movin' right along

just truckin' along with the mixes, here. things are sounding really good i think -- we're about 5 deep at the moment. almost halfway there. 'cannot escape' is one worth noting. i really like where this song has gone. i probably mentioned that before we went in-studio i ended up changing the time signature of the song, which gave it a different feel in itself. but then once the rest of the guys got behind it and everyone put their ideas into play it really took the song to a whole different place. before recording started i would have ranked this song somewhere closer to the bottom of the 13 i've got; but now it's taken a pretty serious jump. i just can't get over how much it's changed for the better from what it once was.

anyway, i've been doing research on production companies and will need to pick one soonish so i can get a template from them and start designing the cover and insert. most of it is already done (in my head) but it will be interesting to see how it all comes out on paper. or a computer, as it were.

just heard 'rise' today which has this cool "i'm driving with the windows down" kind of thing going for it that i really like. i don't know what order they're being mixed in so it's always sort of a nice surprise to me when he sends me the next one.

mix 2

i don't know if i'll cover every single mix but for now it seems appropriate.

so i had a bit of a breakdown over song 1 last night. i felt like it just wasn't shining. it's hard to explain, but something about it just wasn't right. so i got kind of depressed, thinking 'geez, are they all going to be like this?' and spiraling with such thoughts until i was in a pretty worthless place. i felt like i just needed to hear something that was good -- to give hope that this record still had a shot at sounding great. i determined at the time that the best thing was just to get my mind off of it and head to bed, so i did.

well this morning i got the mix for bring it back and i got my ray of hope and then some. it sounds fantastic. like really, really good. i listened in the car first this time and have since discovered the main problem with the other song were those computer speakers i was listening through. i thought they were pretty decent speakers even though they are old -- and maybe they are. but they color the sound in a pretty unpleasant way as it turns out. so i've nixed them as a listening option and am much happier at the moment.

so i've sent in my latest revisions to both and am awaiting the next song. now i'm excited. it's amazing how quickly things can change...

the first mix

i got the first mix of the first song just a little while ago. ....i was afraid. :)

the first song he did was 'bethany's song' - a relatively simple one since it really only has 3 instruments and my single vocal. but even given that it's amazing how tough this is. it's my job to basically approve the mix; make sure i like the overall balance between the instruments and the vocals, make sure i'm liking the vocal takes we chose, listen for anything that sounds weird....stuff like that. i'm also supposed to listen on a few different listening systems to see if anything sounds weird in one place that might sound fine in another. for my two i've chosen my car (obvious choice) and a set of speakers i frequently plug into my laptop that are pretty decent.

i can easily see why people say you could drive yourself nuts doing this. it would be pretty easy to be really nitpicky and never really be satisfied with any given mix. and that's only in this song which only has 4 tracks! i can't imagine what it'll be like to sign off on one of the more complicated ones.

anyway i've just finished listening through a few times and sent back my first comments. overall the mix seems really nice and i really don't have any complaints about it on that front, which is great. there are a few vocal parts that sound a little weird that i want to look for other takes of, but that's the brunt of my beef with this particular song.

so anyway that's a glimpse into my first reaction to the first mix of the first song. more to come, i'm sure.

Day 7 (which is actually today. but isn't done yet)

today has been.....crazy. and interesting. and long. and then crazy again.

it was a 'record at home' day, which started this morning when travis got here around 8:15 ish. we unloaded all his crap that he brought, tested a few pieces, and then left to head to our church to record the actual piano there for 'you are never really gone' (which has turned into a solo piano number). so we left at 8:40 or so and it took us the better part of an hour to get over there....lots and lots of traffic.

so we get there, and who do we find in the sanctuary at the piano? the piano tuning man. totally unplanned. no one told me (or knew) that he was coming. and the piano, as it turns out, was noticeably sharp as a whole. so we got to play it freshly tuned. luck you say? favor of God i say. i felt smiled upon. it was quite fortunate.

so we got the piano done with eddie without any major hitches. took awhile. but it came together pretty nicely. then we lunched at zaxby's, because apparently travis is quite obsessed with zaxby's. and who wouldn't be? i mean it's really good, even if their products do have way too many corny "Z" names.

then we got back here and with the time we had left with eddie turned him loose on some synth sounds to help augment 'questions' from it's original form. it is sounding pretty darn cool at the moment. there are a lot of interesting ideas there as well and i'm interested to see how they come out. there is one particular sound that we put in a track that we nicknamed "Orcs", which made my day entirely. when you hear the song you'll have to tell me if you can figure out what sound effect you think we would have named in such a way.

then we re-recorded the toy piano, which came out a bit better since we took the lid off of it this time. i will be returning it to its rightful owner tomorrow, at long last.

after that we realized we made a grievous math error in how many songs we were planning each day. for some reason i knew we did 3 on day one, and during day two was like "oh well if we do 4 today then we'll do 5 tomorrow, which will be a long day but will be fine." travis agreed. neither of us realized that 3+4+5 = 12. not 13. and there are 13 songs. so at this point we realized that i have 6 songs left to sing lead on, all in the same day. this is unfortunate. that's a lot of freaking singing. the good part was that we did get the really tough ones out of the way. and with a break for eating dinner and another smaller break for me to eat raw honey (which i discovered is not at all underrated as a vocal remedy) i ended up being okay through all of it.

so now we're finishing up bethany's background vocals. then i have to transfer a few files over, decide whether or not i need to add any 3rd parts, help travis pack, and then we'll be done for the day.

it is 10:55 right now. i'd wager travis will be leaving here within the next hour. so 8:15 to midnight....almost a 16 hour day. whew. it's been a marathon. but tomorrow i'll be able to say "this record is done being recorded"! then it will be on to the next steps.

anyway, i'll go ahead and post the few pictures i took over the past few days. i really wish i'd gotten a picture of the piano at the church....but i forgot the camera. whoops. :)


this is me recording vocals in the "bat cave", which was constructed of styrofoam. and a mic. as described in my "day 5" post.


this is a flash-less shot of the same thing. sort of reflects the vibey lights (or lack thereof) that we had going.


'nother one.


this is the booth empty. i wish i had more room to take a wider shot of it because it was pretty crazy looking.


front shot of the singing bat cave area.


the music room at the house, except full of equipment and turned more into a studio type thing.


bethany singing background vocals.


and another shot of the action.


just finished doing all that other stuff i listed and finished helping him pack up and it is now 12:23 am. 16 hours and 8 minutes that we worked today. i'm really tired but at the same time i'm not...probably because my head is still awhirl about everything. hence the writing before i go try to sleep.

so next will be travis mixing everything down, a couple songs a day for me to comment on and send back. that will be 6 full days of mixing to get all the songs done - they won't be consecutive days or anything. a lot of them i feel like i have a fair sense of what they'll sound like but a few of the ones that we left ourselves a lot of options on will be really interesting to hear when they're mixed.

just like the first three days we recorded, this has felt like a total whirlwind. it happens and then it's over, and i've not even had much time to process it -- or, as evidenced by my attempts to recall what happened just yesterday -- even remember everything we did. it's easy to think we overlooked some kind of crucial detail, but i do think we got everything we needed to get with him here. obviously if time and money were no object we could have been much more leisurely and experimental with everything until we got it all just perfect. but i really am happy with what we've got. ...at least right now. :) i've no idea how i'll feel when things are getting mixed together and i'm trying to process the songs as whole units instead of a bunch of pieces and elements. that should be a pretty interesting process. and you'd better hope so, because i'm going to be writing about it either way so this is your boredom or entertainment on the line here. :)

whew. i'm going to try and rest now i think.

and again i say.....whew.

Day 6: A Recap (written on day 7, pretty much right before i write about day 7)

wow now that we're at the end of day 7 (almost, i'm really just on a break) it's hard to remember what happened in day 6. which was yesterday. but here goes.

eddie came in to start the day off with doing a bunch of keys and synth, which all went pretty well. we did work on 'great' synth parts for quite some time. it's a giant mess right now; a huge freaking pile of options is really what it is. so that will be travis' job to sort through all of that and make it sound good. right now it's got a lot of potential....but yeah, pretty much sounds like a mess. in a good way. got me? good.

then we sang 4 more songs -- and now i don't remember what they were. wait, maybe i do. i know we did 'king forever' and then 'we live'.....after that we did one other one that i can't remember and we finished up with 'consume' when my voice was good and tired.

i also fixed an electric guitar part that was sounding out of tune on 'rise'. then i think we pretty much called it a day.

which brings us to today -- which is not over. i'm sitting here while bethany is finishing up her background vocals. so i think i'll start writing about today now. and will add the pictures.

day 5

well we started right in with electric guitars. set up a bunch of amps and heads and stuff and just got straight to cutting. it's amazing how much less time was involved in setup than there was when we were doing drums and all...

did a bunch of lead stuff today. added the lead lines in 'we live' and 'king forever'. we ended up adding all kinds of crazy stuff to 'beautiful', not the least of which was an ebow part not unlike the one i'd originally envisioned for the song, which was awesome. i didn't do it before because i could never get a good tone with my crap guitar. but borrow some guitars and some decent amps and after some tinkering you've got a pretty decent sound. i hope i still like it the next time i hear it though -- these things are fickle.

also travis had a friend of his cut a few random electric parts up in nashville as well to save us some time -- most of the parts are keepers, too. thank you kyle, whomever you are. :)

then it was off to singing. we set up the fancy vocal mic on the largest boom mic stand i'd ever seen, and then travis and knox set about building me a styrofoam cave to live in. i mean sing in. i went in with my headphones and lyrics and bottle-o-water and got to work -- we got vocals done on 'nothing else', 'rise', and 'beautiful'.

so 95% of the electric stuff is now done, and main vocals are done on 3 songs - not bad for a day's work. i did take a few pictures but realized tonight that the cable that transfers said pictures to my computer is still at home. so...yeah, pictures will have to come later.

tomorrow we (hopefully) finish all the synth stuff with eddie first thing, then just track vocals until i can't take it anymore. (vocal tracking went fine today, by the way. i need to get some more water for tomorrow but my voice held up fine).

see you tomorrow night...

night before - again.

welp, here we are again - night before studio time. two more days at the studio tomorrow and tuesday, then a day at the house wednesday. after that we should be entirely done with recording the album. crazy.

there is a crapload of stuff left to do though, so we're going to have to hit it pretty hard tomorrow. lead parts for each song, all the vocals, more keys...it's going to be a lot. so here's hoping the ol' voice holds up. say prayers if you're into that sort of thing - i know i'd appreciate it. :) i'm a little bit worried about it but hopefully it will be fine with the proper warmups and what have you.

so anyway until tomorrow night's recap of the day........bye.