Blog Studio Journal Archive

We’re still not technically in the studio yet, but most people would agree that what we’re doing right now could be considered “pre-production,” so I’m firing up the old “Studio Journal” category again.

So far we’ve been just been writing. We record everything we do, so we can go back and listen and make notes about where Mike fucks up so we can give him shit about it. It gives us something to do besides writing the next great American rock album of all time. We’re up to somewhere around 9-14 new songs, depending on how you define “new” and “finished.”

Actually none of them are really finished (even the ones we’ve played live already), but they’re getting pretty close. As you can see in the following photo, we have a lot of stuff written up on the big board.

New songs. Old songs. Arrangement ideas. It’s all there. You can practically hear the new album just by looking at this photo. Here’s another shot of the arrangement board for a new song called “Targets on the Range”:

That’s some groundbreaking shit right there. A, B, A, B, then an OUTRO! In the middle of the goddamn song! An OUTRO! I won’t even tell you what’s crossed out there either. You might die just from hearing about it. When you finally hear the actual song you’ll shit your pants either way, but just be thankful we didn’t leave what we had in there. It most certainly would have killed you all.

There’s no telling when or where this new material might appear. Not exactly the news you want to hear, I know. We’re planning on being in the studio over the summer. That may actually happen sooner or later than we’ve planned. You know how it goes.

For now (and in case you can’t read Mike’s sloppy handwriting in the photos), here’s a pretty-much-up-to-date list of new song titles:

1. Instructions: How To Die
2. Greenlight
3. Gods & Profits
4. Shine
5. One More Time
6. Speaking in Code
7. Novelty
8. Over Medication
9. Easier Said Than Done
10. Targets on the Range
11. Pancake Day
12. I Told You I Was Sick
13. 3 P’s
14. Hershey Squirt

Until next time, I’ll leave you with a couple more photos taken at a recent rehearsal. You can view the full set here.

OK, so we’re not technically in the studio yet, but for the sake of simplicity anything that has to do with writing, recording, mixing, etc., will be labeled as “Studio Journal”.

For the past couple months we’ve been getting together about 3 times a week and working on new material. We’re at the point now where we have 5-6 songs that are really far along. They’re not necessarily done, but pretty close. Then we have 4-5 other songs that range anywhere from just a few ideas tied together to a somewhat complete arrangement. Sometimes you find yourself up against a wall with a particular song and you just have to let it sit for a while.

A few of the songs came together very quickly. For me those always seem to be the best ones. Sometimes everything just clicks and the song almost seems to write itself. Then there are other times where we try 20 different arrangements and nothing ever seems right. It sucks because we have a lot of really good parts that just never found their way into a finished song. If we somehow could turn each one of those into a song right now, we’d easily have a double album ready to go tomorrow.

We’re all pretty happy with the progress so far, though. I’m just anxious to get to the point where the songs are done and we really start nailing everything down and getting ready to record. That’s always the most exciting part for me. I tend to be pretty spontaneous when we’re writing. I hardly ever play anything the same twice. So when you get to the recording stage, you kind of have to settle on something. It’s interesting to see where everything ends up and it’s just exciting to be able to hear it recorded properly. Drums just don’t ever sound quite as good as when they’re all miked up and recorded on separate tracks. Well, for me at least… the live sound is cool in its own way, but I just really love the way they sound on tape.

We’re also working on a live performance of some songs from the Subdivisions EP. We tried it for the first time on Monday and it actually went pretty well. I think it’s gonna be really cool when we get out and do these songs live. I think some of you who were a little surprised by how different they are might appreciate them more after seeing them performed live. They can tend to sound pretty mellow on the EP, but I think we’ll probably be bringing some more energy to them live.

So, you’re probably wondering where you’ll be able to see this live performance. Well, so are we at this point. We don’t have anything booked as I’m sure most of you are aware, and for the near future we’re probably only looking at doing some local shows. We need to raise some money to pay for this new album, so we’ll probably be doing a bunch of shows over the summer, but they’ll most likely all be in the PA area. And they’re probably gonna be geared more around our lighter stuff so we can get into some smaller places.

We love doing our big, loud show with the 12 foot screen or whatever, but there’s a lot of cool little places in our hometown here (Doylestown, PA) that we just can’t fit that kind of setup into. And besides, I think we’ve always wanted to try doing a more stripped down show. “Sinch Unplugged,” I guess you could call it, although we’ll still be using electric guitars and synths and stuff.

If the shows go well we’ll certainly be considering taking the acoustic show into some other areas, but for right now we’re starting at home. Hopefully some of you will be able to make it out to the shows and let us know what you think. We’ll try to get some decent video recordings as well for everyone that can’t make it.

We’ll have more info on specific dates and stuff over the next couple months.

This is way old news, but for the sake of closure I wanted to wrap up the last studio journal and tie up any loose ends before we start a new one (which will be happening soon).

Obviously Clearing the Channel is done being recorded and mixed. It’s also done being promoted anywhere other than our websites, and it’s done being bought by our legions of loyal fans. That still leaves about 5.99999 billion people (give or take a thousand) that haven’t even started buying it yet.

It’s been out for almost 2 years now, Everyone Else, so it’s time to shit or get off the pot. If you’re not done buying our album yet, now is as good a time as any to get started.

DVD? What DVD?

Throughout the studio journal for Clearing the Channel, we talked a lot about this DVD that we were supposedly putting out. Yeah, so that never happened. But it wasn’t from a lack of effort. I think we just underestimated the amount of work involved and got to the point where the album was ready to go and the DVD wasn’t so we tossed it on the backburner.

And there it stayed for many long nights, until one particular night where some jackass broke into Jay’s office and stole a bunch of equipment, including the hard drives with the DVD project on it. We still have a somewhat “final” edited version of it, which you can watch on Sinch TV, but if we were ever to add to what we have, we’d have to pretty much start from scratch. Not cool.

Anyway, just to clarify anything that wasn’t cleared up already: there are no plans to release a DVD (let alone anything else) at the current time. For all intents and purposes the DVD that we planned to release is available to watch on Sinch TV, even though it was never really finished.

For those of you who are wondering here’s an update on what we’ve been up to:

For the past six months or so our main focus has been writing new music for a future release. As of right now we have six songs together along with several half written songs that will either be made into future classics or shit sandwiches. For our own enjoyment we’ve tentatively titled some of the finished songs after inside jokes (as we usually do) like our song “I made Ripper Cry.” This title comes from an incident on our 2002 tour when Jamie made our tour manager Ripper cry. It’s a longer story then that but if I told you it wouldn’t be an inside joke anymore (plus its not that interesting). If you were at any of our last few shows you may of heard the song as well as “Novelty” which were the first post “Clearing the Channel” songs to be put together. While these two aren’t a very far departure from the past music we’ve assembled, other songs like “Greenlight” go in a bit of a different direction. More then ever before we’ve really been experimenting with looking at the writing process differently. This includes not only rethinking song structure but also the instrumentation in the band. Not all of our “experiments” have worked out but others have. A good example of this would be one of our half written songs where instead of playing guitar Tony plays keyboards. Nothings final yet but if our thought process continues down this path you can certainly expect some new sides of the band to be shown with our next release.

Stay tuned for more news on the writing process as we head into the studio in 2007.

For the past month or so we have been “balls” deep into the mixing of the new record. So deep, in fact, that we (or more accurately, “I”) forgot all about this studio journal. Actually didn’t forget, I just didn’t feel like posting anything. It always seems like a good idea before we start recording, and then we’re so goddamn busy that I can’t keep up with it. There’s just so much going on it’s ridiculous.

We’re trying to finish up all the final mixes, which will definitely be completed by the end of next week, or the beginning of the next, depending on where you like to think that a week ends. Anyway, that’s pretty much our final deadline and it looks like we are on track to make it.

Jamie is currently in the studio finishing up some background vocals and harmonies and Tony has plans to go in for one more day next week to add some more guitars. We’re about 90% through the mixing and we’re still recording. That’s the advantage of using a system like ProTools. We can literally be recording up until the last day of mixing, which is good for us because we always want to add more. I still have things I want to add to the last album. It may actually be too late for that though.

Some other studio related things that are going on: Tony has been working on a some various tracks and interlude type things that will be spinkled into the mix. Maybe an intro here, a few samples there. He’s also been remixing the drum tracks on one of the songs. Basically we’re taking the original drum take and cutting it up and turning it inside out and then pissing on it, just to see what happens.

There’s also the issue of the DVD that you may have heard mentioned on an occasion or six. Myself and Jason “Jay” Smith are currently trying to edit the ridculous amount of footage that we’ve collected over the past two years into something that remotely makes sense. I think it’s coming along pretty well. Like I said before, at some point we’re gonna try to put some sort of preview of some of the DVD footage up on the site. At this point, we just want to get the thing done, or at least semi-done, before we even start worrying about that.

And then over here we have the issue of the live show. After only playing three shows in 2003, it’s taken a little while to get back into performance mode, but I think we’re getting close. We’ve been rehearsing a new set that is a pretty balanced mix of old and new stuff. So, these upcoiming shows will be a good chance to hear some of the new stuff, but we also haven’t forgotten about our last album and all of our fans who still haven’t seen us live yet. Considering the fact that our set on the last tour was only about 30 minutes (since we were the opening band), we’re actually playing just as much (or more) old stuff in this new set. AND you get to hear a good portion of the new album, before it even comes out (or gets leaked on the internet).

So, yeah, we’ve been pretty busy. And the new album is pretty much done. What isn’t done, however, is the DVD and the artwork and packaging design for the whole thing, which we are handling as well. So, I gotta get back to work.

The recording process for the new album is complete.

As always, there may be things added during the mixing, but all of the basic tracks are down and we are now preparing to mix. The mixing will be taking place at the same studio we did most of the recording at, High View Studios in Luthurville, MD.

For the past week we’ve all been listening to rough mixes of all the songs, basically just getting our mixing ideas together. This is where things start to get interesting (to me, at least). When you’re in the middle of recording, it’s hard to imagine what the final song, and ultimately the whole album, will sound like. Now we’re at the point where we can start to hear everything come together and put on the final touches, whatever that means. There are a lot of different ideas coming together. We’re set to start the mixing within the next week, so we’ll see what happens.

I guess some people may be wondering about the actual songs we’ve recorded… How many are there? What are they called? etc. Well, to answer the first question, there are 10 full songs and another something or other that will make its way onto the album in some form or another. While its not necessarily a song in the way that the other songs are songs, you’ll still listen to it like a song, so I guess we’ll just call it a song.

To answer the other question (that no one asked), most of the songs have final titles, while a few are still referred to by the working title and have yet to be fully named. We don’t have a final track listing ot anything like that, but I can tell you that among the song titles, you may (or may not) find songs such as “The Power of Suggestion”, “Identity Theft”, “Sails”, and “One in the Same.” You could also come across songs called “Bald and Aggravated” and “Six Months”, although that’s somewhat highly unlikely.

Also remaining unnamed “as-of-yet” is the album itself (and the DVD for that matter, although its unclear if the DVD will have a seperate title from the album). There are some ideas floating around, though. Some of them better than others. But you can rest assured knowing that there *will* be a title before the album “drops.” Or whatever. And like I said in the latest “news” update, we’re trying to put together a short preview clip of the DVD up on the site for your viewing enjoyment, so keep your eyes open for that.

We’re getting close to finishing the recording phase of this new album. Since the last journal entry, all guitars have been completed and the vocals for about half of the tracks have been recorded. This leaves a couple more sessions to finish up the vocals and then maybe a day or two to add finishing touches on everything and then we move on to the mixing.

Even at this point, before any mixing has been done, the songs are all sounding really good. We’re really anxious to get this album finished so people can hear it. It’s been almost a year since we’ve been home from touring so I know a lot of people are probably wondering what’s going on or what’s taking so long or whatever. But I think anyone who actually cares enough to be wondering what’s going on will be satisfied with what we’ve been spending all our time on. We probably could have written and recorded a new album in half the time we’ve been spending on this one, but then I think it would really be obvious that we rushed it and most people would just be disappointed.

When it comes time to release the album, we may need some help with promotion. It could be anything from handing out flyers at shows in your area to just telling your friends to check out the new album. A lot of our fanbase has been built from word-of-mouth so every little bit helps. Things have been building pretty slowly, but I think with a little help, we can turn a lot of people on to what we’re doing with this new album. We’ll probably be putting up some flyers and other promotional stuff for anyone who wants to help with that kind of thing. And obviously we’re open to suggestions. If you have an idea on how we can get the word out about the new album in your area, please let us know.

Since we left off, Mike was eating his own shit, the drums and bass were completed and we were moving everything over to High View Studios to continue the recording process.

At this point, the next step is to record all of the guitar tracks. Instead of recording one whole song and then moving on to the next one — the way most of the other instruments are recorded — the guitar is usually recorded based on the type of sound being used. So, basically, all the “loud” parts are recorded in all the songs and then we go back and record the “quieter” parts and other parts that use different effects. Just to give you an idea, the chorus of a song like “Tabula Rasa” or “The Silent Acquiescence…” would be a “loud” part and the verse of something like “433″ would be “quieter” part. I guess that would be pretty obvious, but you never know…

Over the course of about 4 days (Oct 24-27) Tony recorded all the “loud” parts in all the songs and then started working on some of the quieter sections. Typically the “quieter” parts take a bit longer because you have to spend more time getting different sounds and making sure the effects sound right. I was actually only at the studio for 2 out of the 4 days Tony was there, so I couldn’t tell you exactly what was done. But a pretty big chunk of the guitar is now recorded which puts us that much closer to getting all the recording done and moing on to mixing. More guitars will be recorded towards the end of this week.

Even though the guitars are still being recorded, Jamie started recording some vocal tracks this past Friday. We usually start alternating between guitar and vocal sessions at this point in the process. Once a song has most (or all) of the guitars done we’ll start recording the vocals, mainly just to allow Jamie to have some time off in between vocal sessions, instead of having to do everything all at once and possibly blowing his voice out. This time Jamie was in the studio by himself, so aside from what he told me — that he finished the main vocal parts (not including harmonies and background parts) on 3 songs — I really can’t say much else about what went on. He sounded pretty happy with what got done though so I guess we’re still on schedule.

While Jamie was in the studio, the rest of us got together to start working on the DVD. It’s still basically in the planning stages — we’re collecting footage and mapping the whole thing out — but things are moving ahead. The only problem is that, so far, we’ve only recieved submissions from 2 fans, so we don’t have much to work with as far as that whole thing goes. We’re still accepting submissions, though, if anyone is interested. We will be using everything that we get in one way or another, so you’re pretty much guaranteed to be featured on the DVD… all you have to do is send us something.

Anyway, we’ll be back in the studio later this week so there should be another update here soon after that.

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:

More photos from the recording of our album are up. All the photos have been moved into the multimedia/photos section.