A technical journal of our recording session.

The acoustic was recorded in a shell, with two Royer R-122's (I'm not sure what model within that line, perhaps the active ribbon). The sound I was going for is maybe similar to Neutral Milk Hotel - Jeff Mangum's acoustic sounds on Oh Comely might be the masterpiece of recorded acoustic guitar in my mind, which is to say a lot of bottom end with enough treble to have a sharp attack. I'm really pleased with the sounds we got last night...there are nuances in the tone of the guitar that are absolutely crazy. Things I'm not sure I've ever heard before, and definitely not in any recordings I've done at home with lesser equipment. Someone posted something about a Komet amp on a forum about guitars and tone that I read, saying that a bandmate asked them how a single note became a chord when played through the amp...I had the same sort of experience while recording last night...if I had a copy of just the guitar at all I'd post it, but unfortunately everything I have includes my singing, which I'm not comfortable putting out there in a rough mix state - I'm not crazy about my voice at all, and even though I'm not a perfectionist, I'm keeping the tracks private until a little studio magic can be worked...I think in 4 songs I never did more than 4 takes, and the majority of which were on a song that I kept having to try over because I repeatedly place one word on a beat when I meant to put it on the + of the beat. I didn't expect to do any real vocal takes last night, but I really flew through the guitar parts.




A couple of the songs end with some massive ritards, and I wanted to use a click track for the ease adding more parts at a later date...I ended up having to have the click tracks made for me as I realized my limited software couldn't do what I needed with the tempo changes...I got the tracks to my liking 23 hours before the session, and was only able to practice with them two or three times each...on one of the songs I got separated from the click during the ritard, but ended up keeping the track anyway...there really were some very cool things happening that were unintended...some sound a little wrong-note-ish (and may actually have been), but they sort of seem to be more ghost notes than real notes, so for now I'm planning on going with them (thankfully they are in parts that will remain just acoustic and voice, where a wrong note won't just create much dissonance with another part).



I can't remember all the mics we ruled out for vocals, the two closest to the camera in the picture are clearly Neumann's, they weren't really in the mix. I think the one furthest is an AKG, whatever it was it captured my voice the truest, but the Royer won out again. We did a lot of the vocals in very hushed tones with my nose up against the pop filter...maybe think Elliott Smith. My long term plans for the vocals are a little more involved...we're going to try a lot of things, including running them through the Leslie, and we may toy with some different mics picking that up.

My overall goals for the sound aren't so much dark, but dusk, I guess you could say. I'm not going for Steve Albini by any stretch of the imagination, but maybe a little bit of a Velvet Underground sort of vibe to the recording would make me pretty happy.

This is probably going to be a pretty drawn out project, despite how much was accomplished the first night. The next step was originally going to be drums. A friend of mine from years and years ago (I mean, I've got cassettes of us playing together when bands that barely saw the turn of the century used to do a lot of shows together) is my favorite living drummer (a modern day Keith Moon)...he's been in Europe for the last month and a half with his band, and goes back on the 16th of January...he also no longer lives in Ohio...but his dad does, and he thought there was a chance he could record the day after Christmas in Cleveland...it no longer looks possible, so I looking into him recording in NYC (I'm nervous about the difference in rates!!!), but I'm not sure it will be a huge amount of time, so it may all work out alright.

This recording has been on my mind for a long time...most of the songs were previously recorded with a pretty great home studio set-up...but I've since decided that pretty great home studios aren't for me (too good to appeal to my penchant for lo-fi, but not good enough to be mistook for being professional). I think I could make it work if I had an endless supply of money, but even just the mics we used for the acoustic guitar last night probably cost more than this entire EP will to record, mix and master. I've decided that I'm not going to enter into any sorts of arms race when it comes to studio equipment, from my perspective, it's a losing battle.