The Buck Stops Here

Ryan was back finishing up the sax recording on Friday.  We only had four or five songs left to finish, and even when we had nothing going in we managed to come up with parts fairly quickly.  His playing was good once he got warmed up, bending into some high notes, adding a little style to the lines.  They should command some attention on the recordings, which is great since I never thought we'd have another melodic instrument on most of these tracks.

Here Ryan has just finished the last one, with a certain air of accomplishment.  Except for my and Justin's vocals, we now have everything recorded for the 15 tracks we'd like to put on the album.  We're both going to New York this week, so I guess it'll have to wait until next weekend.  It's a slow process, but at least it's proceeding.

Let It Loose-Ah

I woke up at 4:30 this morning feeling like death would be preferable, and proceeded very quickly to ruin my vocal chords with corrosive internal chemicals.  So singing was out.  Fortunately Ryan came over and recorded some saxophone, and put up with my periodic moans of achy despair.  Not only that, but he got a whole bunch of songs done, 9 in fact.  He always knew what he wanted it to sound like, which was helpful, and we breezed through the ones he had parts for.  The ones that are left are tougher, either because they are largely improvisational or because he hasn't settled on a part yet.  Hopefully we should be able to do them on Sunday afternoon.

We found that stepping a few feet back from the mic allowed us to get a bigger sound, and although the room is not perfect, or even good, at least it's not square.

Bring It Up

After a long school, band, and sickness-induced hiatus, I finally recorded some vocals today.  By my count 5 songs worth.  Just doing 'Crimes' tired my voice out; the new key is much higher than we used to play it.  We did a short set at Gerts (the campus bar) last night in our first biweekly spot hosting an open mic, and we played almost all old songs.  Have to try and fold in the new ones eventually, I guess. 

I've been going through the lyrics in preparation for singing them, changing little things.  I'm surprised at my complacency (or maybe laziness) though, as the majority of the lyrics still stand as I originally wrote them.  Not only that, I've discovered that some of my songs read better as someone else singing them to me, which is odd.