9/28/11 - Tony's Home Studio

Last night, when I was tracking Dustin's guitar part for "On the Sidewalk," he mentioned perhaps adding some hand drums into the song. I thought that was a great idea.

So tonight, before my studio mixing time, I decided to track some percussion in my basement home studio. Every year at Christmas, it has become something of a tradition for my mother-in-law to give me a fair-trade ethnic percussion instrument. So, I've got these toys that I've played with, but never really used for anything.

So I set up my Bluebird mic and played away. I had fun using several different things: cabasa, beaded gourd, claves, djembe, and bean rattle. Super fun. And the percussion is exactly what this song needed. I'm glad Dustin suggested it.

I headed to IPR to mix, which I did. And I liked the way it turned out. The end.

EDIT: Here is the official release of the song:

9/27/11 - IPR C-Lab 1

Tonight was a quick session. It was a non-Beards session. I (tony) am currently in a Mixing & Mastering course at IPR and the song "On the Sidewalk" is going to be my final project and a semi-final mix is due on Thursday.

All I had left to record is Dustin's part. The previous parts were tracked awhile back, as you can read about in previous installments.

We had a pre-production session tonight at IPR, so afterward, Dustin and I took some time to get the guitar line laid down. We settled into a C-Lab and plugged directly into the DI on an Mbox 2. After a few takes, Dustin made it happen. It's all good.

I originally thought that all I had left to record was Dustin's guitar, but after we listened together to my reference song (Paul Simon's "Under African Skies"), Dustin suggested some hand drums. I thought that was a really good idea. So tomorrow I plan to make that happen.

9/20/11 - IPR Lecture Hall 1

Tonight was an overdub night. We worked exclusively on "Destiny, She Drives a Rolls" tonight. To start the evening, Dillon replayed some bass, fixing some minor flubs.

After that, Anthony tracked some acoustic guitar to add a little flavor to the song. It was really good to have the points of view of both Eddie and John Kargol, his assistant. They worked with Anthony on figuring out just the right part for the acoustic. It seemed that in general, Anthony wished to lay down an acoustic layer throughout the song. But after we tried that, the song was kind of muddy and too thick. So John, Eddie and Anthony worked out a good ornamental part. The result was good.

After spending a good chunk of time on that, we moved on to Anthony's delay-soaked guitar solo. The only problem was that his effects pedal is currently in the shop, getting serviced. Eddie Ciletti, however, did not see this as a problem. "We have tape!" he said. So we did Anthony's delay the old fashioned way, with a natural hall reverb and a tape delay. It sounds really good.

That was all we had time for tonight. Sadly, Dustin lugged his gear two blocks after finding parking and didn't even use it. We've got a few more overdubs left on this tune and then we'll move on to overdubbing the others.

Stay tuned, Junebuggers! This stuff is good!

9/13/11 - IPR Lecture Hall 1

Great session tonight.

Tonight was the first of the 'Beards' sessions since joining forces with Student Run Records. The previous sessions related to 'Beards' have been scrapped in favor of the professionals at IPR producing and tracking us. Furthermore, this is our first venture with our new bassist, Dillon Marchus.

Eddie Ciletti, IPR's resident analog wizard and mad scientist, had expressed interest in working with us. And we, who have worked with Eddie before, were interested in working with him again and tracking to tape, instead of digital as we normally have done.

Eddie was particularly interested in producing "Destiny, She Drives a Rolls," but we were told to bring two more songs in that we felt Eddie would do well with. We chose "Handlebar Mustache" and "Give Yourself."

Long story short, this session was great. We did a lot of good work. We spent most of the session on "Destiny" and moved on to "Handlebar." After those, it was late and we were tired, but we decided to run through "Give Yourself" a couple times. And awesomely, the second take nailed it. We got basic tracks for all three songs done tonight and overdubs will start next week.

The sounds Eddie got were great. It sounds really warm, rich and old school. Dillon and I discussed how we kind of wished that Eddie was doing the whole record. But don't take that too seriously. We're very excited to work with the other producers as well. It's always good to get multiple points of view.

We're off to a good start. Dillon is an amazing bassist. He's going to work out just fine. The album is going to sound gooood. You're going to like it, I know.

More to come...

[We did a fly-on-the-wall webcast of the session. You can watch it on Ustream if you feel so inclined. A few cool things happened.]

8/16/11 - IPR Lecture Hall 1 Hallway

Tonight's session was pretty much just for fun. Eddie Ciletti, the analog techniques instructor contacted me, asking if we'd like to play for his class. And we're not usually one to turn down cool things like this. So if we can get a couple tracks out of the deal, cools. We're in.

We arrived and set up around 6pm, when the class starts. Eddie had us all set up in the hallway, since it offers a pretty great natural reverb. He put on mic on the drums. Yup. One. It was an omnidirectional mic on top of the kick, seemingly pointed at my crotch. Not so strangely, that's how it was referred to in all of Eddie and the class's notes -- the crotch mic. Nice.

There was a mic on Brandon's bass cab and there were two ribbon mics (bi-directional) on the guitar amps, which also served as room mics. It was an interesting setup. Anthony did vocals in the doorway to the studio, which served as a sort of isolation booth. It was pretty cool.

We tracked two songs tonight - "Sledgehammer" and "Clone You." We played them live with a possibility of overdubs later on.

Not much more to tell. It was fun. Studio stuff always is fun.

UPDATE (8/17):

It turns out the tracks didn't turn out as well as we had hoped. We are so used to playing those songs so heavily that we overplayed in the recording. It just didn't sound that great. It wasn't Eddie's fault. We just overplayed for that setup and we didn't realize it until it was too late.

Oh, well. That's too bad. But for you savvy people who like to seek things out, there are currently files of the poorly played songs that will never be released somewhere on the Internet right now. That is your challenge, if you wish to accept it.

5/14/11 - IPR Studio 2

The phrase of the day -- technical difficulties.

The idea was to come into IPR's studio 2 and record for a couple hours and beyond. We were originally going to go from 2:00 - 4:00, since Brandon had to be somewhere at 5:00. As it turned out, Dustin also had to be somewhere. Luckily, Collin Crawford (fellow engineering student) and I were able to grab a couple more hours, so our session was set for noon to 4:00.

Collin and I both arrived at IPR at about 11:30, and the studio was open. So we were able to load in my drums and check out the necessary gear from the lab office. We started the setup process and got a pretty good handle on it. The others arrived before we were completely finished, and they patiently waited while we finished setup.

I'll spare you the technical details, but long story short, we had major technical difficulties. Signal was not getting everywhere it needed to go. And then it would be fixed in one area, but mess up in another. Troubleshooting abounded. When Collin and I reached the end of our rope, we called in lab staff. They were flabbergasted at the situation. They told us we had better just unplug everything and start over. Oof.

I know in the above description it doesn't really sound like much time had passed or much difficulty had happend. But by the time we were told we'd be better off starting over, the clock had already reached around 2:15. All the while, the other three dudes were waiting... waiting. Oh, so patiently. My band mates were a class act during the difficulties. No one complained, though anyone would be bored and frustrated at that point. They all said it wasn't a big deal, even though anyone would be annoyed. They sat patiently, got some lunch, hung out, joked around, played some guitar and discussed some good music. Dustin bumped his plans back, otherwise he would have had to leave before any tracking at all took place. All the while, Collin and I were scrambling to get things set.

By the time we were finally ready to track, we had about enough time to lay down drums, bass, and guitar and vocal scratch tracks for two songs: "Destiny, She Drives a Rolls" and "Soul Shaker," both to appear on Beards. After these two were satisfactorily set, Dustin and Brandon both had to jet. So it was just Anthony and me, with two songs tracked, and everything set up to record. After a bit of discussion, it was decided that we would track drums and scratch guitar/vocal on two more songs, just the two of us. As long as we had spent so much time setting everything up, it would have been a shame to walk away after tracking drum and bass on just two songs.

We didn't really have much material rehearsed enough to record with just Anthony and me. So we decided on one we knew we had, "Handlebar Mustache" and one other fun cover tune, which will remain a mystery at this time.

When it's all said and done, getting drum tracks for four songs is a pretty good day -- assuming the sessions turn out to be of quality.

This session marks the beginning of Beards. It has officially begun. Hopefully, this isn't an omen of what is to come. Hopefully, today was our "getting the kinks out" session.

Here's hopin'.

3/13/11 - IPR Studios

Studio Diary - Tony (3/13/11)

This was the second weekend in a row that by happy circumstance I was able to book a lot of time in studio 4 at IPR. Anthony was there and Brandon was able to be there this time, too. Unfortunately, Dustin was working again. So we missed him again.

The day started with Brandon laying down some bass on "On the Sidewalk." This was my first time recording bass, so it was kind of an experimental day. I had spoken with my buddy Collin a couple days earlier and we came up with some ideas for bass mic setup and such. So I employed some of those ideas and had fun with it. Brandon came in and knocked it out of the park like a pro. We got all the bugs out and did a few takes and called it good on that tune.

After taking a brief break to go pee, we reconvened in 4 and Anthony taught Brandon the chords and structure of "Piper." Because, though the other members of the band had previously played the song incessantly, it hasn't been played for years, meaning Brandon had never even heard it. But Anthony laid it out for him and asked him he accepted the mission put before him. Not surprisingly, he said yes.

After a few practice runs, he got the feel for the tune, and added his own flava to it as well. He put some licks and fills that we would not have thought of into the tune. He really helped to make a juvenile and monotonous song a bit more interesting and enjoyable. So to those of you reading that were with us in the old days, this song is coming back (at least in recorded form) and it's better than it was before.

We wrapped on bass recording and I set up the room for vocal takes, since Anthony did not get a chance to track vocals on "Piper" last week. As usual, Anthony was very consistent in his vocal and double vocal tracking. It didn't take too long to lock it down. It went so well that we finished up all we wanted to finish with two hours to spare. The dudes left, I cleaned up and worked on some school work.

All that's left on these tracks are guitars by Dustin on both songs and some background vocals by me on "Piper."

It's coming along. I love doing this stuff, and I have ideas for more songs to work on in future sessions. If you, the reader, have any suggestions for songs of ours you'd like to hear recorded, suggest them either in the comments below or on Junebug's Facebook profile.

...tony...