Pawnshop Diamonds Studio Update

Sorry for the lag in posts, but I've had some other stuff on my mind.

At any rate, the Pawnshop Diamonds studio session is going extremely well. I listened to our first full rough mixes last night---by full, I mean all the instruments and vocals are there---and they sound fucking amazing. By far, the best quality studio recording I've been a part of.

Our studio time broke down like this:

Day 1 - (10 hour day) - Set up gear. Set up mics on gear. Get sounds. Start basic tracking. We recorded together live (sans vocals) and the plan was that on whatever track we decided was the keeper for the drums, anything else worth keeping (bass/guitars), we would, and then would overdub or retrack whatever needed it. So on day one we got all six songs worth of drums done, as well as all the bass tracks/overdubs. That took up a majority of our ten hours, so we ended up the day just listening to the full live tracks of the songs, and myself and Kevin (the other guitar player) took notes on our performances and what we wanted to either fix, overdub, or retrack for ourselves the next day.

Day 2 - (10 hour day) - All about guitars, baby. We had hoped to get some vocals in on this day as well, but Matt was getting over the flu, and as it turned out the guitars took a little longer than anticipated. I went first. I retracked one song entirely and overdubbed on a the others.

Also, this would be the time to mention that Mike Quinn, our engineer, is a whiz at the cut and paste. By this, I do not mean copy and paste, a la "Fly Away" by Lenny Kravitz. For each song that we did, we probably cut at least three live tracks on the day before, meaning we played each song at least three times and kept at least three versions. So, when retracking guitar parts, there were times where I wanted to fix something, and instead of replaying it, Mike was able to take a part from one of the other takes and use that instead. I know one of the "heated discussions" that came up pre-recording was to how "love" we were going to be when recording, and I'm sure to some this may have felt a bit like cheating. Not to me, though. I believe that:

1) The studio is NOT live, and when in the studio, you should use the benefits of the studio. If we wanted a "live" sounding recording, we should just record live. (For the record, I was also against the fully "live" style recording that was discussed not because I don't like the vibe---I do--- because I felt we were not good enough to pull it off. Don't get me wrong, I think we're plenty good, but to get something I would have thought was good enough would have required a lot more practice/live experience than we currently have. ) Besides, I think a lot of the debate was that we don't want a recording that sounds too processed. I agree with that, but I think that sucessfully using the studio to do things we can't do live won't necessarily do that. And then there's:

2) Doing it this way was quicker. We are on a budget here. If we had unlimited funds and time, I'd be totally fine with keeping at it until we all got great live one-takes. But since that's not the case, expedient is the word of the day. As it is, some of this recording will be paid for out of pocket, and the more we can minimize that, the better.

Anyway, back on track. I retracked or overdubbed my parts in the first half of the day, and then moved on to my solos and lead parts. After which, Kevin did the same for his parts. Again, this ended up taking up a lot of the day, so we ended with a little bit of rough mixing at the end of the day.

Day 3 - (7 hour day) - Vocals. Matt, recovered from the flu, cut three songs' worth. This was also the day I had to do the background vocals for the one song I would be doing them on. The most daunting part of my studio experience, standing in front of that (gulp!) vocal mic. Since the background aprt actually called for a few voices, we first did it with both me and Matt at the same time. Later, when our bass player arrived, we did it again with the three of us, all standing in front of one microphone, headphones on, all "We Are The World" style. At the end of the day, that background part ended up being 8 voices total, all of which were thrown into the rough mix. Talk about sounding overly processed. It didn't sound bad, but definitely not what we wanted. In the second rough mix from the other night, it sounds like some of the voices were removed and it sounds a lot better for what we're trying to do. Also, on day 3, I did retrack one song of my rhythm guitar entirely. Matt had thought there were tuning issues that were going to bother him on one tune. I didn't notice it to the extent that he did, and when I ran it by Mike, he called it a "Rolling Stones" sound....being that yeah, maybe it was a little out of tune, but not so much that it was bothersome. Much like how it seems on a lot of Rolling Stones records, it always sounds like someone is a little out of tune. I agreed, but had no problem retracking if it made the band more comfortable. And besides, Matt was late (big surprise) so we just took about 20 minutes and did it while waiting for him. Once again, we ended the day with some mixing.

Day 4 - (7 hour day) - I wasn't there for this day, because I was traveling home from NC. But I have the rough mixes, so I know that the vocals were finished and some more rough mixing happened, and it sounds FAT!

From here, our next day will probably be a full day of just mixing. I'm not sure when that will be scheduled for, however. Hopefully sometime in the next few weeks.