Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Mix

Yesterday I went to Black Lion Audio to transfer our mixes and start some minor editing on the tracks. We dumped all the .wav files on to disk so Jeremy can take them home and start working on the mixing. On Monday I'll be heading over to his place to hear what he has so far and help sort out all the tracks.

We still have a lot of editing we need to do. When I recorded I used multiple amps so we have to go and pick which tones sounded the best for each track. Eventually we have to record Bailey and Ursula as well.

Monday, December 29, 2008

Recording, part II

Yesterday we finished up what we could in the studio. Five songs, rhythm guitar, bass, drums and percussion were done. For the most part it sounds pretty good. We still have a lot of work to do. Hopefully everything tracked well and all the parts are pretty tight. I have to go back and re-track some clean guitar parts for Good news, I'm not on fire and maybe Ice Box On Western.

Jeremy took the tracks and is getting the mixes worked on. Once the basic mixing and EQing is done I'll go in to do some editing on the tracks. We did some extra layering so we can do some minor editing.

I just sent out some e-mails trying to get us some interviews to promote our shows in February here in Chicago and in Milwaukee. Hopefully we get some responses back.

On Friday we played at Elbo Room. I know I didn't have a chance to post anything up about it before, I apologize. During one of our songs Eric from Tiny Speakers/Arctic Fox came up to do some vocal work for us. Here are the lyrics for what he did on Good news, I'm not on fire.

here are my branches inside this fortress
in there i will un-weave gold into the the mouths of horses fed for
when the time will come to go...but, there's nowhere to go.
decide which sign will mother my pain, it's going to happen anyway.
cut it up, throw it all in the fire
the glowing ember eyes, sears the softer side.
dear mother at my feet which soaks in kerosene
father fills me full of straw, strikes a match onto it all
read between the print extra! extra! listen closely please..
the light still burns deep inside
good news, I'm not on fire

I plan on working on some sticker designs. Hopefully we'll have some by our next show or our Feb 13th show at the latest.

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Studio Time

I am dead tired. Tonight we had our first recording day. We spent about 12 in the studio working on our first ever E.P. We're hoping to get five songs done but by the looks of it we may have to settle for four songs. As of right now we have Seahorse and the Monkey, Evil Shenanigans, and Sentence Fragment IS a Sentence Fragment practically done.

Right now Cain, Brandon and I are just recording the structure and back bones of the songs then Bailey and Ursula are coming in to lay down their tracks. We're also hoping to create a short interlude based off of Seahorse and The Monkey. It's going to be mainly piano and cello. We'll see if we have time to pull something like that off.

Our friend, and Radio One Chicago DJ, Jeremy McLean has been kind enough to record and engineer the sessions. We are currently recording at Carterco Studios. Lou from Penthouse Sweets was kind enough to lend us his amp, I think we'd be lost with out it!

We've mainly been using three amps while recording. There is a Fender Bassman, a Vox AC30 Custom Classic, and a Marshal 1959 combo amp re-issue. Any time we've had to do a lot of clean guitars I've been using the Vox and a Fender Roc Pro 1ooo together. With the more distorted stuff on the album I've been using the Marshall and the Fender Bassman with a Boss blues driver. The sound is a little boomier than I was hoping for, but it is pretty fat and fills up a lot of space on the songs. It's a pretty big wall of sound that we've been producing with the combination of amps we have.

As for Cain, he's been using his Fender bass and his standard bass rig. We have him direct in and also mic'd, from what I'm aware of. I could be wrong.

As for Brandon, he is also using his standard set however he just recently purchased a new Ludwig black magic snare. From what I remember it's a 13" x 7" which is fairly interesting. It's adding a new dimension to our sound.

Ursula is going direct in and Kevin is using a combination of the Fender Bassman and the Marshall.

I'm dead tired so I'll post more details tomorrow.

Hex

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Dec 26th Flier

Schuba's

It is now officially Christmas Eve. I was out with Sean from Radio One Chicago and I just got home from Schuba's where we saw The Rickters. They were pretty damn amazing!!! It's really great to see that there are still good three piece bands out there making music.

I'm getting really excited and a little nervous for our show coming up on Friday. I'm sure everything will be fine musically, it's more the prep work that needs to be done. You have to load, then unload your gear, make sure you have your fliers, email list and all the other stuff ready for the show. Making sure the rest of the band gets there is another fun thing.

Hex