Shawn's Retrograde/Life Like Luster Session Diary

[Yogi]

Hey, I think at the beginning here that I should mention that at some point recently we went back into the studio with Lizzy and she put bass on "Only Shallow" - it looks like neither of us wrote anything about it on our diaries. Maybe Lizzy didn't because there was an "incident" that wasn't all that pleasant that happened during the session, and maybe she wasn't too thrilled about writing about that. It wasn't The End Of The World or anything, but it wasn't necessarily the most fun thing to be a part of, or in my case, to have contributed to the cause of. Anyway, Lizzy forgave us eventually, and she got her bass done for that song, so there you go.

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So last weekend, I got back to the studio. All that work that we did on the new album last year has become sort of "Phase I" in my thinking of it. This last weekend was the beginning of the final phase, er, I guess "Phase II" if we're going to have a naming convention for it. Now is when the push begins to get this damn thing finished. I am very much aiming for a release in the summertime. All of my focus right now is on making this happen. I think we have the songs we need. We might need one or two more, I'm not sure.

I've also got some different things I'm focusing on for Phase II. Phase I was done very much like how all the previous albums were... recording one instrument at a time, with painstaking attention paid to every detail. Obviously recording this way can produce good results. But it takes longer, and by extension costs more. These days I'm interested in getting more done faster. In addition to the obvious financial benefits, I'm trying to not get too bogged down in every stinkin' little thing on every single song all the time. I'm not shooting for absolute perfection. I don't care about getting The Greatest Tones Of All Time. I want to capture some excitement, some spontaniety.

And for once, I'd like to finish an album before I'm sick of it.

So this weekend PnL were busy with stuff on Sattidy, and I only had a couple of hours, so I went down and Darin and I did some editing on a couple of tracks while we caught up with what we've been up to these last few months. Both of us are getting really interested in filmmaking, and Darin has actually been considering getting some pretty sophisticated hardware in that department.

Eventually, we decided to work on some rhythm guitar for "Numbered Days". We ended up spending a good while listening to amps and mic combinations before finally settling on something and going for a take or two. We finished up a piece of the first two verses before I had to head home for the night.

Sunday I came back, and we picked up where I left off - we knew that PnL were probably going to show at some point, so we continued working on ND. We got most of the verses done, and half of the guitar on the choruses before the Pete and Lizzy train did arrive, but there's more to do on some later date. Oh, gear folks will want to know that I was playing my Carvin 7-string through Darin's Fender Twin for the stuff we did.

So, Pete and Lizzy arrived, and I wanted to immediately switch gears and work on stuff that all three of us needed to be there for: "gang" style backup vocals. The song is "Inscrutable You", which is festooned with all manner of backing vox stylings. Actually, that tune is chock full of so much stuff that we're running low on available tracks, and so in order to get all the harmonies in, I wanted us to just go out there and stand around the mic all Aerosmith-style and belt out the harmonies in unison, rather than the one-part-at-a-time approach I always did in the past. We ended up doing two passes of each line, so that when they come in there's the sound of six voices singing in three-part harmony. We haven't ever even practiced these parts in rehearsal before, which I'm sure PnL would prefer (more of that whole 'spontaneity' thing I'm going for) but we did fine. We've all been musicians for a while, after all - it doesn't take all that much time to get parts like these. I really love doing vocals like this, too - rather than just one person at a time singing all alone in the main room, it's so much fun to just all be in there at once going full-bore.

And that's all we did Sunday.

Next weekend, we're setting up the band equipment to record two new songs, "Fair Use" and "Mold On My Soles." We're going to play all three of us live-in-the-studio all Van Halen I-style, with the goal of getting finished drum and bass (and maybe even guitar) performances done in one day. This is what bands in the 60's did day-in, day-out. I see no reason why we shouldn't be able to. I'll write next week about how it goes.

[Yogi]

Wow, what a great weekend in the studio! I'm not sure I've ever had such a productive two days since I first started recording at Darin Di Pietro's place almost exactly seven years ago now. The biggest reason for that is because I didn't have a band back then, like I do now - which pretty much required me to go in and record just one instrument at a time on every song. Hey, if you liked those old records I made, then obviously doing things that way worked just fine, and all of the 2005 recording we've done on our new album was done that way.

But this weekend, the three of us were all out in the main room, playing together on just about every take.

It was so much fun! I felt like a "real" musician. I want to record this way with HZ as much as we can going forward.

Lizzy and I discussed that one of the reasons this process worked so well for us this weekend was that the songs we were recording were pretty easy to play - and she may have a point there. We'll see - the next tracks that we're going to be tackling basics for are pretty crazy, difficult stuff. I'm going to choose to be optimistic about it, though. Maybe we're just that good or something. Yeah, that's the ticket!

When we set up for a weekend of recording at Di Pietro Sound, we almost always set things up on Friday night, then come back fresh the next morning to start making takes. The last couple of times, I've begged off from the Friday Night Setup, but since we were all playing live together this time I couldn't get away with that so much, since I needed to set up my guitar rig, too. I arrived and Pete and Lizzy were already there, setting up zee drums and the bass rig, respectively. Lizzy and I set up our amps in these wooden isolation boxes that Darin built on either side of the small drum riser where Pete set up the drums. For the initial tunes on the session, I just used my current live rig, which is a pedal board with a few stompboxes on it into my Fender Hot Rod Deluxe amplifier. It's just a 40 watt amp with one 12 inch speaker, but it's a fiery little number, I must say. I used it previously for the YHZ sessions I did with Brian Timpe and Chris G three years ago, but never on any other recordings. AND, I've recently replaced the tubes (or, actually, had them replaced for me) by Bob Pletka The Tube Guy, who also adjusted the bias on the amp when replacing the tubes (from what I could tell, he just turned it up as far as it would go). I had this done right before our Central gig the other week, and Darin told me he was shocked at how good my guitar sounded that night. He was very impressed listening to the amp for these sessions, as well.

I have to say that the HRD amp actually sounds better to me in the room than it does when I hear it on playback - which is what explains my ambivalence about some of the takes I did this weekend. Darin, Lizzy, and Pete were all thrilled with the guitar sound, but I have to admit that what we got didn't really match my original idea of what it should be. In some cases, though, I'll be keeping the live takes I played, because 1) there's nothing wrong with them, I played well and 2) everyone else was so excited about the sound, they can't ALL be wrong, so I'm just going with it. And it will be nice to have my actual current live setup documented on a recording. I've become so spoiled by all the amps I can play with at Darin's that I'm just used to mixing and matching all over the place when it comes to tones.

So, the Friday night set up went pretty well, although there was some hum issue with Lizzy's bass rig that took a very LONG time to get hunted down. Frankly, I didn't see what the freakin' big deal was, because I know for a fact that we've recorded all over the place before with buzzy amps (listen to the end of "Strange Ways" for some pretty loud Beller Bass Rig buzz). From my perspective, buzzy amps happen all the time - it's part of rock n' roll, so no big whoop. And usually, you can't hear it when the song is going. I dunno. I just don't care about "pristine perfect audio" anymore (if I ever did - I can't recall, really), but Lizzy and Darin were dead set on getting it gone, so okay, fine. I just browsed favorite blogs on my BlackBerry, so I was happy.

Somewhere around midnight, we got some basic tones dialed in for everybody. Darin was happy that there was almost no bleed into the drum mics from the two guitar rigs tucked away in their iso boxes, and he was really happy about how Pete's drums sounded. But then, if I recall correctly, he's been happy every single time with the drum tones on this album - maybe it was a "different" happy than the previous times. You'll have to axe him.

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Soooo, Saturday! Saturday! Saaaaat-urday! (Thank you, Elton)

Hodgy wanted to sit in with us at his birthday show the other week, and I thought Neil Young's "Cinnamon Girl" would be fun to play with him. Every now and then in rehearsal I'd just start playing it, and usually Pete and Lizzy would join in, and we'd play as much of it as I knew before stopping. It always sounded good to me, so when the Hodgy Birthday Gig came up, we actually spent some time actually learning the song, and I figured since we invested the time, we might as well record it. It was a good warmup for the weekend, and we played it maybe twice, no more than three times. I don't think Pete made any fixes at all, and I can't recall if Lizzy did. I'm gonna overdub some extra guitar tracks on it, but it came out well. We "rocked it up" a little, sped up the tempo, but otherwise it's a pretty faithful reading of the original track. It'll make for a good B-side. It was a nice way for us to break the ice for the weekend, too - we proved that we can get good results and sounds with all of us playing at once, with no nasty bleeding from the guitar rigs into the drum mics.

So, we moved on to a new tune called "Fair Use." We've been playing this song for months now, and for the first three or four months we played it entirely instrumentally - I didn't get around to writing lyrics and melodies for it until November sometime. We needed a name for it, so I just named it "Fair Use" off the top of my head. When it came time to write the words, I couldn't imagine changing the name I'd been used to for so long. It's a peppy little poppy number, with a pretty simple structure - both Pete and Lizzy contributed mightily to how the music turned out, in fact I think this tune is probably the first ever co-writing we've actually done, and certainly it's the first we've recorded. If there's a "single" on the album, "Fair Use" is probably it.

I guess there isn't that much of note to say about the recording of the song - other than we played it, and eventually we got enough of a take that Pete wanted to keep, but fix some issues on the drum tracks. Lizzy did the same thing with her bass track, but I didn't even really listen to what I was doing on guitar. My headphone mix mostly sounded like butt to me, so I wasn't thinking that what I was playing would get kept (cuz, you know, I don't like guitars that sound like ass). I should mention that Darin shouldn't take this personally - headphone mixes almost ALWAYS sound like butt to me, in ANY studio I've ever been in. In any event, this is the guitar that I played that Lizzy wrote about that they were all listening to when I showed up on Sunday, and convinced me via their enthusiasm that I should keep.

But that's jumping ahead a little.

I guess we started on Saturday around 3:30 PM or so, and getting a take with happy drums and bass for "Fair Use" took us until 7 PM or so, and by then we were all starving, and so headed off en masse to get some grub.

Upon our return, we knew we couldn't really do much that required a three-piece rock band to blast away (thanks to the late hour), but what we COULD work on was putting Fender Rhodes on "Inscrutable You."

Pete and Lizzy know this keyboardist/producer who was willing to lend us his Rhodes for the session (I forget his name, but Lizzy named and thanked him in her entry, so I'll just add to the thanks here), and PnL picked it up Saturday morning. I was really excited about having a real Rhodes to use for the part - which is initially the main part of the entire song. I was even inspired to write IY because of all the Rhodes work on Bryan Beller's View album, so I'm glad we got the real thing in for this session.

I'd never actually seen a real Rhodes in use before, just heard it on all those old records from the 60's and 70's - but once we got it set up and fired up (actually a more difficult process than you'd think, since the Rhodes doesn't have it's own power amp built in), we were all just so jazzed. Even though it was getting late, it's like we got some big jolt of energy (or at least, I did), just because it sounded so good. I don't think Pete even started attempting takes until 11:30 PM or so, and we didn't leave the studio that night until well after 1 AM.

So anyway - Pete really wanted to play the Rhodes part, and he's a real keyboard player and everything in addition to being a drummer (he plays guitar and bass, too, and probably Oboe and Glockenspiel for all I know), and he did a fabulous job. An old electric piano like that has all sort of "character" that you could never replicate with a synth sample, and it's just wonderful how the track turned out. It didn't take Pete all that long to get, though we did go back and forth a bit about how much to perfect some aspects of the performance, and how much "human element" to leave in. Darin and I argued most strenuously for the "human" side of things - there was one stretch that we loved that Pete really wanted to fix. When he cut it again, he did in fact play the part "better" - but for some pretty much undefinable reason, it wasn't as "good" as the original, flawed take. We kept the flawed version. It's awesome.

As I said, we finished up with the Rhodes very late, and that was it for the day. Sunday looked wide open, since we only had one more song scheduled to record - I had felt that our "wish list" of items to get done was somewhat ambitious, but it looked like we'd have no trouble at all getting through what I'd wanted to.

[Yogi]

Sunday dawned clear and cold, and we were back at it by around 12:30 PM or so. Chief task of the day was tracking a new song called "Mold On My Soles", that we'll probably play live for the first time next month at the Central (be there or be square). It's a slooooow moody number for most of the track, the tempo is something like 52 bpm. Toward the end it gets a little gnarly and rude, though.

My guess is that overall it's not such a tough number for Pete and Lizzy to play, but it's important to get into the groove and not let go. For me, there are some really challenging spots, because some of chords are pretty bizarre.

Oh, but wait -- that wasn't the first thing we did, anyhow. As I mentioned (and Lizzy reported), I arrived last at the studio, to find everyone grooving to the previous day's takes of "Fair Use." Everybody was pretty happy about everything, and then they wanted to know why I didn't want to use the guitar tracks I'd played. I hadn't thought that much about it to be completely honest, but I think I was figuring on replacing the parts I'd done at some later date. After listening to the rough mix with everyone in the control room, though, I realized that with a couple of small fixes, what I had already was perfectly amenable for (fair) use. So I went out in the main room to make a couple of quick punch-in patches, and then I doubled the guitar part for a few specific sections. We'll see how much of the doubled part we use when mix time rolls around. In any event, I still have some parts to overdub later, I might be able to get them done next weekend.

So, then it was finally time to work on "Mold On My Soles", and I needed to swap out amps, and Lizzy switched basses, which necessitated some tweaks on her tone from the control room. I plugged into Darin's Vibra-King amp, with the tremelo set on. We eventually started making takes. Unfortunately, probably my best performance of the day was on the very first run-through, which didn't get kept. Oh well. After we got a complete take down, we took a break for me to sing a guide vocal track, which made it a lot easier for Pete and Lizzy to keep their place. Once we had that, I don't think we did more than two more full takes. The last full take we did, we ended up keeping 2/3rds of it, punching in for the bridge and chorus rideout at the end. Pete and Lizzy made their fixes, and by then, around 4:30 or so, Darin was needing some grub, so off we went. Red Robin is the closest place that seems to have something for each our peculiar dietary needs, so we tend to go there a lot when we spend whole days in the studio. We had a somewhat sobering conversation about facing mortality, and how the childhood concept of what "Home" means is a hard one to let go of.

We got back, and I went out to the main room to start patching up the holes in my guitar performance. It was interesting what we fixed and what we didn't - the guitar track I did is by no means a perfect performance, but it seems to have a nice vibe. There's a repeated figure at the end that goes on a long while (this song will almost certainly have a fade-out ending), and it's the trickiest of the song to play right. It took a while to get through it, and even what we have isn't perfect. Have I mentioned lately that I don't care about perfect playing? I have? OK, cool.

Looking through the control room window, I could see Pete napping while I was out there flailing away. That boy can sleep anywhere.

We'd had some idears about continuing with some of the backing vocals for these tracks after I got done guitaring, but it was not really to be. I got a call that needed dealing with, and so we were done for the weekend.

But that's OK - we got everything we'd hoped to get (and maybe even a little more). I had such a great time recording in this manner, and I hope we'll be able to continue doing things this way as we move into the home stretch of getting the album done.

[Yogi]

I direct you to Darin Di Pietro's THOUGHTS about Sunday's work...

And now, my turn, though honestly, I don't have all that much to add. I spent a good number of hours at the studio with Darin on Sunday (Lizzy and Pete were in CHEE-CAH-GO), and we got a lot done. Darin had been playing his Telecaster through his Peavey 4x10 something-or-other amp and was raving about the sound of it when I arrived, so I thought, hey, I can make like Jimmy Page on Led Zeppelin I with the best of them (fun fact - Page used a Tele through a Supro amp for all of that first album). It was indeed a mighty sound, and I used it on rhythm guitar for "Cinammon Girl", and then some overdubs on "Mold On My Soles", and I also played it though the Vibra-King for clean funk stuff on "Fair Use." The guitars on "Fair Use" are all done, in fact, that whole song is all done except for sangin' which is pretty amazing, since we just started tracking it just over a week ago. I also did a sola on "Cinnamon Girl", but after listening to it today, I dunno if it's the one I want to keep. Methinks I may need another attempt. What I did is a little boring, I think.

Ummm... what else? Oh, I busted out yon Carvin 7-string to continue the work on the rhythm guitars for "Numbered Days" and we are ALMOST done with that one.

All the while we worked, when we finished up on any particular song, we made a rough mix for me to listen to later - up until now I have had no rough mixes at all to listen to. Now I have one of everything we've got down so far. I think we'll be putting basics down for two, possibly three more songs, but right now everything we have (minus fades and any future edits) totals about 45 minutes. We're getting there.

And man, some of the songs sound so great! I can't believe how good "Inscrutable You" is sounding. It's definitely my current favorite of the batch.

Lots more to do though, and the plan is to spend some time next weekend doing some of it. Then we'll see - this job I've been on is finally wrapping up and I'll need to see how the next one firms up before I continue laying out the funds. It should give me a chance to get a couple more songs together for recording. Ideally, we need to be done tracking this thing by the end of April to get it out when I hope to get it out. So... we shall see.

Anyway, it's been nice hearing everything we have in one setting... we've got some quality work going this time.

[Yogi]

So, Lizzy likes the solo I did on "Cinnamon Girl" - I dunno. I can never tell anymore about guitar solos. I mostly just wing 'em these days, and I never have any idea about what they should be. The best thing about this particular one is the ridiculous tone of it, wildly overdriven in a most over-the-top fashion. Maybe it's fine? Maybe it's dumb to worry about whether or not I played the best solo ever on everything. I mean, it's just a solo, right? It's what I did that day, so maybe that's good enough? I must remember my credo about recordings not just being about "Ultimate Performances" anymore - they're also snapshots of where I am while I'm doing the work. Probably best not to overthink it.

Too late!

OK, so yesterday we spent a good solid afternoon crowding around a microphone, doing lots and lots of background parts. I spent the morning frantically transcribing my vocal improvs from the demos into Finale and getting the scores printed out so that when I was at the session I'd know what the notes were supposed to be. I tend to layer a lot of vocals and counter-melodies all over everything, and I don't have instant recall of what all the pieces need to be.

And of course, Lizzy and Pete were there to sing these things, and they might have had a basic familiarity with some of the parts, but we pretty much never ever rehearse vocals, ever. In rehearsal, I notice sometimes Lizzy stepping up to her mic to sing backups, but we play so loud (and her vocal isn't in my monitor) that I seldom actually hear what she's doing. Which is cool, I'm grateful that she does that. Every now and then I bring up the idea of just sitting the three of us down and rehearsing vocals, but usually Lizzy and Pete give me these expressions that indicate they'd rather gargle razor blades while being set on fire, so I drop it.

I still want them singing on the recordings, though.

And lucky for me, they're game to try. Maybe it's just the actual "rehearsing" they don't like?

So the first thing I wanted to get was a bunch of what I referred to as "girl lines", because I wanted that timbre only a female voice can give you, so Lizzy was up first, doing some "solo lines" on various tunes. Lizzy can hit the notes, that's for sure, and her voice sounds great doubled, so that's what we did on all that stuff. I'm glad that even though she lacks confidence in her singing that she'll still allow me to browbeat her into doing it anyway - she sounds terrific. I mean, you all heard what she did on the Retrograde disc, right? Can you please send some compliments her way?

And then it was back to my recent favorite activity of doing "Gang vocals" like They Used To Do. You know, Them. They did it All The Time. And now We do it just like Them.

I dropped a quick harmony on the bridge of "A Kick In The Shin" that I had forgotten to do, and then Pete and Lizzy started working together on some duo lines that pepper various sections. Some of these melodies were pretty challenging with chromatic strangeness and key modulations that happen inside of one bar, and you know, there was the whole no previous rehearsal thing going, and so parts took a little while to get. I mostly try to just offer encouragement and as few comments as possible while this process goes on - there's nothing more difficult to manage from an ego standpoint than doing take after take of one little line, and just blowing it, time after time. I know very well what PnL were going through - they've never sat through any of my lead vocal sessions, and I can tell them right now that they can get pretty ugly.

But those two are troopers, and talented, and we got all their parts done on AKITS, and now all that song needs is a few seconds of lead guitar in a couple of spots and, BOOM. It's done being tracked - nearly two years after we started it.

Funny, I barfed out the demo for it in a day. How does that happen?

Oh, wait - backtrack - the songs we got "Lizzy Lines" for were "Numbered Days" and "Sublimeinal." No more work was done on those tunes other than that.

After that, I had 90 minutes before the dachshunds needed my immediate attention - and I looked at the list of stuff to do, and saw that we should tackle the backups on "10 Print:", a song that we don't even have keeper drums on yet. We tried to get them at one of the sessions last year, but Pete wasn't feeling it, and we moved on to other things. We're hoping to get in and recut the basics for the track sometime in the next few weeks. But the not-quite-ready-for-primetime take from last year had enough for us to listen to to get the backups, and they were simple enough that I knew we could get them in 90 minutes.

They took an hour, and that's only because I think we doubled every single thing we did - one little part was declared by DDP to be "Def Leppard-ish", which startled me a little bit, I was hoping they would sound more like a gaggle of New Wave Construction Workers (go with me on this). Not that Def Leppard are to be scoffed at (if you can't admit that "Photograph" is one of the greatest pop songs ever written, we have nothing further to discuss), but jeez. I'll have to have a listen back to them at a later date.

And that was it - NO WAIT! I forgot that in between the "Lizzy Lines" and the AKITS stuff, Lizzy and I sang the bridge on "Cinnamon Girl" together, reprising the parts we do live. Man, we've got a nice little punk rock version of that song going, yep.

So that is IT. Today I'm heading back in just a couple of hours to do more guitars. We're getting there, but man, it seems like it takes so LONG. There's so much work to do on a project like this, and I'd forgotten, a little. Having bandmates does make it a lot easier. It's really cool to be able to go in to the studio together and knock stuff out really quickly - but some aspects just take time no matter what you do.

But that's OK - I've been driving around listening to ten rough mixes this week, and I have to say - I'm getting really excited about how this one's turning out. And there's still a lot more work to do, but, I think - I hope - it's all going to turn out great in the end.

Oh - and the name of the record is:

Life Like Luster

[Yogi]

Not feeling very verbose today, so I'll keep today's update about what we did on Sunday short n' sweet.

First thing we did is get out the acoustic guitar, Darin's purple Ibanez one, and I tried an idea Lizzy suggested for the end of "Fair Use", strumming along over the ending chords to get a percussive shimmer going there. I think we did two tracks of that. Then we backed up into the choruses where I added a couple of "ear candy" little touches on a couple of chords.

Then we bopped over to "Mold On My Soles" where I doubled certain sections of the clean guitar part with the same acoustic. That was all for folky me for the day, out came the Fender Hot Rod Deluxe and I added one more heavy guitar for the section of weird chords at the end - it hadn't been sounding apocalyptic enough for me with just the one.

Moving on to "Numbered Days" - got out the 7-string and we finished up the rhythm guitar on the pre-choruses, and then out came the ASAT Telecaster into the Peavey classic 50 head for some semi-dirty chimey stuff over the Big Ending. Oh! I also did a track of that with the Danelectro.

I was kinda tired, and actually starting to feel a little "guitared out" if that makes sense - so I thought I'd stay on guitar but change things up by playing a solo on something - and I went back to Darin's black Tele (the one I struggled with soloing on "Cinnamon Girl") for the "Numbered Days" solo. This solo is a written part, I pretty much always do the same thing, but it still needs to be a good performance. Those big strings on that Tele sure caused me some pain, but we eventually got a good take.

And that was IT.

I think I need to start singing again on these things soon - get away from relentless guitars. I think also that the fact that I've been listening to the roughs contributed to my "material fatigue" - there's a reason I don't listen to rough mixes very much. I'm going to take a break from them for a while. So yeah, singing. Oh, but we may track drums and bass this weekend - so singing later.

[Yogi]

We did a drums-n-bass day yesterday, all for one song - "10 Print". We originally took a crack at it about 8 or 9 months ago, but for whatever reason Pete wasn't feeling good at that session about the tune so we abandoned it. It always kinda bugged me that we never came back to it, and I think at some point I sort of crossed it off the list of possibilities for this project.

Well, consider it uncrossed-off. We did out setup and tracking all in one day, a choice that I think ended up sort of tiring everyone out, and the mood wasn't as light overall as it usually is. Darin was still feeling the effects from a recent bout of "walking pneumonia", and even he wasn't his typical chipper self. He's a pro, though, so burned out or not, he got the good sounds and the good setups going.

We did the "all play together thing" again, even though I knew pretty early on that there wasn't going to be anything in my guitar track that was keepable. Honestly, I'd rather play take after take in the room with the band than sit in the control room with my butt getting numb. If nothing else, I was able to practice the parts I will end up putting down later, and try to make them tighter. We play this song live, and I wonder what kind of slopfest my guitar part must be if I had to try that hard to play tight when I wasn't singing.

We tried a few takes before heading out for some food and our typical conversation about the futility of our Human Race. My take: I know it's bad, but I just can't give up on us. I just can't.

We came back and did the usual: played some takes until Pete had one that was good enough to keep some of it and fix other parts. Basically, the tune has sections where he plays a swanky groove, and then other parts loaded with End Of The World Drum Fills. On the "keeper" take, Pete kept all the groove stuff and replaced every single one of the EOTW fills. With this sort of thing, I just have to sit back and wait until Pete gives his OK on each punch: we get to the point where I can't tell what's "better" about one take over another (unless there's an obvious mistake). Pete eventually got a composited track that he was cool with, so we switched to bass.

Lizzy ended up keeping little bits of her live track as well, though she ended up replacing more than half of what she'd done. Again, there were obvious screwups in places, but then there were long attempts to fix sections where Lizzy didn't feel "the groove" enough. At some point, I can't tell the difference, and I just defer to the players. I do want them to be happy, and we eventually get there. Which we did. Sometimes I think Lizzy defers a little too often to the opinions (mine included) of the peanut gallery about what is and isn't a good take. I've been trying to encourage her where I can to decide what she wants in a take. To be fair, though - I know what it's like to be in that situation. Sometimes when you're recording you get to a place where you can't necessarily be objective about what you're doing. This usually happens to me when the idea I thought I was gonna do turns out to be A) completely wrong for the song, or B) way too hard to play, so now I've gotta think of something else to do. It can be hard to switch gears when the idea you thought you had is not the one that's gonna work. Especially if you were really excited by the idea coming in - it can be really disappointing when you realize you can't do it, and it can color your attitude.

In any event, we got bass and drums for "10 Print." We're getting to the end of the line for rhythm section work for this project. At least one more song is slated to get recorded, maybe a couple more, but we're close.

COMMENT!

[Yogi]

Yesterday and today I spent some time at the studio doing vocals - and indeed, I finished all the singing on "Mold On My Soles". That's three lead vocals down. Many more to go.

I don't really have any whacky stories this time - I have to say that I think Darin and I killed far more hours shooting the breeze and talking excitedly about filmmaking techniques than we did getting recording done. But hey, we hadn't hung out for a while, and we have to catch up on these things. I'm gonna try and get in the studio some mid-week this week before spending more Quality Time next weekend. We shot some more footage this weekend that will probably make its way into future chapters of the Web documentary.

Huh. Was this the most boring diary entry ever? I think it was! Sorry!

COMMENT!

[Yogi]

Another quickie entry - I spent a couple more hours tonight in the studio working on vocals on "Sublimeinal" - specifically, a whole bunch of harmony backing parts that are sprinkled all over the freakin place in that tune. I had forgotten what a vocal extravaganza that song turned into. Oh well. I think another session like tonight and I'll have the "Sublimeinal" vocals done, though there's a coupla things that Lizzy has been doing live that I need her to throw down on there. I'm planning to head back down on Friday night (no social life for the band leader) and probably on the weekend, too.

Decked out in starshine!

[Yogi]

I guess vocal sessions I do just aren't all that interesting to talk about - we're not doing much that's all that crazy, I mean, I'm just sangin', and I either get stuff right or I don't.

It's funny how things I think are going to be really difficult to get sung correctly are often easy, and things I think should be simple I end up doing 20 times before I get a good take. So much different than live singing, where you just get up there and go for it, and whatever comes out is what you get.

As promised, I was back in the studio yesterday, and I started working on finishing up the "lead" vocal track of "Sublimeinal". I noticed right away that I was having control problems. I think I was a tad dehydrated (bad for sangin'), and I had gone pretty full-bore in rehearsal the night before AND the night before THAT I had been in the studio going full-bore, as well. There were some parts of "Sublimeinal" that I knew I was never going to get feeling as I did yesterday, but I was able to get the vocals done on the two pre-choruses. So now what?

Luckily, there was a song that required vocalizations, but not necessarily real "singing." The verses for "10 Print" are performed (on the recording) with a sort of noir-like whispery "radio voice" - talking, not singing, in other words. That was something I could do without needing a great degree of control, so we switched over to do that. I haven't really done anything like that on a song before - I was thinking a lot about what Kevin Gilbert did on the Kaviar Sessions album when I wrote this song - things like "Indian Burn" specifically. I was surprised, a little, anyway, at how long it took Darin to find a mic/preamp combination that gave us a sound for this vocal that he liked. We played around a lot, before eventually just going back to our typical Manley mic.

So, I tracked all the goofy talking on "10 Print", and we had a little time left over, so I decided that even with lousy vocal control, I could probably sing the vocals on the bridge, since they're mostly just unhinged yelling, and who needs "control" for that?

So, I laid down two tracks of hollering, that we'll later run through some sort of distortion plugin to rough 'em up. Darin says they sound like some 70's heavy rock vocal, like something from Black Oak Arkansas. I'm getting that vibe a lot from this album - the whole 70's vibe. That's fine with me - I think rock and pop music probably reached its artistic peak right around 1972-73. If I can make songs that even remotely approach stuff from that era, I'll be happy.

COMMENT!

[Yogi]

We did two more sessions over the weekend - and I think that what we did was focus mainly on rhythm guitars for "10 Print." My memory is failing me a little bit as I sit here and type this. I used yon Carvin 7-string guitar into my L5, and we worked on the main rhythm tracks. I've mentioned already what a peculiar song "10 Print" is, and the guitar parts are no exception. They're very schizophrenic and odd - I can't really imagine this song being very playable say, around a campfire on acoustic guitar. There's riffy stuff that pops in and then is gone, followed by weird, 70's-TV-show-music-sounding wah guitars in the verses, followed by odd chromatic-blues riffs which eventually gets around to a huge metallic A-tuned 7-string part on the bridge - and then the whole mess is punctuated by Vai-like melodic quotes from others songs that sort of comment on the entire proceedings.

It shocks me that we can actually do a pretty good version of this song live. Over the two days, I got all the rhythm guitar stuff done. We flew in a bunch of "character" vocals from my original demo (you'll just have to hear it), and then I re-did an overdub at the end of "Mold On My Soles" for good measure. That was the weekend.

Next Sunday, I'm gonna be back, and my aim is to finish up vocals on "Sublimeinal" and "10 Print", because after that we're gonna have to take a short break from the studio. Looks like I'm about to get leveled by a big tax bill, and unfortunately, that's going to have a big impact on Ye Olde Albume Budgete. I should be back working again before the month is out, so hopefully it will only be a couple of weeks. It will give us time to continue rehearsing the last couple of tunes we're thinking of laying down for this project, one of which might be the heaviest tune I've ever written. You fans of the heavier fare like "You Fell" will probably enjoy it. It will be an adventure getting that song down on "tape."

[Yogi]

Let me just take a moment to mention that the session at Darin's last Sunday did indeed finish off the vocals for "10 Print", though we didn't get to work on "Sublimeinal", so the vocals for that will remain in "almost-done" condition until I start getting paid for my new job sometime in May. We'll get back to the last big tracking push by June sometime, that's what I think. And then mixing! Then the WOOORRRRLD! BWAH-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!

[Yogi]

Just posting here to say that we've finally got some time booked in the studio again for July 14-16! Yay!

It's been a long while.

[Yogi]

Hey, it's a week ago that we were recording last, but HEY!

I can remember what happened, so this diary is still valid, even if not HOT OFF THE PRESS.

But first: Sue Bird is hot.


Alrighty.

So last weekend we went in to do basics for two tracks. One is our cover version of Van Halen's old chestnut "In A Simple Rhyme", the other is one of my songs called "Dusty Demonatrix."

We are continuing the tradition of: if we spend enough time learning a cover tune to play it live, we might as well record it when we go into the studio. We have THREE cover tunes in various stages of completion right now. Our version of IASR is pretty close to the original, except for a radically re-imagined intro section (that whole drum intro on the VH version? GONE). We tracked it all old-school VH-style, the three of us banging away live in the studio. While we played it I kept holding the image of a teen-aged version of myself laboriously trying to learn the song off the vinyl (yes, Virginia, I'm THAT OLD). I had a great time playing the track.

We played it about six times if I recall, and we kept five of those takes. On the fifth one, Pete and Lizzy fixed up the bits they didn't nail to their own liking. I'm going to "comp" together my guitar track from the five takes (PRO TOOLS AT HOME NOW!!! WHOOOOOO!!!!). So while it won't be a VH-style TOTALLY LIVE TAKE, MAN, all the guitar bits that get used will have been PLAYED live. In preparation for the comping, I lined up all five takes of my guitar track and pushed PLAY. When the solo comes on, and there are five versions of the solo going all at once, it's HILARIOUS.

Starting the recording with a cover is a nice relaxing way to get into the work. I get the feeling that Pete n' Lizzy don't "sweat the details" as much when the song is not our own, and that's a good headspace to be in when the song IS ours, so yay.

Then, on to "Dusty Demonatrix."

This one is going to appeal to those who like "You Fell" from ARF? It's heavy. I'd say it's pretty much a straight-up METAL song. Of course, I'm not an authentic metal singer, so it's as metal as we can get with a guy who sings like me.

It's heavy. I tune my seventh string down to A. We played it instrumentally at the last Central show (I can't play/sing it yet), and Hodgy liked it. So, hey.

Anyway. This is probably the hardest tune, drum-wise, on the whole album. We've rehearsed it for a long time.

It's good that Pete (and now Lizzy) has been playing full-time in a metal band for the last few years, because he knew what to do.

Sheesh. What should I say about this song? I don't want to get into what it's about. I won't be printing the lyrics in any booklet or Web site. You'll have to figure them out.

There's a section at the beginning that I call the "vomit" section. I wanted the musical, audio equivalent of violent projectile vomiting. We left a hole there when we were tracking the rest of the song, and came back to it. I don't know if what we have sounds like vomit to you, but I'm thrilled with it.

Pete and Lizzy got their parts down, getting the majority of the track done on Saturday, and finishing up Sunday. I'll have to go back and get all the guitars done later. We spent the rest of Sunday working on the vomit section.

I haven't ever written a song from as purely an angry, spiteful place before. It's probably going to stick out on the album like a sore thumb. That's OK with me. I really like it.

August looks like (knocking on wooden things) a good month for getting the last push of tracking work done.

This entry has been brought to you by the number 9.

[Yogi]

Well, I had thought that we were done tracking basics for the album, but then I just finished a demo of a new song called "Handbasket" and everybody likes it, so we're probably going to track that one, too.

Hey, why not?