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We can finally confirm the date we’ll start recording the new album: Saturday, June 27
As usual, we’ll be recording the drums first. We’re hoping to get all the drums tracked in the first two days, which is about how long it it took on Clearing the Channel. A good chunk of the first day will be spent setting up, micing the kit and getting the sounds we want. It’s a riveting process that I’m sure you won’t want to miss.
And if you’re one of the lucky fans who donated $25 or more, you’ll have access to a live stream from the studio all weekend long. You’ll be getting an email sometime before that weekend with details on how to access the live stream. And if you’re not one of the lucky ones who donated enough to get access, there’s still plenty of time to get on that list. Just head over to the donations page for more info on how to get involved.
First things first: We have pushed back the end date (it was May 5, 2009) from our donation project and added a target amount ($20,000).
We’ve received emails from a lot of people suggesting that we add a target amount, even if it ends up being more than we actually need. Realistically we could spend any amount of money, but I think we’ve come up with a number that (if reached) would allow us to get a great quality recording and still have enough left over to do something really cool and unique with the CD packaging and other rewards that everyone’s getting for donating.
I originally just picked a date that was months in the future, but May 5 had no particular significance. It was really just a random date. We do plan on starting the actual recording soon and can easily get started with the amount that people have pledged already.
It’s been pushed back to Dec 31 only because they force you to choose a date. I guess you can’t let a ChipIn campaign go on indefinitely, not that we would want to anyway.
We’re all really excited to start recording and are incredibly grateful to everyone who’s donated so far. It’s really going to allow us to focus on the music rather than having to worry about where we’re gonna get money from every time we want to use some studio time.
Thanks so much from all of us.
(If anyone has any questions about this please let us know. We already have a few questions we’re gonna answer here on the blog very soon, but feel free get in touch with more. I know it’s a little weird to change the parameters of this thing after people have already donated so we definitely want to know if anyone has concerns about that.)
Be a part of Sinch history and help us get this album made!
The more money we raise, the faster we can finish the album and get it released. Any amount is welcome, from $10 to $10,000 (or even more if you’re super rich and want to executive produce the album!)
With your donation of $10 or more, you’ll be able to download the new album for free as soon as its released. You’ll also be immortalized on our website with your name listed among all the supporters that made the new album possible!
We are also thinking about other ways of giving back for larger donations. Nothing has been decided yet, but some of the ideas are:
Signed and numbered CD version of the album shipped to you on the release date.
Signed and numbered T-shirt not available anywhere else shipped to you on the release date.
Signed and numbered poster not available anywhere else shipped to you on the release date.
A phone call from a member of the band thanking you for your contribution
Free all-access tickets to one of our shows
A day in the studio
An acoustic performance at your home
A full band performance at your home or nearby venue
We’re open to other suggestions as well. The important thing is that we love what we do and want to give you a chance to be a part of the process. So feel free to contact us with any other ideas.
The process actually started about 4 years ago, soon after the completion of Clearing the Channel, when we started writing new music. That may seem like a long time to be working on an album. Well, it is. We’re slow, what can I tell you. But you knew that already.
We showed up “around 11am” which means we didn’t really get anything started until almost 1pm. By then we had all the equipment loaded in, amps and drums miked up and the streaming video feed ready to go.
The whole point of this first day wasn’t to record anything that’s gonna end up on the album. The songs will end up on the album, obviously, but the recordings are just for reference. Up until this point the only recordings we had of any of the new stuff were either 1 mic garage recordings or 1 mic show recordings which can be kinda hard to listen to when you’re trying to get into the details of the song.
Also, we needed a way to get everybody on the same page. The guys who we’re working with, Rob and John from Sweet Creek Studios and long time studio journal favorite Chinstrap, hadn’t even heard most of the new stuff yet. We wanted to get some first impressions and ideas from people who haven’t been listening to this stuff for so long. The only people we’ve ever really done this with before have been the other producers we’ve worked with, who we didn’t know at all before working on the albums. So, it’s cool to be doing it with our friends for once.
We ran through 15 new songs and got decent takes of everything, aside from all the bass parts that Mike fucked up. Like I said though, these are like scratch tracks. And we’ll get someone to overdub his parts anyway.
Some of the new song titles include “Targets on the Range”, “Cause & Effect”, “Thizzle” and “Pancake Day.” Those are all real titles. We’re absolutely not changing them at all.
Over the past few weeks we’ve been back at our rehearsal space (so we’re not wasting studio time) working through ideas, rearranging and hopefully making the songs better.
We haven’t nailed down when we’re going back into the studio, but it will probably be sometime in January.
In the meantime, watch this video that Tony just sent me (he literally sent it as I was writing this):
In addition to the live stream we had going on our first day in the studio, we had a bunch of video cameras set up, recording the action from every possible angle. Mike fired up the old electric video editing machine and put together this short clip:
Over the next couple of weeks we’ll be back at our practice space going over the songs with a fine toothed songwriting comb. We’ll be crossing our t’s and dotting our i’s, especially in songs that use those letters.
Our next session is tonight (Monday Nov 24) at 7:00pm EST. I’m gonna try to broadcast some stuff on Qik. I tested their service out a couple weeks ago and it seemed to work pretty well. The quality isn’t amazing or anything, but it’s not bad for a live feed coming from my phone. As usual, if you don’t catch it live, the recordings are saved and are immediately available.
Anyone tuned into the live studio session yesterday probably noticed that after a certain point everything sounded really SLOOOW. It was a problem with the stream (not sure exactly what) and so the whole second recording sounds like that too.
I’ll be doing a more in depth post about how things went yesterday, but the short version is that we got 15 new songs recorded and we’ll be heading back into our rehearsal space over the next several weeks to refine everything and get ready for the real deal (wherein we record everything over again and make it sound even better).
Thanks to everyone who watched yesterday. I know some of you might have been expecting something a little more fast paced, but that’s just kind of how things are in the studio. Especially when you’re watching it from the same angle all day.
I’m not exactly sure when we’ll do another live broadcast but if you signed up for a ustream.tv account you’ll be among the first to know.
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:
Instructions: How To Die
Greenlight
Gods & Profits
Shine
One More Time
Speaking in Code
Novelty
Over Medication
Easier Said Than Done
Targets on the Range
Pancake Day
I Told You I Was Sick
3 P’s
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.
