today, my brother david and i started recording songs for our new CD. i picked him up from gainesville on wednesday, and after a brief stop for some rock climbing action at a local gym, we came home and set up the studio. in our house there is one second-story room, which we call the bonus room. we cleaned this room out of every unnecessary object, and quickly set up drums, guitars, an amp, a PA, mic stands, a gigantic mixer (that can probably fly, it looks so sleek), our computer, etc… by the end of wednesday night we had what for all purposes looked to be a bona fide home recording studio.
yesterday, thursday, was Day 0. Day 0 was spent practicing all of the songs (most of which dave and i had not played together and so he needed to write the drum parts). it was a long day. also on Day 0 i decided that it would be cool to keep a recording session journal of sorts–comment on each day’s progress, what we are working on, that sort of thing. possibly, some of you will find this interesting. so, here we go!
day 1: friday 12.20.2002
i woke up early today (11am) since i had to take my dad to work. i did some christmas shopping while i was out and came back at noon. i woke david up and we started working. for about 2 hours we practiced ‘so talk about it’, a song i’ve played at shows recently, and probably my most poppy song. the song is easy enough to play, but has some parts where i play around with the time signature a bit, making it tough for a drummer to follow. dave, of course, had no problems at all, and came up with super-groovy lines for the different parts of the song. probably around 2 or 3pm, we decided we were ready to start recording. we got a click-track going, and i layed down the guitar lines for the song in 2 takes, after setting up two oktava mk-319 condenser mics in an x-pattern in front of the sound hole of my guitar. satisfied, and glad that all the practicing we’d done had meant i knew the song perfectly, we moved on to vocals. for these we used just one of the mk-319s. i did a couple takes, and thought i was happy with the most recent, but decided that all my upper range notes were on the flat side. i recorded again and fixed this as well as it was going to be fixed. shifting the mics to drums (we used the 2 mk-319s for overheads, an audio technica pro 25 for kick, and a shure sm-57 for snare) took a little while, since we had to find decent equalization and compression settings. eventually dave started tracking, and somewhere between 5 and 10 takes later we had drums.
at this point dave suggested that we add some electric guitar to the song, to give it a little more powerful edge at the crucial parts of the song. i was skeptical, not wanting to clutter the song, but decided that we should try anyway. we miked the guitar amp with the sm-57 and i searched for the warm, fuzzy sort of distortion that i liked and thought would help out the song. we did some sound checking, and then i laid down a few lines with the electric. i was happy with the first take, so everything was super.
deciding that all the parts were right on, i started the mixing process. by this time it must have been 6pm. i mixed for about half an hour, doing volume and pan evolutions, bringing out this and quieting that…mixing is a subtle art which i would very much like to be good at, but for which i have neither proper training nor proper tools. still, i did my best, and around 7pm, dave and i had a Song. a Finished Song [close enough anyway]. i was excited to listen to it and hear all the parts work together to create just the kind of feel i wanted the song to have — catchy, yet technical, fun, yet sarcastic and a little edgy. i burned the song to a CD and played it in our home stereo–it sounded great!
then duty called and dave and i went out shopping for christmas presents. in the meantime, we listened to the song some in the car, and dave decided he needed to redo the drums. so when we got home, we miked up the drums again, tried for a little different sound, and recorded dave. he had decided that he wanted to play a slightly less-complicated, more-groovy sort of beat, that wouldn’t take away from the rest of the parts as much as he decided it had. we practiced the new version some, and he made 5 or 6 takes until he was happy. that was all well and good, but then i decided i needed to re-record the electric guitar. something about it just sounded like i was playing out of a cardboard box and not the nice, big, amp i was borrowing. i switched the sm-57 to the mk-319 and tried for a different sound. eventually i fiddled with the EQ settings enough to get something that i thought was halfway decent. with no hope of getting it any better with the equipment we had, i layed down the electric guitar track in one take.
this is probably 10 or 11pm now, and i finally start mixing the re-recorded tracks into the rest of the song. still, it didn’t take me too long, and soon i was mastering the song and trying to up the levels so it would be as loud as a song from any commercially-produced CD. at midnight, all our toil was done, and i burned the new version onto a CD, and also made an mp3. i’ve listened to it quite a few times now, and despite a minor mixing change or two, i think it’s as good as it could possibly sound with our gear and our understanding of recording techniques. so, i am a tired, yet happy, man, and it feels great to be able to listen for the first time to a song of mine with drums played by an excellent musician, and with some electric guitar punch to augment my usual acoustic sound.
i’ve decided, unfortunately, not to post any mp3s of new songs to the blog until the whole CD is done and finished. too many changes could be made any day to the songs that there’s really no point in putting anything but the finished product up here.
still, if you’re really interested, stop by the house and hang out while dave and i record. or, talk to me on IM and i’d be happy to let you in on a listen to whatever’s currently done.
and with that, i’m off to bed.
virtual song on spin: so talk about it | jonathan lipps
