopefully next time we go in, we won’t have to fiddle with gear and can just hit record and go.
We kept hearing these loud slapping sounds right outside our door while we were recording, and when I finally went to investigate, some dudes from another band were playing cornhole right outside our space. I asked them nicely if they could play on the other side of the building, and right after that, one of the dudes managed to throw a bag into the ceiling rafters.
I cheated and listened to some of our takes after we recorded. The sound is really dirty, hopefully in a good way. The drums sound trashy and immense. I think it’s going to be a good sound for Krakatoa, really representative of the chaos and grit embodied in the album concept/story line.
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Kick
Jordan basically said I was a fool for using a drum to support the kick drum mic, pointing out that when we’re playing, the mic will be bouncing all around and probably picking up extra resonances through the drum. I guess I already knew this but had pushed it to the back of my mind. I’m going to rig up some kind of actual drum mic stand with the bottom half of a music stand that someone left by the trash in our practice space. Need to remember to buy some duct tape.
Recording starts tomorrow?
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We are organized and prepared
Ben was out of town this weekend but I was itchin’ to get some work done for the recording so yesterday Sarah and I took the instruments back to the practice space and set them up. This was when I realized I don’t really know how to set up a drum set. I think I kind of got them right but I wasn’t sure which stand goes with which cymbal and I kept moving the drums around but something still didn’t seem quite right.
So then Sarah read while I started setting up mics and getting some basic sounds. We bought some actual cheapo drum mics on Craigslist, a couple of which are actually powered mics, which is pretty fancy for us, and I had some good plans for setting them up but then had realization no. 2, namely that we only have two mic stands now, and neither one is a boom mic stand. So that required some imagination on my part.
Here’s what we’ve got going for the drums so far: a kick drum mic on the kick drum (duh) but we don’t have one of those sweet kick drum mic stands so it’s resting on the rack tom that Ben bought but then got frustrated with. Then we’ve got a tom mic on the floor tom and one of our powered overhead mics on the snare. Finally I hung the other powered overhead mic from the ceiling to hopefully get cymbals and “room sound.” I’m big into ambience.
In the past I’ve used mixers where I can easily pan the drum mics to different stereo locations. This time I’m using our PA as a mixer, and it doesn’t really have stereo separation. What it does have is a monitor out and a main out, so I can run some drums to the former and some to the latter and then pan those on the 8-track for stereo separation. Figuring out the levels for that was getting pretty complicated though, so right now I’ve got the kick, tom and snare going to one track and the overhead to another track, and I can pan those later for fake stereo, which is appropriate for the Fake Fictions.
Bass and guitar were pretty easy. Stuck our other tom mic on the bass amp, took like two minutes to get the level, and it was good to go. Then I put one of our SM57s in my guitar amp, which was made easier by the big hole in the grill from the Dreaded Practice Space Fire of ‘07. I had hoped to set up a second guitar mic a couple of feet from the amp but I ran out mic cables and was running low on tracks too. I’m sure the bass and guitar will bleed into the overhead drum mic anyways. I guarantee it, in fact.
So we won’t really know how everything is going to sound until we’re all recording together but at least now we’ve got some basic settings to start with. Hopefully we’ll be able to get together this week and nail down the sounds so we can start recording in earnest this weekend.
I took some pictures of the recording set-up but they are still on my camera at home. Maybe later.
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