wizardmickey
04-06-2008, 09:20 PM
Friday ended up being a very productive session in the grand scheme of things! Perhaps at this point however, it should be explained that we are concurrently working on 2 projects simultaneously;
1) A Demo of Cover Tunes that we will have broken into snippets as well as the full length versions in order to shop around for more gigs (a few places have been insisting on us having a demo to present.)
2) The beginning stages of our as of now still unnamed CD of our own original material. That having been said…
Friday started with Chris in the isolation booth with guitar in hand to lay down his parts for our song “Breaking Away”. He took a couple of cracks at it until he hit upon just what he was looking for, and then he moved on to the 2 cover’s that needed his guitar parts; “Take It On The Run” and “Hard Days Night”. The issues that arose from the first song was that he had to play his lead solo before the rhythm tracks had been done as John hadn’t finished that (my bad!), and for the second song he had planned to play along with the vocals from the scratch tracks done during Session 2, but they were gone, so John sat in the control room and “sang in Chris’s ear” as he played.
With that all done, everyone moved into the big room to record the drums and scratch tracks (drums always need to be done first it turns out snce they are the most difficult to capture a good sound) for “White Wedding”, “Bad Day” and a song Chris and Chad had written called “What Ya Gonna Do?” During the 1st song, Stevie dropped 3 drum sticks, but grabbed an extra as quickly as he could and never lost the beat. In fact, if he hadn’t told us (and been blatant about the 3rd drop) you really couldn’t tell from the recording! “White Wedding” has a section where he goes into double time (and holds it all the way to the end of the song), and unfortunately, we had to play through the song twice to get it right… his arms were about shot, and we still had 2 more songs to go!
After a break, we banged out the other 2 songs and called it a night.
Saturday, Chad and John were the only 2 in the studio (besides Danny behind the board of course… and John’s wife for moral support!) Since John got there first, he hit the vocal booth to touch up some harmony vocals for “Wish You Were Here” (an original song from the 1st Session.) Chad arrived, and set about throwing down a bass line for that song. Next, both Chad and John recorded their bass and rhythm guitar parts for “Take It On The Run”, “White Wedding” and “Bad Day”. Other than a few little errors that were punched in to fix, they pretty much hammered them out in 1 take each. John was back to the vocal booth to do vocals for “White Wedding” and the first layer of harmonies for “Breaking Away” when it was time to call it a day.
Now, the “plan” for Monday (Session 5) is to have Chris and Stevie come right in from their day jobs and do their lead and backing vocals for “Take It On The Run”, “Hard Days Night”, “White Wedding” and “Bad Day”. When John arrives, he’ll put down his vocal parts for the first 2 of the songs mentioned in the last sentence. Time permitting since it’s already slated to be a short session, everyone will try to get their guitar parts down for “What Ya Gonna Do?” as well before the night ends and have Chris sing it so that during next week Danny can spend time cleaning it up and getting it mixed for us.
1) A Demo of Cover Tunes that we will have broken into snippets as well as the full length versions in order to shop around for more gigs (a few places have been insisting on us having a demo to present.)
2) The beginning stages of our as of now still unnamed CD of our own original material. That having been said…
Friday started with Chris in the isolation booth with guitar in hand to lay down his parts for our song “Breaking Away”. He took a couple of cracks at it until he hit upon just what he was looking for, and then he moved on to the 2 cover’s that needed his guitar parts; “Take It On The Run” and “Hard Days Night”. The issues that arose from the first song was that he had to play his lead solo before the rhythm tracks had been done as John hadn’t finished that (my bad!), and for the second song he had planned to play along with the vocals from the scratch tracks done during Session 2, but they were gone, so John sat in the control room and “sang in Chris’s ear” as he played.
With that all done, everyone moved into the big room to record the drums and scratch tracks (drums always need to be done first it turns out snce they are the most difficult to capture a good sound) for “White Wedding”, “Bad Day” and a song Chris and Chad had written called “What Ya Gonna Do?” During the 1st song, Stevie dropped 3 drum sticks, but grabbed an extra as quickly as he could and never lost the beat. In fact, if he hadn’t told us (and been blatant about the 3rd drop) you really couldn’t tell from the recording! “White Wedding” has a section where he goes into double time (and holds it all the way to the end of the song), and unfortunately, we had to play through the song twice to get it right… his arms were about shot, and we still had 2 more songs to go!
After a break, we banged out the other 2 songs and called it a night.
Saturday, Chad and John were the only 2 in the studio (besides Danny behind the board of course… and John’s wife for moral support!) Since John got there first, he hit the vocal booth to touch up some harmony vocals for “Wish You Were Here” (an original song from the 1st Session.) Chad arrived, and set about throwing down a bass line for that song. Next, both Chad and John recorded their bass and rhythm guitar parts for “Take It On The Run”, “White Wedding” and “Bad Day”. Other than a few little errors that were punched in to fix, they pretty much hammered them out in 1 take each. John was back to the vocal booth to do vocals for “White Wedding” and the first layer of harmonies for “Breaking Away” when it was time to call it a day.
Now, the “plan” for Monday (Session 5) is to have Chris and Stevie come right in from their day jobs and do their lead and backing vocals for “Take It On The Run”, “Hard Days Night”, “White Wedding” and “Bad Day”. When John arrives, he’ll put down his vocal parts for the first 2 of the songs mentioned in the last sentence. Time permitting since it’s already slated to be a short session, everyone will try to get their guitar parts down for “What Ya Gonna Do?” as well before the night ends and have Chris sing it so that during next week Danny can spend time cleaning it up and getting it mixed for us.