Man, Quit That Noise Over There!

Mott finished up the electric guitar today, and fixed up some previously-recorded ones.  We added a solo guitar track to 'Then Go,' on top of the distorted rhythm guitar on the choruses.  As he was slightly less sick than last time, he also redid the vocals to 'Barfly.' 

Summing up his recording experience, he said "the way I feel about most of these tracks is I could do them better...yeah.  That's it."  That's true, but that could be said of any of our parts, and I think it's more important that we capture a realistic performance, one that is representative of what the Argyles sound like live.  That's the reason I wanted to record this album anyways, to have a sort of record of what we sounded like and what we played when we were together.

The recording process is forcing me to pay far greater attention to what my bandmates are playing than I can during our performances, so in a way I feel like I'm learning what we actually sound like for the first time.  And everyone is learning the songs more fully; we may have played them dozens of times, but there's little things that Mott wasn't doing or that I didn't realize that he was doing - a chord here, a riff there - that are putting the songs in greater relief for me.

This is during one of the takes of 'Barfly,' during which Mott worked himself into a lather even if we were only recording a single line.  Gotta admire the effort.

Do You Like It

Mott was back at it last Satuday, largely unsupervised as I was writing song lyrics with Parapraxis. 
I listened to what he got done yesterday, and he's managing to get some good sounds out of the ZOOM pedal.  I think there's one song where he accidentally hit the tremolo about halfway through while recording, making 'January February' sound like teeth chattering.  That may have to be redone tomorrow, when I hope we'll be able to finish up the electric guitar. 

On the mixing side of things, I've been bringing the replacement toms into the same instance of Session Drummer as opposed to running several of them, to save processing power.  If I need different kits for the kick and the toms I guess I can create one out of the different sounds available, but so far that hasn't been an issue.  I was also looking for a recording of rain on a tin roof to stick at the end of 'January February' and found freesound, an interesting library of field recordings and samples from all sorts of places.  Not sure how or if I'll use any of them yet, but it is funny to see all the things people take the trouble to record.

You can see Justin, Andrew, and Leona in the background.  We wrote a song about some seaweed which longs for the return of high tide.  Justin also drew a picture of someone being torn apart by a giant seagull.

Play Kush part, Fred.

Mott was here today, starting the electric guitar recording.  He is the purest and most unadulterated source of rage in the Argyles, and I wasn't sure how it would translate into the studio, but we got a good half-dozen songs completed, and more started, if not nailed down.  Most of his parts are at least semi-improvised, and even takes of the same material are highly dissimilar.  Which is to say, creative, but unpredictable.  A couple of riffs we ended up keeping today, including one for Cigarette 2-Step, were entirely new, and the songs we have left to record are even more uncertain.  It'll be interesting to see what he comes up with.

He's playing my Mexican Strat (with a Dimarzio X2N in the bridge position), through the Zoom G2.1u pedal, straight into the Audio Interface.  He's also using our friend Alberto's cable, which we took and haven't given back for months.  Thanks Alberto!

Take It Down So I Can Make These Hits Over Here

I worked on editing today, fixing little mistakes in the bass and guitar tracks, making the rhythm match up nicely.  I had been cutting out the noise from the tom and floor tom mics when they weren't being played, but today I tried replacing them with samples, starting on 'Perseus'.  I'm happier with the sound of the drums and the lack of background noise, so I think I'll do that on all of the tracks.  For most songs, I'm opening new instances of the soft synth, because that way I can pan them individually.  I'm finding that the overheads have enough bleed from the rest of the kit that panning them harshly makes it more interesting without sounding too jarring.

As far as tracks to be included on the album, I'm thinking that since we've never performed 'Hold It Together' or 'The Sweet Spot', maybe they should be left off the album (although the parts should still be recorded while we're doing all this).  Without 'Heat', as well, that brings the number down to 15, which I think is manageable.  We could then leave a couple others out later, based on how they sound once they've been mixed.

This is my new setup - I got a new monitor and plugged it through the HDMI out on my computer, relegating the CRT to the tv tray on the right.  I haven't figured out how to detatch one of Sonar's windows to drag it over to the other monitor yet, so I mostly just use it to make notes or look things up online.

Preacher daughter.

Didn't have much time to do anything today, and my voice is not in recording shape, so I just fiddled around with the rough mixes, trying to get them to sound better.  I started panning the overheads and the toms, and working a bit with the percussion strip plugin (PX-64) on Sonar.  I'm finding that above all, more high end is needed for the sound I want on a few of the songs, like 'Red Plaid Shirt'.  Right now I'm applying it straight to the drum bus.

This is maybe the last time you'll see this monitor, as I'm finding it doesn't have enough screen space for me to work comfortably.  I'll see if I can't buy a larger one tomorrow.

Is it Mellow, Brother?

For once I didn't have any band practice, so I got all of my acoustic guitar parts recorded instead.  It took all day, 7 or 8 takes each.  I worked out a little Freddie Green thing for 'The Sweet Spot' as well.  That just leaves the rhythm guitar for Perseus (which Justin does).  I'm going to try to record the vocals this week as well but I have some sort of throat sickness, so they might have to wait.

You'll notice that behind the microphone I have a feather-filled, cotton-shielded acoustic panel to hopefully block some of the room noise.  The guitar is a Martin DC-16GTE and the mic is the Rode NT1-A that I got for Christmas (thanks!).

Yesterday, Clyde.

After a short christmas break during which the album was put on hold and the studio relocated to my apartment, Justin came over on Saturday and re-recorded some bass parts.  I had decided over break that 'Crimes Without Victims' needed to be in a higher key for the vocal part to work, so we redid that.  Then we went through and made sure everything was there for all of the bass parts, even if some stitching together would be required of me later.  If Justin had a recording motto, it would probably be "We can fix that later" or "We can just reuse that, right?"  He's usually right though, and the sound he gets from that bass is better than any way I've found of playing it.

Here's a pic of my room in Delta, where I spent the break.  A couple days before I left I decided to test out my new mic (the NT1-A in the middle of the room) by recording a cover album, as I periodically do.  I like to do the songs in one try but had to do one take for guitar, and another for vocals.  The vocals were hard, because I had a cold and a bit of a fever, so I called the compilation "So Sick."  The guitar I used (sitting on the chair) is my dad's 1958 Gibson J-50.