Got guitars done for one tune

Saturday morning, I ran over to my rehearsal space, picked up my amp and (after breakfast) brought it back home. Time to start laying down some guitar tracks. I had hoped to do some recording on both Saturday and Sunday, but due to grilling, Sunday didn't happen. But Saturday I miced up the amp, got some sounds and went to it. I got one track mostly done. I may add some flourishes later on, once the bass and vocals have been added. But for now I've got two rhythm tracks and a solo laid down.

Recording, for me, has always been a love/hate relationship. I do tend to stress myself out about it, in that of course you want to get a good take. But the longer it takes to get that, the more stressed I get. Although I want everything to be perfect, I have to realize that it probably won't be, and just make the decision where there might be little things that I might hear that no one else would notice. But even with that, I think the one tune I recorded Saturday sounds pretty damn good. And therein lies the love part of the equation. Once you get something recorded that you like, it's immensely gratifying feeling. Even after I was done, and had given it the "critical" listens, I kept replaying it simply because I thought it sounded cool.

That's the good stuff right there.

Anyway, I had hoped to get some work done on the other two songs I have drums already recorded for, but Sunday didn't happen (as mentioned above), and it took me about 4-5 hours Saturday to get that one song done. By that time, I was a little burnt, and a little self conscious of the fact that my upstairs neighbor was home and had just had to listen to me try and record the same solo 30 times. Although I wasn't recording as loudly as I would have liked, there was still a good amount of volume cranking out of my bedroom. As such, I probably will not be recording again until next weekend, unless I know for sure that my roommate, landlord, and upstairs neighbor are all out of the house. I don't really want to subject them to it on week nights. Just trying to be polite.

First round of recording

This weekend was the first round of recording for the drums. Eric was playing on three songs, so I rounded up some gear and headed over to his place on Saturday.

The gear: My laptop with Nuendo for my recording needs, a MOTU 828 mkII 8 I/O unit for getting sounds into my computer, a Mackie mixer (borrowed from my bass player, Rick) for getting sounds into the MOTU, SM58 for the bass drum, SM57 for the snare, two overhead mics (Shure something or others that I borrowed from Fil), various cables and stands (some borrowed, some owned), one guitar, one amp, one pre-amp unit (borrowed from Matt) that I didn't use, and one set of Eric's drums (which sounded awesome!)

Saturday was primarily for setting up and doing run throughs on the three songs. This was also the day where I would likely find out whether or not my jury-rigged system was going to be able to do what I wanted it to. I had talked to my bass player, who does live sound occasionally as part of his job previous to beginning, and as a result had started developing some doubts as to whether or not I would be able to accomplish what I wanted to do. Well, not so much if I would be able to accomplish it but if I would be able to do it well. Because my mindset was that if it wasn't going to sound better than what I already had then why bother? Of course, I did have a back-up plan in place, that if I could not get drums recorded on my own that I might spring some cash for an engineer to come and do it for me, or even go into a studio to do it. Of course, I was hoping not to have to do this.

Luckily everything went very well and more smoothly than I could have hoped. Mostly (explanation to come). It took about and hour or so to get everything set up. I got signal from the mics all the way to Nuendo without much hassle. It's always a joy to see those little meter lights shining, indicating that you can indeed record sounds.

The one issue that we had, (and this wasn't even so much that it was detrimental to recording), was that I couldn't get a good sound out of my amp for Eric to play along with. Here's how that worked. I didn't want any guitar to be on the recording of the drums. The only reason I was playing was so that Eric would have something to play along to. So, I disconnected the speak in the amp, and plugged straight from the amp preamp into the board. The problem here is that you cannot get an adequate amount of volume without it sounding like garbage. It gets so distorted as to be indistinguishable from noise. I tried several different configurations of things to get it to work. By a certain point, all you're really trying to do is add volume without adding any more gain. I tried going straight from my amp to the board---no luck. I tried going from the pre-amp unit to the board---no luck. I tried amp to pre-amp unit to board---no luck. Imagine the worst guitar tone ever, and then imagine something that doesn't even sound that good. We were able to play through it well enough; I'm more concerned about how this will play out in the second round of recording, with someone I have never played with before and the possible addition of bass going on at the same time as well. This is something I will have to work on.

Despite that, I'd call the weekend a success. After setting everything up on Saturday, Eric and I just did a brief run through on the three songs to work out a few ideas/thoughts. Then Sunday we sat down to do the actual recording. It took us somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-4 hours to get all three songs down. That was for the drums, and then for a little extra percussion---cowbell in the chorus of one song and tambourine in the chorus of another.

It will probably be a couple weeks before the next round of recording drums. Hopefully that will also just be a one weekend recording session, but we shall see. Between now and then my job will be two-fold. First is to mix the drums for the songs Eric did. This will entail throwing some EQ on there and tweaking the levels so everything sounds balanced, and I hope to start that this week. Possibly even tonight, although I wouldn't mind a day off before beginning. Once I get that done, I'll throw some guitar tracks down.

Project update

Well, not much of an update, but a little one.

I hope to get started with the actual recording in a few weeks. The project has gotten slightly bigger. Originally I was going to do 6 songs, now I'll be doing 8-9. Even though a few of the extra songs are different stylistically than the other 6, I've decided to add them because...well, because why not? I might as well get them recorded while I'm recording.

At any rate, I have a few people lined up to play on them so far. (Hopefully, provided no one falls through.) Eric is going to play drums on three of the songs. And then the drums for the original six will be played by a guy I know from online, Will. The one thing that concerns me is that I've never actually heard his drumming, so that should be interesting when I finally do. He's actually in a few bands, two of which I've seen, but in those bands he sings and plays guitar. However, most accounts say he's pretty good at the drums, so I've got my fingers crossed. Also, I might have a bass player, Jim, lined up for the original six as well. Also someone from online, and a friend and former roommate of the guy playing drums. In fact, it was the drummer that brought Jim on board, as he played the demos for him one night. Oddly enough, I have a few other connections to Jim: He played in a band called the Damn Personals (who were pretty popular) who I've seen before. He played in another band called The Horses, and two of his bandmates in that band dated two of my former Porter Sq. roommates. He is friends with Krista/Joe/Laura/Rob independent of the fact that I am. And he used to have a crush on my roommate.

Also, there is a chance that I might be able to line someone up to do the actual drum recording, so I don't have to. On one hand, I wouldn't mind trying it myself. But on the other, I also wouldn't mind having someone else with some more experience (and possibly some better drum mics) do it, so that I can get some better drum sounds. I had sent an email to my buddy Benny, (who works at a recording studio in Allston, and who I'd emailed recently anyway regarding some potential Pawnshop Diamonds recording), and asked if he knew anyone that might be interested in a few days work for some short money. Short, because it'd be coming entirely out of my pocket, and I can't afford to spend a lot of cash on what is essentially a vanity project. He said his assistant might be interested, so I'm trying to get more details on that.

If that doesn't pan out and I do the entire DIY route, I will be borrowing some mics/cables/stands from assorted people, and hopefully a headphone amp from Fil. Hopefully that will be enough.

Also, I sat down over the weekend and figured out how to unplug the speaker from my amp, and just plug the preamp into my I/O so that when playing scratch tracks for the drummers to record along with, my amp won't actually get caught in the recording. I'd like to have as much separation of sound as possible. Since I won't be working with the most top notch gear or experience, the more leeway and flexibility I have to manipulate the sounds after the fact, the better. That reminds me, I should see if I could get my hands on a DI box, in case Jim wants to record live with Will. Hmmm.

Anyway, like I said, hopefully I should be starting the actual recording in a few weeks. We'll see. I'm a little excited and a lot daunted by the amount of stuff I seem to need to pull together.

P.S. Bill, thanks for the offer. When I get past this first stage of getting the drums and bass down, I'll start thinking more seriously about what I need to do for guitars and vocals.