Recording Diary v6

We came in the studio at 10 am, did a little cleaning and Craig did a little Warcraft ass kicking. My friend Larry is playing with a big rock band in England right now and he keeps IM'ing saying weird shit. I think he's playing in front of 25,000.00 people today. Kick ass.

More work on "Generator"

Set up the ADK Area 51 and did 3 falsetto backing tracks on the chorus and re-did the lead chorus vocal. Then we re-did a few lines in the chorus to add variance throughout the song.

Next we did the backing (na na na na na na na) b-vox tracks for the out section. Multi-tracking about 8 vocals (lead and harmonies).

Vocals seem good. Everything is a keeper thus far.

Next our drummer the Mighty Gomes came in and changed the heads on his drums and tuned them. Tuning is everything. If you want a good drum sound start with the tuning, and make sure the drums sound like you want em in the room before setting up any mics..."Fixing in the mix" is a retarded waste of time.

Tuning takes time.

While the drums were being fussed with we placed Reason Glockenspiel parts on the verses, B sections and the chorus followed by a percussive Marimba for the chorus.

We set up the mic on the Marimba with old trusty (ADK Area 51) and I banged out the part.

Next we added a Trumpet/Melodica harmony part on the chorus with Craig on Trumpet and myself on Melodica.

Then we set up the drums. We set up the mics using the Beatles "Pepper" pattern that we nabbed from the "Recording The Beatles" book, which is the best book ever written. If you like that Beatle sound you should buy it, not because you'll ever come close to sounding like the Beatles, but because it's fun to try and fail.

Recording The Beatles

We used SM57's rather than the AKG D19's because, well, we don't have em and the mics are kinda similar anyway. But we do have the same kick drum mic that the Beatles used, the AKG D20

The drum mic placement worked like this:

The AKG D20 about 5 inches from the kick drum. The low end gets larger the more the mic is moved back from the drum..and we wanted a fairly tight kick sound.

A Shure SM57 under the Snare Drum, pretty close to the snares.

A Shure SM57 to the right of the Hi-Hat

A Shure SM57 next to the Floor Tom

The ADK Area 51 on a boom stand over the drums. This will pick up other tones from the snare and get the rack tom.

We then recorded the drums, moved the mics a bit, recorded the drums, moved the mics a bit..you get the idea.

Jeff played the part three times and we deemed take 3 the keeper.

Next we hit the bass guitar part for the out section. Craig and I sculpted out a walking bass line for the last 4 bars of the song. We used the double neck bass (that Craig managed to tune). Gee that bass sounds cool. Graig pounded for about 40 mins until we found a keeper.

Then we added a Reason Accordion part to double the horns on the chorus. It sounds cool.

Next we added some counter point vocals for the outro. Three tracks of doubled vox.

We are now fucking tired. it's 8 PM. No breaks...

Bye