Shawn's Retrograde/Life Like Luster Session Diary

[Yogi]

We start recording the new album tomorrow! As per usual, getting some good drum tracks are our initial aim. We start with three tunes, which I shall identify via acronyms: AKITS, ND, and IY. I'll be posting pitchas and hopefully some video as well as we move through the process.

Woo-hoo!

[Yogi]

Feels like the first time...

Feels like the very first time...

We're greeted with beautiful weather in the Seattle area for our first day of recording the first Half Zaftig record. We're having an early spring this year (in fact, it's almost like we didn't really have a winter - cue up hysterical news stories of water shortages) and today was a picture-perfect day.

I arrived early(!) to Darin's place. Once Pete and Lizzy arrived, we unloaded their van, removing from it all items drumming-related. Pete set up his kit in the corner of the main recording room, where Darin has a little riser thingy setup with a clear plastic screen-type dealy in front of it (you'll see it in the pitchas). Once he was nearly done he realized he'd forgotten a replacement drumhead for his 12" tom-tom, so Lizzy and I headed off to the Southcenter Guitar Center to acquire said missing artifact. On the way I forced Lizzy to listen to most of the new Steve Vai album. The three of us are seeing Monsieur Vai here in Seattle in late April.

Upon our return to the studio Darin and Pete had nearly gotten together some more-than-acceptable drum tones, and after an hour or so of further tweaking (and I guess, the installation of the newly acquired drumhead) the sounds were deemed appropriately "God-like." Time for lunch!

Off to lunch we did go whereupon a lively discussion of the fairness/appropriateness of the death penalty was had (Darin's for it, myself not so much). Lovely mealtime conversation, you should try it. A brief stop for coffee and water later, we were back at the studio, and it was time for Pete to start making takes.

We started with IY, which is a pretty slow (quarter note = 74) sort of ballad-ish, but also sort of weird and cowboy-like song. Not terribly straining on Pete's drumming talents, but sometimes the songs that are supposed to be "easy" can be the trickiest ones to get. Lizzy plugged in her new Fender Jazz V and laid down a scratch bass track with tone that thousands of real albums with major-label budgets only dreamed of achieving. Pete had a really tasty first-take of IY, but elected to fiddle and futz and by the time we'd arrived at a satisfactory performance, all of the original take had been replaced. Pete asked if we could keep this finished take 1 and still give him the opportunity for a take 2; well, certainly this could be done and was. And even while we have two perfectly lovely sounding versions, we may revisit the track tomorrow - there was an issue with bizarre happenings on the ride cymbal (we think it was hitting a microphone) that we'll probably want to fix.

We then moved on to AKITS, which we had actually started recording a year ago during the "demo" sessions. We had intended to release AKITS as a vinyl "single" but then budget realities collided with idealism and that idea got shelved. In any event, most of the other tracks on AKITS had already previously been recorded, so Pete had lots of shiny finished tracks to listen to as he re-did his drum track. He again had a mighty first take at it, but unlike IY, part of his first take survives (he got all the way to the bridge). His performance on the song last year was just fine, but in the intervening year, Pete had started doing a bunch of really cool things in rehearsal that weren't on that recording, and the idea of releasing a version without them became something I couldn't really deal with, so we're not. Pete finished his last punch on the tune at about 7:15, and I called it a day (Darin told me later he was glad, as his ears were getting pretty fried).

Tomorrow we'll start work on ND, and then possibly revisit IY. Pete's gotta be done by 5:00 PM to make a Charlie Drown rehearsal, but I'm feeling very confident right now that after all is said and pounded on tomorrow, we'll have gotten what we came for, three newly finished drum tracks.

Pictures and video will be forthcoming.

[Yogi]

Well, it's just not sposed to be this easy!

All of us arrived at the studio around the prescribed time of 11 AM. Some several diabolical bathroom jokes later, and we were ready to make us some takes. Another gloriously beautiful day in the neighborhood as well.

ND was on deck. This song was recorded before, for the Salve sessions, that time with Chris G and Bryan Beller. We got it all mixed and mastered before we got to the very end of the game and I decided I just wasn't happy with the final result, and it got pulled from the Salve song list in the 11th hour. It was just too assaultive, too claustrophobic, and too clever by half in the vocal arrangement end of things. When YHZ first formed I still thought enough of the song to teach it to the band, and we've been playing it sporadically since. Pete and Lizzy brought a more simplified ease and grace to the tune, and I thought since we went to the trouble of learning it, we ought to record it.

This is where I should mention that just because we're recording a song, there's no guarantee at all that it will make the album. In the past I've always just collected everything I had, recorded it, and put it out there - this time I want to record more than I need, and then release only the very best of it. So while we may end up with a releasable version of ND, that doesn't mean it will come out on the album. It'll make the inevitable HZ box set, though.

ANYHOO - Pete probably worked on the track on and off for 3.5 hours or so. He had some great stuff on his very firstest take (which includes an entirely new end section that wasn't part of the Salve version), and then we went on to patch up the bits that weren't up to snuff (according to Mr. Pete, that is).

When it comes to the other musicians on recordings I make, I try really hard to pretty much let them produce themselves, allowing them to nail the performances they were thinking of. I only speak up and/or put my foot down if I hear something that will conflict with another element of the tune that I may feel is more important to the overall vibe or arrangement. So when Pete says that those two snare hits are "screwball", and I don't hear it, generally I will just let him have at it (even if it seems silly to me at the time). It's important that everyone be happy with the final result, and I don't mind taking the time to get there.

In the end, Pete did very, very well, and we stitched us together a fabulous drum track. The thought had occurred to us to possibly have another crack at IY today, but after listening to yesterday's takes, Pete decided that what we had was just peachy in his view. So we were done for the day, and early.

Very nice to be completely successful in the weekend's pursuits. Next weekend, Lizzy will be on the hot seat, playing bass on these tunes.

[Yogi]

"Mmmmm! That's terrific bass!"

I hate it when P'N'L beat me to the session diary punch, because turns out they're both great writers and they already done toldja most of the good bits. I am grateful that they're also both a coupla crazy gearheads, cuz they ALSO tell y'all about that, so I don't have to; that stuff just makes me sleepy.

But beat me this week P'N'L have done, and so I shall just try and fill in the odd gap here and there, and talk less aboot the nitty-gritty technical aspects and fill you in some on the VIBE that happens in and around DDP Sound when you coop up the three of us plus one DDP for an entire weekend.

I honestly don't know what comes over us. In between all the careful listening and microphone placement and re-tuning and guitar switcheroos and punch-ins and waveform overanalyzations, if you were a fly on the wall you'd hear an unending stream of bathroom humor (in many languages!), randy non-sequitors, depraved accounts of public execreciatory funtions, email stalkers, and enough foul language to sink a pirate ship. When I first met Lizzy, I was all askeered to engage in the usual amounts of locker-room "boy talk" in front of her (she being a lady and all), but turns out she is not only unfazed by such stuff, she is quite capable of joining right in with us filthy men. It's probably not unfair to say that DDP himself brings out the, uh, "best" in us, and I'd go so far as to say that this sort of thing is part of the "DDP Experience" and helps make the records sound the way they do (this isn't a new phenomenon: Bryan Beller wrote this about his DDP Initiation in 1999: "Every track was played on a Fender Jazz Deluxe V. Some got the benefit of a T. C. Chorus/Flanger and an Electro-Harmonix BassBalls. All got the benefit of Mr. Darin DiPietro, the engineer and studio proprietor with talent to spare and a mouth randy enough to make Tommy Lasorda blush. A fine time was had by all, even if Yogi, Darin, and I are going to hell as a result." Click here for BB's full story if you haven't read it).

So anyway. This weekend was all aboot the Lizzy, and her playing of the bass fiddle. In my time working with Lizzy, I've observed the unfortunate effects of the all-too-prevalent "She's Pretty Good - For A Girl" paradigm that is very pervasive in Muzo-Land. I've seen and heard people who should know better describe her work in that context, and all I can say about that is: Those Dumb Fuckers Don't Know What The Fuck They Are Talking About. Lizzy is a fantastic bass player, and I don't have to be Tony Levin to tell you that, or for you to believe me when I say it. Some players in this world are very good at being Note Activators when they pick up an instrument; the very best players combine the ability to Activate Notes Correctly with prodigious musicality. Lizzy is one of these; and the difference between these two groups is gigantic. I am lucky to have musicians like Pete and Lizzy involved with this music. Have I said that before? Oh well. It's worth repeating. I'm excited not only because they are playing such crucial roles in what we're doing, but also because (if I may stroke my own ego for just a moment) I believe that this music is going to allow them a showcase which may possibly exceed what they've yet been asked to present the world at large - and that once folks hear what they've been up to, there will no longer be any room for pithy and ridiculous (and in Lizzy's case, plain sexist) comments. So fuck off, you dumb assholes. You know who you are.

Uh. What else seems relevant? Lizzy and Pete gave ya the blow-by-blow. Lizzy nailed down four tracks in two days. They all sound fabulous. Things got a little testy on Sunday when we were working on ND, there was one little bar there where this zippy little lick happens and we had differing opinions about whether what we had was good enough or not. When you get a mob of passionate people in a room who care an awfully huge amount about the outcome of what happens there, you're gonna have moments like this. The discussions got a little heated is what I'm saying, and in the end, I got tired of it and invoked my Powers Of He Who Holds The Purse to end our destructive conflict and bring ORDER to the GALAXY. I was definitely a little indelicate about it, which I do apologize for. But sometimes there are gonna be things upon which everyone cannot agree completely, and I'm trying a whole bunch not to get bogged down in such things on this project.

'Cuz as I think I mentioned before, I'm not really about capturing Utmost Perfection on every take these days. I want to capture where we all are at this moment in time, as much as I want to get good recordings of the songs. And if one of these tunes happens to catch one of us at a moment in time where what's asked by the material is a bit out of our grasp, I want to capture that, too. We are always trying to do our very best at every moment, but sometimes we have to compromise on something because we're a bit bested by a challenge in front of us. This is something I would never have accepted some time ago, but makes perfect sense to me now. Maybe it's because as time passes, those little imperfections start to become the things that I really love about a track. I hear them and remember the struggle, and I smile. That's a big part of what I want to do when I make recordings nowadays.

I should reiterate that it's not like we're talking about a giant fucking clam in Lizzy's part: I defy anyone who wasn't there to even find the moment in question once the album is done.

So anyway. It's so cool to see so much progress made in just a few sessions. Next week, I'll be in the studio again on Saturday, where I'll be doing vocals on the demo tunes. As much as I'd desperately rather be working on the new stuff, I've got to get that demo stuff done, and I have to admit it's sounding really great. The possibility remains that these new versions of old tunes may end up being better than the originals. So while I'm having a hard time working up enthusiasm for re-visiting old standards, the sooner I get them done the sooner I get to go full-bore on the new things. And that is gonna be exciting.

[Yogi]

On Saturday I was in the studio, but the work I did that is relevant to this particular diary was miniscule. I was there to start doing vocals on the demo tunes, mostly. Since I can't sing all the live-long day and still get decent things on "tape", the plan was to sing for as long as I was able, then switch over to guitar stuff on the "new album songs." And pretty much that's what we did.

It was a bleak RAINY day Saturday, and it was just Darin and myself in the studio. We tend to be more peppy when the weather is good; Saturday we were definitely affected by memories of the warm, spring-like sessions of only two weeks prior.

And then there's the fact that I've been dreading recording vocals for months, heck, maybe even for a year (since the demo sessions initially started). I actually enjoy singing, once I get going and actually do some of it, but I don't think I'm that great a vocalist, and though I'm much more aware of my limitations in that regard than I used to be, when I see vocal sessions upcoming on the calendar, I do tend to find myself looking for excuses to do something else. Yesterday I was trying to recall the last time I'd done any "master" vocals at Darin's, and I believe it was some time in 2002, for the Salve tracks. That's a long time. Plenty of time to build up a healthy supply of mental neuroses. In the interim, the original version of YHZ did some live-in-the-studio tracking in April 2003 where I sang live with the band, and the (vocal) results were so uneven and disappointing, I think I've given myself some sort of complex about singing in the studio (Chris G's playing on those sessions, though, was spectacular).

One thing we needed to do on Saturday was a thing in Pro Tools called "consolidating tracks." Pete detailed our typical process for recording, which is rather than record 10 takes and edit together all the best bits, we tend to just get one decent performance and then go along and "punch in" the bits that aren't so great. I personally think this is a way more efficient way of going about things than the "edit 50 takes" method. One thing that happens though is that Pro Tools makes an audio file for each little punch that you do over time, and so the file sizes for each song start to get pretty ridiculous. "Consolidating" takes all the punches you do on each given performance and creates one, final, single track of the whole thing. We saw some file sizes drop over 50% after consolidating them. So it's definitely a worthwhile exercise.

And it's great to do when you're avoiding getting in front of a microphone. So for a couple of hours we consolidated all the tracks we're working on and argued politics. 'Cuz that's what we do.

Anyway, I eventually got my ass out there and started singing, doing vocals on "Throw Me A Bone" (demo version). The tempo of the demo version is several clicks faster than the ARF version, and the guitar sounds are less aggressive, so it's like a zippier, slightly mellower version of the tune. The vocals on the ARF version are deeply unsatisfying to me for a lot of reasons, and I sing the song quite differently now than when I first wrote it. I can't say as what I did really comes close to my "ideal", but once we got going I started having a good time and not worrying about it. I didn't get a rough mix to take home, so I don't even remember what I did. Hopefully it's good enough for a demo.

Anyway, after 2.5 hours of continous singing, I was pretty burnt, and was starting to lose what marginal control I have, so it was time to move on.

We popped open the file of IY, the sort-of-weird-cowboy-70's-ballad-ish-but-not song that might be on the new record. I don't currently own any six-string guitars that are setup in standard tuning, and I didn't want to play this song on the 7-string like I do in rehearsal, so for IY I'll be using Darin's toys. I'm also not really planning on using any of my "typical Yogi amps" for sounds on this track, either - no L5 (unless maybe for a tiny bit of lead guitar). The little bit I wanted to start with happens two times in the whole song, for a total of maybe 10-15 seconds. Heh.

We sure spent a lot of time on 10-15 seconds of guitar playing. First we set up three different amplifiers to mess around with sounds. I sat out there in the main room playing the part in question, listening to the amps. Frankly, any of the three would have done just fine, but we sat out there and split hairs, looking for the "perfect" sound. I think we settled on a Fender Bassman.

Then it was a matter of settling in and recording the part with Lizzy and Pete's tracks. I messed around with playing with picks of different thicknesses at Darin's suggestion, and ended up using a really thin one that flopped all around. Typically, I use a 1.0 mm pick for everything, so this took some getting used to. Then we realized that I kind of go at the part a little differently every time I play it, so we just sorta had to listen to lots of different versions to see what was/wasn't working. Somewhere in there, we recorded 10-15 seconds of one guitar track that you'll probably barely notice under all the vocal parts and Rhodes parts that will be on there.

But that's how things go in the studio! We wouldn't have it any other way.

And that was what we did. More sangin' and possibly guitarin' for me next week.

[Yogi]

Back at it we were today, and will be again tomorrow as well. Do I need a preamble? I think not. Getting to it:

The first part of the session was again a-vocaling for the demo tracks, firstly finishing up the lead vox for what we as a band now affectionately call "Boner", and polishing up a couple of harmony lines. I won't be doing all of the backing vox on these tracks, Lizzy and maybe even Pete will be adding some sangin to fill out the vocals and make them more "band-like" rather than the Army Of Yogis that I typically do. But PnL weren't there, so I just worried about my parts.

We finished up Senor "Boner", then moved on to "Firefly", which I have been looking forward to recording vocals for again about as much as one might look forward to fifteen root canals. "Firefly" remains the most difficult of all the songs I've written to sing - but this time I am "re-imagining" the parts that are really difficult and I actually got through the tune pretty darn quickly, all things considering. A couple of Lizzy vox here and there and that song is all done (AGAIN).

One thing I've been noting as I've been recording vocals again: singing songs after rehearsing them in a room with people for months on end is very different from singing songs for the first time ever in the studio right after you've written them. There are things in these vocal performances that I wish were in the originals. Nice to feel good about these tunes, though mostly I just want to be finished with them, period.

After "Firefly" was finished I was very burnt in the vocal department, so it was time for guitar slinging on the NEW stuff. I got out my new Carvin guitbox and we started goofing around with amps. My intent was to start work on the rhythm guitar for ND, which we came to with such an intent after a dinner break. Turns out that I'm very not accustomed to my new instrument, which caused me to make a lot of very silly mistakes that I wouldn't have made on my old black Universe (which I didn't bring with me). Darin suggested trying some other song, an idea to which I rapidly assented.

So back to IY we went. We attacked the bridge, which calls for a slightly nastier tone than happens in other areas of the song, and I played Darin's G&L Telecaster-thingie, which quite frankly has one of the best necks of any guitar I've played in a while. It also has a maple fingerboard, which I typically don't like that much, but I survived the usage of this one. After getting down the gist of it, Darin thought it would be fab if I doubled what I'd done on the Rickenbacher 12-string, and shoot, darned if it wasn't fab after we listened to the playback. And by then it was late, and heck, we're losing an hour to Daylight Savings. Time to go home.

Tomorrow I think I'll try to finish the rest of the stuff to do on IY, which includes a bunch of acoustic parts, along with some electric guitar melody lines. I won't bother with the lead guitar stuff, I'll do that at some future date when I do the sola for AKITS. We'll just have a guitar sola day and get 'em all at once. That's the ticket.

Oh, and I have to do some more sangin on the demo ones tomorrow. SIGH. Steeling my determination, and... curtain.

[Yogi]

Today was a day an awful lot like yesterday: continued vocals on one of the demo tunes to start, played guitar later.

The sangin was done on "Sleeping", and I got oh, say 66% of my work done on it before I started noticing that I was having some issues with control and lack of power. Possibly due to the fact that I worked my throat pretty darn raw yesterday, but I just didn't have that much in me that was worth keeping. I was disappointed not to get "Sleeping" done, but there's not much left of it to do.

Moving back to IY, we decided to attack the remaining electric guitar parts, which consisted of two sections of melodic-type playing of single-note lines. The first section was trickiest, cuz I was playing the lines by hammering the left hand notes while working the volume knob to get a swelling effect. So it was necessary to get a tone with enough gain to make the notes come out, while not being too noisy. We ended up using one of Darin's Strats with the neck pickup on into my L5, with an MXR Micro Amp in front of the amp to get some added boost (which pretty much describes my "typical" lead guitar tone since the ARF album). After a modicum of struggle, I got the two harmonized lines sounding pretty spiffy. Oh, I also ended up jamming a folded up paper towel under the low strings that I wasn't playing to keep them muted while performing the parts.

Then there was one more section of overdubs that goes over the bridge section that we worked on yesterday. It's a background part that gradually creshendoes as the bridge takes place, two guitars playing a melody an octave apart. This part was much easier than the previous section, and was finished pretty quickly, though we had some issues with overloading one of DDP's new pieces of gear cuz of some VU malfunction or other. I dunno man, I just play the songs.

After that I was tired and I have to work tomorrow, so I called it. All that remains on IY are a coupla tracks of acoustic guitar, remind me to ask Lizzy if I can borrow her Taylor for that. Oh, and that sola stuff that's gotta get done at some point. You know for a song that has good stretches with no guitar at all in it, I sure have done a lot of guitar parts.

Next weekend, I have a rare weekend away from the studio (though Pete is gonna be there working with Darin on a different project). The week AFTER, we're all three of us be back at DDP Sound to track the next batch of drums. So I guess I won't be sangin for a while. Oh well.

[Yogi]

O, The Depravity.

Here are some of the things that came up in discussion amongst the four of us during today's sessions:

*Squirrel Tubes
*Axe-Wielding Altar Boys
*Where Has This Turkey Baster Been
*If There's No Squirrel Tube Handy, There's Always This Rainier Box
*The Poisonous Octopus Proboscis - Hide Your Eyes!
*Ask The Starbucks Girl Where We Can Get A Brazilian Wax

And many, many more. It's really impossible to go into more detail at this time, suffice it to say that most of the stories are sadly true.

So we're all together listening to Pete work on new Drum Tracks. I put together five guides for these sessions, which included four songs that we've actually rehearsed, and one thing that we've been improvising lately in front of one the songs to be recorded. I thought it might make for a cute little ditty, so I laid it down as I was working on the guide tracks for the other songs. This month's tracks shall be known now to you as S, TP, OS, RO, and N.

Setup was last night (Friday), and I didn't attend, so maybe Pete and/or Lizzy will tell you about that. Pete was going to work on RO first, but when he realized that I'd made the little guide for the new thing, not yet properly titled but N to you, he thought that might be a fun thing to warm up with, being that it's very short and heck, we've been improvising it anyway. He took a couple of passes at it, and had to listen a few times to figure out what little arrangement I added to it (mostly a little ending) but within short order had something we all thought was cute. I then asked if Pete could overdub a track of shaker, and Pete put on two. There may be more percussion overdubs in this track's future, we'll see.

Moving to RO, a deceptively simple-ish tune with a shuffley sort of swing feel to it. I notice that I describe many of the tunes we've worked on thus far as simple - and that's true, they are. But don't worry, we're getting to the prog beast (S) tomorrow, for those of you into that sort of thing.

RO took Pete what, a little over two hours? Pete is very attuned to getting things just the right sort of groove, and so is very particular about going about it. He also doesn't rigidly plan out everything ahead of time, something I'm becoming more and more grateful for the more I spend time in the studio with him. I guess this way of working is more in line with my own current philosophy of getting the songs under the fingers, but leaving room for ideas and unexpected occurrences when you're actually recording. Anyway. He also didn't mind that I sprung an arrangement idea that radically changed the mid-section of the song at the last rehearsal before these sessions - and he handled the part beautifully.

RO satisfactorily drummed, it was 5 PM and time for dinner break. Off to our now familiar haunt Red Robin and fish n' chips for 50% of us. Depraved discussions continued, for which I'm sure the fuckin' liberals are to blame. Did you know that Washington state has no income tax?

Back to the studio, armed with a new batch of probably ill-advised caffeine beverages (Pete and I both later suffered the ill effects), and Pete wished to begin work on TP. TP is a fucking weird song, that's really all there is to it. I was thinking a lot about Kevin Gilbert when I was working on it, and it's very wordy and bizarre, and just fucking weird. It also has a funk shuffle groove, something Lizzy and I remarked that a decent number of the new songs seem to share in common. Something new for those that have been following along, I guess.

Anyway so TP. Darin had a really interesting idea for the verse sections, which was to add another snare drum to the mix, to be used on the verse sections. Darin called it a "popcorn snare" though I'm sure there's some "official" name for it. It was a little teeny snare drum they set up to Pete's left. I got video of some of Pete's first attempts with it. It really brought an interesting dynamic to the track as Pete moved between the "popcorn" snare and the regular one. So looks like that will be a part of the final track. However, as Pete continued to work on the song, he just didn't seem to be feeling up to snuff. Mostly I think he was being too hard on himself, but if you're not feeling it you aren't, and there it is. He actually got all the way through the track a couple of times, and then we started our regular procedure of working through the performance fixing the "bad" bits, but eventually it just seemed like too much spinning wheels and the decision was made to move on.

Which we did, to OS, a cover tune with only two main sections that's as straightforward a bash-a-thon as one can imagine. I think Pete maybe did two or three takes all the way through, before getting one that needed two patches (and there was also some time spent on an interesting Darin production detour that may or may not make it to the final mix of this one). Patches applied, and it was 10 PM+ and we were happy.

Not bad when you get 2.5 songs done on drums in a day. If we had come out of the weekend with that as our tally I would be satisfied.

It appears TP may be slated to wait for the next drum sessions, and we'll be attacking the 5.5 minute beast that is S tomorrow. We've pretty well rehearsed the ever-loving shit out of S, so I am optimistic about our chances with it.

If you love me you'll wash that squirrel tube,
-Y

[Yogi]

Don't believe anything I type today - Steve Albini made it all up.

Yesterday it was finally time for Lizzy to set up and tackle the bass parts for S - which could possibly be the most difficult song I've yet written for a bass guitarist to play. "No More Evil" is a bitch, but that's mostly because it's unrelenting - once you've got the main riff down, it's purely a matter of stamina. S, however, is filled to the brim with lots of really fast chromatic licks and time signature changes, runs that zip wildly from one register to the other, string bends, and all kinds of other crap that I can't remember right now. And it's five and a half minutes long. It makes me tired just thinking about it.

I knew that whatever day we finally got Lizzy in to work on this track would be a long one for her, just as it will be a long one for me when it's time to get the guitars down. She used her Geddy Lee Jazz bass, which she's been keeping tuned down to what I refer to as "'Fair Warning' tuning."

What can I say other than Lizzy gritted her teeth and gutted it out. We worked with our general MO, that is, she took a couple of full passes at the track before we started inching along, section-by-section, tightening up places that needed it. One of the hardest licks of the whole track she played perfectly on that first pass.

There was a brief break for a bit towards the end when we had to pause for some Pro Tools brain surgery on a crucial section of the drums, but other than that, we were pretty focused and worked without much pause - Lizzy's track took literally nearly all day. I have to wonder when you have to work that hard on something whether it can truly be called "having fun" - I s'pose you'd have to ask Lizzy herself if she had a good time or not. I think we ended up with a great bass track, though, and that's what we were there for.

This afternoon we'll spend some time on the last bit of S, which is an overdubbed bass part on the verses, and then we're switching to backup vocals on the demo tunes. We're so very close to being finished with that stuff now, I really want to switch gears and just bring those tracks home. I finished up nearly all my lead vocals on the five tracks this week, still have a little more to do. This will be Lizzy's first time singing in the studio with this project, something I know she's looking forward to about as much as a public flogging, but I think once we get rolling, she'll be fine.

[Yogi]

Well, I haven't been able to add anything to this thread in quite a while, as we've been working like mad to get Retrograde finished, so no work has been done in a long while on the debut HZ full-length way bitchen record.

Well, tonight we laid down the first vocals of the entire album, on IY.

But it wasn't me singing.

Instead it was one Charlie Drown guesting with us in the studio, making a cameo appearance on IY's bridge. Well, I guess it's more than a cameo, since she's lead singing on the part in question.

IY is as we've said before, a weird little song. It tells the story of... well, it's too ridiculous to get into here. Anyway it tells a STORY, and for the section we recorded tonight, I really, really wanted a female vocalist, as the STORY involves a female character who is making her point of view known at this part of the tune. Initially, I thought Lizzy would do it; she's a girl, after all, and she can sing (and at the time we were talking about all this, I didn't yet know how well). But when discussing this section of the tune with Ms. Liz, she seemed not all that thrilled about being asked to essentially take over the lead singing for a bridge. I recall making a frowny face at this revelation, and saying resignedly, "Well, it's gotta be a female vocalist." Lizzy said - "Well, what if we ask Charlie to do it?"

And suddenly all seemed very clear. Charlie Drown, the band, is Charlie Drown, the singer's, brainchild. She writes all the music. They do a very theatrical show, of very heavy and very intense music, with a very confrontational sexual vibe. I'd met Charlie only once a couple of years back, when she came to the first YHZ show that Pete and Lizzy played on (Pete plays the drums in her band, too). She was quiet, polite, and very sweet, completely at odds with the whirling dervish persona on her two albums and in the live shows I'd seen. She's a fearless performer with talent to spare, and a pair of lungs that could shoot down a B-52.

There is nothing in Charlie's catalog that sounds remotely like IY. And she was indeed perfect for the "part." All that remained was to see if she'd be up for it. Pete inquired for us.

And obviously, she consented, since I'm talking about how we just got done recording her.

There's not much I can say about how things went, other than to say that Charlie sounds incredible. She's still being very "her" while managing to get the point across on a Half Zaftig song. She totally grokked the story and the way the "characters" were supposed to be interacting. She says the song reminds her of Alice Cooper, back when he was still doing really cool stuff. I had a few production ideas and we batted a few things around for a while - some of the melody ideas were for the extreme low end of her range, some of it pretty much impossible for her to get to; Charlie herself offered up a solution to that issue that works really well.

The whole thing probably took her about two solid hours of pretty hard work. There are moments where she's just wailing and it just knocks me out. I've already told her that I don't really want to play the tune live unless she's around to come up and sing her section with us - and she's all for that. She was incredibly easy to work with, and I'm so very grateful for the work she did. It couldn't have been easy to come into the studio with a couple of pretty much total strangers (me and Darin) and lay down tracks like that - talk about an alien environment (Pete and Lizzy were off watching the Pointy Tree band and couldn't make the session).

So, the first vocals on the new HZ record are done. Now I get to follow that performance when I get around to doing my vocals. Sheesh.

[Yogi]

Woo-hoo! New sessions for the new HZ album. It's been a while.

Basically I have a week to get in as many hours in the studio as I can - Darin takes a vacation for nearly two weeks in August, and the weekend after he gets back I'm off to LA (again) for a weekend with fam-dambly. Oh, and we all have dayjobs in the meantime, and we rehearse twice a week now. So. What was I saying?

So I was at the studio today, in the HOT SEAT as it were. Today is Pete and Lizzy's anniversary, so they were off doing things Anniversarial, and so it was only Darin and I, working on an extraordinarily bright, sunny and HOT day here in the Northwest. It just occurred to me that it was five years ago that we began the stretch run of sessions that completed Any Raw Flesh?. The summer of 2000, that was. Sheesh, time flies.

Today I did nothing, if by nothing you mean recording acoustic guitars on four songs. I borrowed Lizzy's Taylor acoustic for the session (a model 714-CE, I believe, for those of you who know what that means), but I also ended up playing a purple (thus, Lizzy-approved by default) Ibanez acoustic guitar of Darin's, along with his 12-string acoustic. I used that 12-string previously on the version of "Lois" on Salve.

First up was the much-previously-discussed IY. The acoustic parts on that song sort of pop up now and again and then disappear, echoing for the most part the same part played by the Rhodes (which Pete is supposed to be practicing - ). We tried several different micing techniques, and I think we doubled at least part of the main lines. Later under the "Cowboy Opera" bridge we laid down three (I think) tracks of shimmery, percussive goodness. The track took two hours or so to finish up. We had fun listening to Charlie's vocal performance on the bridge - I love it. I'm hoping to start working on my lead vocals on this track Wednesday night.

We moved next to RO, which I'm comparing (in my own troubled mind) to Zeppelin's "Ramble On" (note the unintentional sharing of initials) - mostly from a structural point of view. I'd forgotten how SLOW of a tempo we recorded this song at. This song will be covered in an orchestral stew of guitars when it's done (a la Mssr. Page, natch), and today was the day to get the acoustic bits. The tempo, along with a shuffle feel made for a deceptively difficult time tracking it - it took me a while to settle in and start getting decent takes. I forgot that on this track we took a line out of the purple Ibanez (acoustic, but it, like most acoustics theses days, has pickups) and ran it into this little amp that darin has that's like 15 watts with one 10 inch speaker. We mic'ed up that amp and had a mic in front of me to get that section.

We finished that up, and then moved on to ND, which I've recorded before, but never with any acoustic guitar. I decided I wanted to try and put acoustic backing for the electric guitar solo section, rather than the big loud electric guitars I used previously. Again, another tricky part had me cursing the gods, and my fingers were starting to get pretty sore - I rarely spend time playing acoustic guitar, as I don't own a decent one, and acoustic guitar is HARD TO PLAY. Finally I got the parts nailed (actually one part, played twice). Darin thought that my flatpicked arpeggiated chords might be nice if they were backed by a 12-string acoustic strummed; we brought in that guitar, and I undertook the 180 minute odyssey of getting it in tune - 12-strings are a bitch that way. Once tuned, I tried Darin's idea, but it just seemed like too much. Oh well. It was nice that we had gotten out the 12-string, cuz I thought I might try using it on...

N, which is the song that isn't written, that we're gradually creating in the studio. As I mentioned before, it started life as a rehearsal improv we'd use to get into RO, and Pete made up a drum part for the click track I'd laid down for it, many, many moons ago. If I thought my fingers were hurting before, I hadn't seen nuthin' yet. Playing the N chords, which are way high up the neck, gradually became an excruciating experience (it actually hurts a little just to type this right now). Many people have asked me over the years why guitar players make "guitar faces" when they play - I always answer, "BECAUSE PLAYING GUITAR HURTS."

I also had to re-learn N, because I had no recollection whatsoever how it went. This took a long time to get. Some of the chords are really difficult to do on 12-string, my nails were too long on my fretting hand, and wah, wah wah wahhhhh. You know what? We eventually got it. Did I punch in? All over the place. Does it sound good? I rest my case.

And that's it! Darin had family dinner duties to attend to, but even so we had an awfully productive day. As I said, my next session is Wednesday, for some sangin'. I'll try to provoke Darin into saying something depraved that I can share with you when next I see him.

[Yogi]

Last night I went to the studio to begin my first lead vocal attempts on this record. IY is the song I picked out, partially because Charlie had already done her parts, so I was interested to see how mine fit in.

IY is part of a batch of tunes I wrote and demoed in a month-long flurry two Augusts ago. Of all of those tunes, the vocals on the demo version of IY were by far my favorites. Usually "demo vocals" sound just like the term implies - sketchy, but there's enough to be heard to get the basic idea of a song. The vocals on my demos usually end up being the very first time I've ever sung the melodies out loud, or I might have been improvising them on the spot. Somehow, with the IY demo, I got a great performance even as I sang it for the first time. This can be bad, especially if you live with said demo for a couple of years before tring to make a "real" recording out of it. There's a lot I'd like to re-capture in my demo performance.

So that's what was hanging over me as I stepped up to the mic last night. Lead vocal-wise, there's just not a lot to do on the track (especially since Charlie does the entire bridge). There are a BILLION backup vocal parts on the song, though. Because there are so many, and we've already used so many tracks (our ceiling is 32 of them), there's going to be no choice but for my bandmates and me to get out there and sing the harmonies grouped around the mic like They Used To Do In The Old Days. That's going to be fun.

So how did I do? Well, I got through the whole tune. There's a couple of spots that I doubled, and we'll mix those parts with the vocals hard left and right in the stereo spectrum, a la so many Paul McCartney numbers of yore. I didn't get a rough mix, but I left feeling like I hadn't nailed it. There may be a few things I'll want to take a whack at again. I'm going back to the studio again Saturday evening, and maybe some time on Sunday, too. If I can get my IY vocals done, I'll switch to singing on AKITS, or maybe doing electric guitars on ND. So many things to choose from!

[Yogi]

Back to the studio I went yesterday, for my last Saturday session in August.

The first thing we did when we got settled yesterday was re-listen to the stuff I did Wednesday on IY, because when I left that session, I felt there was a lot I needed to re-do. I think I felt that way because there were a few lines that I must've tried to get about a million times, which starts to get both tiring and frustrating. I started to get into a weird headspace as that was going on, which makes it pretty impossible for me to actually judge what I'm doing as I do it. This is one of the five billion reasons having Darin there with me is so invaluable. I need someone to be able to tell me honestly if I did something badly enough to redo it, and someone who will argue with me to keep something inadvertently cool if I want to try and do something over that's of good quality.

Well, turned out that we kept everything I did Wednesday night, except for one tiny piece of one line, which I went out and re-did in one take. Woohoo! The lead vocals on IY are done.

So, we moved over to AKITS. This song is tough because I'm doubling (singing twice) just about every single line in the whole song, so it takes twice as long to do. I'm doing it because the doubled vocal sound pretty much defines that "60's pop vocal," and that's what I wanted to get on this tune. Even though when you hear it I don't know if it'll sound like a pop song to you. It does to me, though.

There's a very tricky melody to sing for the verse sections, where the first two lines are sung one way, with a minor-ish descending thing. Halfway through the verse, a repeated guitar pattern with an augmented chord comes in over the same bass part, which subtly shifts the perceived key, and the vocal has to shift to match. The shift is very small in most spots, like a half-step in either direction, but you can tell if I do it wrong, so it had to be pretty precise. My operating term for a lot of these vocals on the new album is to be "loose AND precise." Sounds contradictory, huh? It is.

We basically had me sing until I couldn't really anymore, and then I tried to do a part of the tune even after I was burnt. We got a lot done, but didn't finish it. I got all the tricky verses done, these little mid-verse things, and one full chorus, leaving 2 more choruses and the bridge to finish up. Oh, and I spent some time on a falsetto backup part at the end (doubled, too), but that's when I was burnt and I don't think we'll be able to keep much of that. The parts I did get sound good. Singing is hard. But I must say it's cool to be getting vocals done this early in the process. For ARF? and Salve I waited until the end of nearly the entire process to start singing, and that was grueling. This way, singing on some days, guitaring on others, producing bass on yet others, is more fun, and we get to hear songs coming together earlier in the process.

So I go back on Wednesday night, which may end up being the last session in August for us, as competing vacation plans between Darin and ourselves will conspire to prevent us from recording much more in August. That's OK. We're still writing. We've got three new songs just about ready to go in and get drums for, that may be the next thing we do, early in September.

[Yogi]

Whoops - I've been a busy little fool at work this week, so I haven't had a chance to update this RE: the session I did Wednesday night. It was a fairly uneventful vocals session. I tackled the remaining portions of AKITS that I hadn't finished, and I also targeted some parts I felt I hadn't really gotten right. This song has been really tricky to get - if only I was Matt Mahaffey I'd have gotten it on the first take.

We got through the whole tune this time. After the session I got some rough mixes of AKITS and IY and I've been listening to them. I'm pretty happy with how I sang IY, but there are things on AKITS that I still feel aren't right. Darin is going to laugh when he finds out I want to do more work on that track, but oh well. It's not so much that I'm going for a "perfect" performance, as I don't know that I'm capable of such a thing anyway. I just want it to sound "right" to me in the end, and right now it just doesn't in spots. We'll get there.

But not in August! Darin's on vacation (careful on that moto-bike, yo) and when he gets back I'm taking off for a few days, and then it's Labor Day-ish, and PnL are moving to a new place, and all sorts of other stuff. I hope to be back in the studio sometime in early September. Being 100% honest, I'm starting to despair that we won't get a new full-length record out in 2005. There's an awful lot of work left to do. Let's just see what happens.

[Yogi]

Man, has it really been since August that I did any studio work on the new stuff? That's a bummer. I guess it couldn't really be avoided in any case - but lately I've been thinking a lot about this album and what we need to do to finish it. So when my work paid me a little early on one of my oustanding invoices the other week, I realized that I could probably sneak in a little work in the studio before Christmas without breaking the bank.

So I snuck in this last weekend. My goal was to some guitaring and possibly some vocals. The song in question is called "Sublimeinal" (do we really need the acronyms for song titles in these diaries? That was sort of dumb idea that I take responsibility for), and we've been playing it for weeks as part of our set list for the Unscheduled Gig We May Play Soon If We Ever Get Around To Booking It. I felt that, even though it has a LOT of difficult sections to do, I was pretty darned familiar with it and could get it done reasonably quickly.

I have to say I was giddy to be back in the studio again. I'm feeling pretty darned good about getting two of the three projects I'd hoped to get done this year Out There To You All, but there is a fair argument to be made that the two projects in question don't have much to do with new music. In March it will have been five years since Any Raw Flesh? came out, and it is VERY high time for me to get something new out there into the world.

Darin had an all-day session with Chris G on Saturday, so I showed up at the stoo-dyo at about 6 PM (had I known G was there I would have tried to get there earlier). After some catching up, we cued up "Sublimeinal" and decided to work on all the "supplemental" guitars that happen in it. I am definitely a worshipper at the altar of the Jimmy Page-ian "Orchestra of Guitars" aesthetic, and so while there are usually some "main" guitar tracks on every song I do, there's also usually lots of other parts sprinkled throughout for "texture". Steve Morse once said something in an interview that's always stuck with me - paraphrasing him, he basically said that he works very hard from the production side to keep songs from ever getting boring, and that tonal variety is one of the tools he relies on most for this. This concept is very important to me, as well.

So let's see, what did we record Saturday - well, "Sublimeinal" is quite the guitar epic, and it goes all over the place dynamically. There's a decent-length intro with the band that ends with a single guitar playing a twangy melody. My original idea was to track this part on acoustic, but Darin suggested playing it on an un-amped Danelectro he has - the guitar is semi-hollow and has a peculiar resonance. After getting all mic'ed up, when I heard what it sounded like, I had the idea to tap my foot, "Blackbird"-style while I played the part. I asked Darin if the mic would be able to pick up the foot taps, and he said he thought so. I told him I wanted to sound like an old guy sitting on his front porch. Next thing I knew, Darin was in the room again, putting a big piece of particle board on the floor for me to tap my foot on. Under one end he put a drum stick between the board and the floor - the point? To make it sound like I was really on a "porch" somewhere.

Now, I have to say, the actual sound made doesn't really sound at ALL like a guy on a porch. But it's so strange, and unexpected, that it doesn't matter. I love how following ideas like this, especially on the fly, without any advance planning, ends up landing yourself in unexplored territory. It's my favorite thing we did all weekend.

Also on Saturday night, I used the Danelectro to play a little harp-like counter-melody on a couple of sections. I even FINGER-PICKED it, a skill I have little to no facility at.

Then there's some stuff on the pre-choruses that we accomplished on acoustic guitar, doubled with electric 12-string through the Vibra-King.

By this time it was getting late, and what was left was the main "beefy" guitar tracks, and those were the ones with lots of really difficult zippy chromatic licks that have to lock in with the bass and drums. Getting any of that done that night seemed not likely, but we thought we could spend some time getting a tone dialed up for the next day.

I explained to Darin that I was looking for a truly nasty sound with lots of teeth. There are lots of power-chords in "Sublimeinal", and I wanted them to be nothing less than ornery. I always think of the sound of that first open G chord that Eddie plays in the beginning of "Mean Street" before the band comes in. That sound has teeth, weight, and clarity, and that's what I was aiming for.

I wanted to try the Groove Tube Soul-O amp, that we had used a bit on Retrograde, and Darin suggested I play his Gibson ES-135. Now, I'm pretty sure this was my first time really playing much with a hollow-body, so there was some adjusting to do, especially with the way I use my right hand. I kept knocking the low string right off the bridge saddle because of my tendency to dig in pretty hard. But the neck on that instrument is an absolute dream, and I felt certain that I could use it. The Gibson also fed back in a really great way, even when I was sitting in the control room with it.

Sunday morning I showed up with tone dialed, and ready to go. We got one pass of the rhythm track finished up in about 90 minutes using the ES-135 through the Soul-O. Some of the hardest licks of the piece I nailed in one pass, and it was some of the easier bits that took a while. Listening back to the finished track, we wondered if we even needed another guitar, which I was planning to put down. The sound is THICK. In the end, we figured we could just record another track, and then use it or not at mix time.

Out came my trusty Strat and the trustier Lab Series L5 amp. We spent probably another 90 minutes doubling the original track. The Strat is a lot more bitey and the gain wasn't quite as high, so mixed in with the Gibson track, it brought out some clarity and high-end that was missing. I have a feeling we'll use both.

After this we took a complete U-turn, and decided to lay down a bit of Hammond B-3 on another song, "Inscrutable You." I had been vacillating a bit about whether we should even do it, since the song as we've got it is sounding plenty full, and I wasn't sure whether the textural additions I had in mind were even necessary. Darin said that the time was now to do it if we were going to try - he's worried that his ancient Hammond may give up the ghost any day, and then we're out of luck.

Have I mentioned that I'm a rudimentary keyboard player?

What I was going to lay down had been sequenced note-by-note by me on the demo - I hadn't even tried to play it live before. It was a simple part, laughable for any real keyboard player, but a challenge for me.

Some might say, why not just use the sequenced part?

I would reply, have you ever heard what a real B3 through a real Leslie cab sounds like? Well, then you KNOW why.

I had played this thing a bit before on Any Raw Flesh?, but that part was far easier to do. Luckily Darin is patient, and waited for me to figure out what all the chords were for the sections in question. Even though I can eventually "find all the notes" for any given chord on a keyboard, I can't think fast enough in real-time to get the ones I need for like, real performance. So it becomes a memorization exercise of finger-shapes - come to think of it, the same time comes into play on guitar as well.

Eventually, we got the stuff done and it sounds so good I'm really glad we made the attempt. And hey, I played some live keys on the new album! There's actually more keys to do on this song, but Pete, who you may not know is a "real" keyboard player is slated to do those. We're running out of tracks on that song though - so I think some consolidation is in order.

And that was it! I'm going back next week to do some technical stuff, and if we can get Lizzy in to do one bass track on one of the drum tracks we did in April, we're gonna. But that will be it for calendar year 2005.

The good news is that I think it's almost impossible that a new album won't come out sometime in 2006.

And it might even be good!