Studio diary #3
Today we worked mainly on songs earmarked for our forthcoming EP. A couple of them are well on their way already, and it has been refreshing to track melodic parts. In addition to recording more things live, we have been trying out all sorts of new things in the arrangements and I left the studio with a fair amount of inspir-ado.
We started the session recording an idea that woke Tyler up this morning... he heard a percussive sound outside of his window and now it is embedded somewhere in the tracks. I will only say that it is not a live animal.
Casey also came in today and played some great parts with some found drums. He has a knack for scavenging things around the studio and making them sound like they belong on a drum kit. For my part I try not to look at what he's playing when he auditions different objects so it doesn't cloud my judgement [being naturally pre-disposed towards junk myself]. I actually have no idea what he was hitting. But I liked it.
Oh yes, and then Emily played her most ass-out rock part ever on a yamaha electric harpsichord.

Labels: recording, studio

Recording journal #2
Drums, drums drum and then some... drum. Tonight we started with 'Cold Kind and Lemon eyes.' I remember a couple of months ago, when we recorded/demo-ed this song for the first time, Tyler and I both realized (totally at, like, the same second) that this album was going to be much different than 'Dust of retreat.' I mean, of course it was going to be different but there is something very new to us going on in this song, something that demands new ways of thinking. also it's an amazing song so it deserves some quality time.
In that spirit we decided to re-track the drums from the first time around. There were a lot of ideas that we wanted to keep, but the feel was a tad mechanical, or perhaps cautious... something we are going to avoid at all costs on this record. So Richard, Tyler, Emily and myself played with Chris during all the takes and we ended up with two or three that felt good. Trying to get as many continuous live performances is something we all want for this record and I'm glad that we are sticking to it. Even if that means playing a song 20 times in a row...
But that's the whole thing, really, that we are coming to terms with. The first few times you play a song, you are going to really f up somewhere but there are often these moments of like, naive genius or whatever you want to call it that you want to keep. So if you can find that moment where everyone is still fresh and also able to play through without falling apart, those takes seem to be appropriate for a lot of these songs. You can definitely hear this theory in action when you listen to outtakes from Pet Sounds or some of the beatles Anthology stuff, after a couple takes of a song they arrive at this golden point where the band knows what to do, but just barely, and it just feels... right.
What you rarely get to hear are takes done after the keeper take. Probably because they are boring. It's like wearing too much make-up.
Having said that, on the flip side of fresh we recorded drums for 'the Ocean' tonight as well. The difficulty with this song is that we have been playing it for about a year, so the thrill of hearing the song for the first time is diminished a bit. I don't really get too worked up about that, though, because I know we will find all sorts of ways to make the song new for us. Beyond that, i get all geeked about stuff just sounding good. However, it is a different sort of challenge than i was babbling about in the last paragraph. You can't get complacent about a song, but you can't just change things around solely for your own entertainment either.
i saw an episode of 'Making the Band' once where Diddy stopped whoever was recording and said, "you're already remixing!" I thought that was an amazing way to put it. We can't be remixing just yet. But there are always new ways of hearing things that might not relate to the way we played a song live. So, as ever, my mind is open.
- Andy

Labels: recording, studio

Recording journal, entry #1
We are done. With one drum track. Well that's not entirely true, we have some or one drum recording we did in Colorado a year (2 years?) ago. We were staying in a mansion in the mountains and ended up really liking the way the living room sounded for drums. So of course we set up a bunch of mics and even had a little control room downstairs by the shuffleboard table.
But tonight marks the first drum track done at the studio we have been building and remodeling for the past 6 months. Needless to say, we are all pretty happy to be out of the constuction phase and thinking about things besides nails and screws and soldering wires. Like drums. And not inhaling, as one of the non-Margot studio partners put it, "the dust of retreat."
The main drum room is oddly shaped and it doesn't have a true center. We also put in a strange sort of adjustomatic floating ceiling that we can move around, so it has taken a couple days to figure out where to put the drums and the room mics so it sounds cool. I think we found a good spot, finally. At least good for the song we started with, currently titled 'A Tangle of Blonde.' It's a song that we actually played a couple times during our last tour, in a stripped-down arrangement. There were some really interesting developments with the addition of a drum kit, i think.
we also tracked some guitar and vocals alongside the drums and a couple of happy accidents took place during the take that i am quite fond of. But i won't spoil it and talk about them.
Stuff that you just can't think of, you know, that's the best kind of stuff. This could be related to our pre-session prayer to the god (gods?) of rock.

luv, goodnight... andy

p.s. you can check out photos from recording on our flickr page
we will be updating the photos and this journal as much as possible.

Labels: recording, studio