Blog Archive for October, 2003

First of all:

From now on, I am going to try to avoid mentioning any specific dates or times when any particular events related to this website are supposed to happen. And if I do happen to mention a date or even refer to something as happening “soon,” please don’t take it too seriously. As I’m sure anyone who’s been coming to the site recently knows, it’s become obvious that I am unable to put anything up on this website on, or even near, the dates and times that I say I will. So, I apologize to anyone who’s been checking the site over the past week or so wondering where the recently promised “studio journal” updates are.

Now that that’s out of the way, I can say a little bit about what’s been going on.

We have officially started work on our new album. First I should probably say something about how we have this whole thing planned out. For the recording of our last album, we went to Nashville, TN and stayed there for 2 months and worked on the album from start to finish and then came home. This time we’ll be doing the recording in different sections over the course of the next 2 months and then we’ll take a short break and then begin mixing.

So, for example, last weekend we went into the studio for 5 days and recorded all the drums and bass tracks. Then we came home. So, we haven’t really done any more work on the album for the past week. And then we’ll be going back in at the end of this week to start working on the guitar.

The point of all this is I guess to explain why the updates to this journal might be less often than you would expect. And who cares….

Anyway, so we loaded all of our equipment into a surprisingly nice U-Haul truck on Friday, October 9th and took everything for a 3 and a half hour drive down to Dragonfly East where we were planning on doing all the drum tracks. The reason for doing the drums in a different studio is mainly for the use of a big room to record in. Basically, when you record drums, at least for rock music anyway, you want to record in a pretty big room so the sound has some room to breathe and you get a nice natural room sound, instead of having to fake it with effects. Really not that exciting of a story but I figured some of you might be wondering why we’re recording in two different places.

After our 3 and half hour drive we arrived in Haymarket, VA and eventually found our way up a ridiculously long and windy driveway to Dragonfly East Recording and Interactive. The driveway had what seemed like 45 degree inclines in some places and, at one point, a stream flowing over top of it, but after driving up and down it a few times a day to get to Sheetz and Subway and whatever else we were lucky enough to find, we actually got pretty used to it. Now that I think about it, we should have video taped the ride up the driveway and put it on the site. Maybe next time.

A good part of the first day there was spent setting everything up. Putting on new drums, setting up all the amps and cabinets and putting up all the microphones on all the instruments. A bad part of the first day was spent trying to remove the bottom plate on my double bass pedal (because it was broken and needed to be replaced) with two of the screws being totally stripped. After about 45 minutes of trying different screwdrivers, cursing at a piece of metal, and finally just staring at the pedal (I guess hoping that we could somehow will the screws out of their holes), Scott (the owner of the studio) showed up with a power drill screwdriver type thing and we got it out in like two seconds.

Sometime later that evening, we got everything up and running and started recording some songs. After spending the last 8-9 months writing, it was nice to finally be putting something down on tape. Well, actually, we were putting it down on a hard drive, but you know what I mean. For any nerds out there who are wondering, this record will all be recorded in ProTools, which will be a first for us. Our last album was pretty much all recorded digitally, but most of it was on a Mackie hard disk system and then we bounced everything into ProTools whenever we needed to. And if I remember correctly we actually transferred all of the digitally recorded tracks onto 2″ tape for the mixing. All of this probably means very little to most of you, but for us it’ll be interesting to see how this album turns out, considering that we’re (most likely) recording and mixing the whole thing in ProTools. I think some people get carried away with the technology and you end up with something that sounds super-over produced and that’s definitely not what we’re going for, so we’ll see what happens.

Having said that, the actual process we use to record the music is pretty much the same as it’s always been for us. The drums are set up in the main room and the guitar and bass amps are set up in isolation booths. Tony and Mike play in the main room with me, and Jamie sings in another isolation booth and we all hear each other in the headphones. That’s actually the process that most bands use, as far as I know. Again, not very exciting, but that’s how we do it.

At the end of the first night we had the drum tracks recorded for two songs. Not bad for a day that we had just planned for setting up. By Sunday afternoon all the drums were complete. I know that’s sort of a big jump ahead in the story, but there isn’t much to talk about. But here’s basically how the drums were recorded:

We played through each song a bunch of times, some more than others, until we got a few takes that we felt were really good. I would say on average we played each song 7-8 times and ended up with 3-4 really good takes. At that point we listen back to each take and figure out what the best parts are. The great thing about recording in ProTools is that I can take parts from one take and mix them with parts from another take. So, if I think the first verse and chorus of take 2 was the one I want, but I really like the 2nd verse from take 1 and the whole rest of the song from take four, it’s pretty easy to put it all together. Some people might consider that cheating, but for me it’s the best way to do it.

I tend to experiment a lot and I never really play a song exactly the same way every time I play it, especially before it’s recorded. I usually just change certain fills or put them in different places - I try to keep the beats and main parts of the song the same - but it just helps keep things interesting for me without really changing the song.

So, when we’re recording I don’t really have one exact way that I want to play the song. I have a basic framework and I have certain fills that I always do, and then there’s parts that I’m always changing and trying different things with. Most of the time the stuff that I’m the happiest with is the stuff that I just come up with on the spot. The point I’m trying to make is that I think the songs, or at least my parts in the songs, benefit a lot from the digital recording process because it allows me a lot of freedom to experiement. Sure, you can splice different takes together with 2″ tape, but it’s much more time consuming - especially if you’re talking about more than, say, 2 or 3 edits in one song. I’m sure there’s some insane analog guy out there who still thinks you can do it better and faster than ProTools just with a razor blade and some scotch tape. And maybe he’s right. But it all comes down to who you’re working with and what they’re comfortable with.

Ok, so I’m not sure where that was going, but there you go. That’s basically how all the drums were recorded. And since we were done with all the drums by Sunday afternoon and had booked the studio until Monday, Mike took over and started recording bass.

At this point everyone records individually instead of playing all at the same time like we do to record the drums. And since everything was being recorded while we were doing the drums, a lot of the bass tracks - or at least parts of them - are already there. Basically, Mike will listen to what’s there and keep what’s good and overdub what’s not. I know some of the songs were completely redone while others were just cleaned up a bit with some overdubs. Since I don’t play the bass and I was enjoying a little free time now that I was done with the drums, I can;t say that I know exactly what was going on with the bass. I’m gonna see if Mike will write something up for the next journal entry to maybe give you some more details about his whole recording process. One thing I do know - and this is 100% fact - is that at one point over the weekend, Mike was heard from upstairs yelling “I’m going to eat my own shit!”

I think I’ll just end it right there, actually. That’s as good an ending as I think I’m going to get.

Here’s some pictures from the studio:

The first chapter in the recording of our new album is complete.

Read on.