Saturday March 11 - 11 AM
Jordan guitars again. Started with Artcore into Legend, very nice crunchy, midrange sound. We also did some Epiphone Sheraton to Randall with Deluxe and Plexi modules, and later some Gibson SG to XTC module.

I love the sound of the XTC! Nice how you can roll back the guitar volume and get a nice open sound and then get super crunchy when you dial the volume up.



The other bandmates were here, but today seemed a nicer vibe. I even showed Derek and Jordan the last post, the one about them. i think it may have helped both of them relax a bit more. Jordan never seemed to get tense and was able to get his parts down in 3, 2 and even first takes.



Finished his electric rhythm parts at 9 PM. 10 hour day.

Next Derek's rhythm parts, but it may be a while, they have to rehearse for a show they're doing in West Palm on the 18th.

Ampmania

Monday March 13 6PM - Derek started tracking his electric rhythm guitar parts. We used the tele with the XTC for the first two songs. Then came the Sheraton for a nice open tone thru the Tweed module, a bassman sound.



This is just the beginning of what will end up being a very long process of experimenting with various guitar ideas. Not to mention the keyboard stuff, synth stuff, percussion stuff and sound fx stuff they want to do. Oh yeah, and then vocals.

What have I gotten myself into?

Monday/Tuesday March 20/21 6 to 10 PM - More Derek rhythm tracks. Monday we blew up one of the old, original 30 watt Celestion G12h's in the slant cab, which will be really hard to replace. Fortunately, Derek has a straight cab too. So we brought it over from the warehouse Tuesday.

We're using the Randall XTC module quite a bit with the Tele Deluxe. It produces a lot of really nice tones, and it's nice to have Jordan's rhythm tracks already done so we can hear how to dial in something complementary and supportive while different.

The bassist and drummer came by on Tuesday night. It's amazing how they can bring progress to a halt (without really meaning to) by all their suggestions and comments.

They're both really great musicians and hear a lot of cool ideas, but their 19 years haven't taught them when to suggest and when to shut up. I think it's more the drummer than the bassist, though. He's really interesting. He writes some truly beautiful stuff, and loves to use effects pedals ala Radiohead to produce some amazingly wacked-out stuff. He and Jordan are more on the ambient, atmospheric side, while the bassist is more a straight ahead rocker, and Derek is Captain Hook.

After they left we were able to get one more track done before the 10 PM curfew - that's the time I suppose my nasty neighbors from across the street will start calling the cops because of the cranked Marshall 4x12 in my garage. I tacked some moving blankets to the garage door, but it only helped a little. Don't neighbors know that you have to step on the throttle a bit to get the speakers roaring?

nothing to add Steve, just wanted to say that I'm enjoying your commentary and the story so far...
keep it coming
T

Wednesday March 22 - 6 PM Derek acoustic guitar. Used our old, trusty Yamaha acoustic that has always recorded so well for us. Derek put on some new Martin SP strings and off we went.

I set up two pair of mics in an XY, intending to choose which sounded nicest. The first was a pair of Oktava MK012s and the second a pair of MXL V67s. MKs went to N72 preamps and V67s to J99s and then straight to MOTU 2408. The V67s sounded bright and round while the Oktavas gave a more even sound. I ended up recording both pairs so we could choose at mix time which sound we liked better.

We only got one song done, mostly because Derek was being his normal anal rententive self, wanting to do take after take without any clear idea of what it was he was looking for. This band desperately needs a producer and I can't engineer and produce at the same time. When my left brain is doing the logical engineering-think my right brain deinitely takes a nap. Anybody else have that syndrome?

We took a break for dinner and to watch Lost before we finished up the song. At least we could record later than 10 PM without the neighbors from hell calling the feds.

Hi Steve:

Being a "producer" for a band of "20-nothings" should be a pretty high paying gig! But we know it is not.

My philosphy in working with artists is to direct my comments to the artist in the form of a question. The other thing I do is to let them get a bunch of takes (i.e., maybe 5 - 8) and finally say this is your last take; then we listen and decide from the takes we have.

I think part of your frustration is that the "clock" is not ticking and the wallet is not hurting (i.e., there is not sense of urgency to get the track done). There is something to be said about paying for studio time that makes the "anal retentive" mindset go to the wayside.

Remember to enjoy the process and the journey! That is what our life is really about.

It was great seeing you and Suzi the other day!

Earl

Saturday March 25 10 AM - More acoustic guitars with Derek and Jordan. Got 3 tracks done for simple a. gtr rhythm parts. Derek was having a rough time with the syncopated rhythm on "Vulnerable" (you can hear the demo version at)

http://www.songramp.com/homepage.ez?Who=Screws

I tried to give him some suggestions on how to loosen up his strum to sit better with the drummer, but he started getting a bit negative and defensive, so I encouraged him to do it the way it felt comfortable and figured on doing quite a bit of editing on it later. There were probably only 24 measures that would need correcting to get the rhythm part to swing a bit like the drummer did.

Later Jordan laid some parts and Derek started to nit-pick him the same way I did earlier! Epiphany time! Seeing your son or sons doing something you do and seeing its effect on people was a real eye-opener. I encouraged Derek to stop by telling him how I chose to stop and reminded him how it felt when he was the subject of scrutiny.

This was a step forward for all three of us. And when Jordan was having difficulty nailing a part, Derek surprised me by waiting until Jordan himself asked Derek to play it for him. Progress in the way we approach our relationships is the best progress of all.

10 AM to 4 PM - 8 hours.

Saturday April 1st, 10 AM - More acoustic and then electric guitars today. We did some acoustic guitar work throughout the past week as well.

It's been awesome to watch Derek and Jordan work their way through their opposite approaches to music.

Jordan is so spontaneous and works from a deep gut level. His lyrics and melodies are sometimes hauntingly beautiful and always evoke an emotional response. He loves the more ambient, ethereal sounds of Radiohead and he leans toward the John Lennon, edgier Beatles stuff. Unfortunately, he doesn't like to push his skills in order to improve on them, and he needs to become more disciplined in his practice habits. It will sometimes take him a dozen takes to get the part he hears in his head onto disk, and it both frustrates and embarasses him when Derek or the other guys are sitting there. Too bad it doesn't push him into some serious woodshedding. There's always hope, and he's still only 19.

Derek, on the other hand, is as logical, orderly and methodical as a musician can get. His approach is more calculated, hook oriented and disciplined, reflecting his love of Classical music and the McCartney type Beatles. He is the brother who practices and works on techniques and instruments until he gets it down, and as such his takes are usually technically excellent right from the get go. However, he often ends up second-guessing what he wants to lay down and sometimes doesn't trust his own gut-level instincts enough.

I told them today that they REALLY need each other. I think they listened.

More guitars tomorrow. Today was 10 to 4, 8 hours.

Monday April 3, 6 PM -- More lead guitar work by Derek. Band came over and brought the progress to a grinding halt as they offered so many opinions on the part he was trying to play that he finally had to ask them to leave the room so he could work.

The funniest part about all this is that he's been playing the same stuff live with them for months, but now that they can listen to what he's doing without them having to focus on what they're doing, they can nit pick. If only I had a huge, soundproof room so I could work like Albini, tracking all at once and limiting overdubs. Then everyone would be forced to concentrate on only their parts, and leave everyone else alone.

Speaking of soundproof, the neighbor from hell finally called the cops on me at about 9:30. The officer got to my house around 9:45 and shut me down. I think I may need a Demeter soundproof speaker box, or whatever the best deal is out there.

6 to 9:45 - almost 4 hours.

Tuesday/Wednesday April 4/5, 6 PM - Well, Derek suggested we put the 4x12 in my wife's closet, which is stuffed with clothes. It worked perfectly, no more noise outside the house, so no more cops at the front door and no more neighbors from hell cursing our beloved 4x12.

We did some reamping so the drummer could use the track in loop mode while he experimented with some outrageous real-time delay effects, which he has a great touch and knack to do.

However, it became apparent that the sound he was looking for was something way outside of what Derek, Dave and I were looking for. He later made a comment about maybe having someone else mix the project, and how he wanted to attend the mixing sessions. I'm not looking forward to that, especially since the sound he looks for is often very different than the sound the others in the band are looking to get.

No good deed goes unpunished.

I like the way you wrote this so far. I'm enjoying reading it.

Very cool!

evt

Thanks, it's been fun so far. The past few weeks we've continued laying guitar tracks. They like a lot of delay pedal stuff on their leads, which I hope won't be a pain in the ass to mix. The Boss Tremelo pedal was noisy as hell when Derek used it. It didn't matter for everything, but on one track the hiss was really noticable. I convinced him to record the part dry and let me use the trem effect in DP, which ended up sounding perfect.

For delay he uses the Line 6 pedal, which is cool, but some of the results have a brittleness to them that makes his Tele sound like a poke in the ear with a sharp stick. I'll have to VintageWarm them and schmutz them up a lot at mix time.

Jordan's guitar work suffers sometimes from the opposite - too dark. But the PSP Tape Saturator and Treble booster plugs work wonders. (Part of PSP's Mix collection - I recommend)

Almost done with guitars, only have 1 acoustic guitar part left and then on to keys.

It's been a while since I've posted, but not because we've been dormant. We finished the guitars and now we're tracking keyboards.

Derek has a Yamaha P60 piano that records really well, and makes a great controller for my rack synths - an old Yamaha TG55 and a Roland JV2080 with Orchestral, Vintage Synths and Piano expander boards in it. I've also got an Emu Proteus keyboards as well as a great vintage Roland JX3P with the programmer.

Recently Derek bought a real Fender Rhodes on ebay, which sounds great, but the sustain pedal causes a static/short sound when pressed, so we have to use it without the pedal. The vibrato sounds excellent on it as well.

Dave (the bassist) owns a Korg Micro thing that Jordan loves to mess with for the Radiohead type of sounds, and has laid a few nice takes with it.

Today (May 1st) Jeff (drummer) brought in his dad's ancient Yamaha CP35 electric piano, which was perfect for one of Derek's songs. We ended up putting DP's preamp plugin on it for some grunge, and it sounded great both ways - with or without it.

Tonight we began to work on vocals, actually just choosing a mic for Derek's vocals.

I set up 6 mics -

Microtech Gefell UM70s
Soundelux U99
Marshall Electronics MXL V67m
Rode NTK
AKG C4000b
BLUE Blueberry

I next took a metronome (electric) and taped a stick to it, about 6" long. I put the metronome on a music stand and took turns positioning it in front of each mic, and turning up the gain on the Yamaha 02R board mic preamps until each one read -14dbfs.

Next we took a popper stopper and put it 4 fingers in front of each mic, while Derek sang a soft passage and then a loud passage into each. The soft passage was sung a single handsbreadth from the pop thingy, the loud was 2 handsbreadths. (We call a stretched pinky to thumb a handsbreadth.)

Here are the blind listening results.

UM70s - smooth but lacking a hair of oomph on the bottom and a bit of air missing on the top.

U99 - Rich mids, nice air and full bottom.

MXL V67 - Very close to the U99, a bit less air on top, not quite as defined in the mids but damn close for $99. We actually liked this one a hair better on the soft passage.

NTK - too scooped sounding, might do well on someone with a "too forward" voice.

C4000b - too round and tubby on the bottom, with a hint of boxiness in the mids.

Blueberry - Nice, but some kind of nasalness in the mids.

It actually came down to a shootout between the U99 (my most expensive mic) and the V67m (my cheapest mic - I paid $80 when Mars Music went out of business), but the U99 did sound better, especially when Derek opened up and belted a bit.

Last night (5/16/06) we started tracking lead vocals. Soundelux U99 to J99 (Twin Servo) preamp to Fatso with 1176 type compressor, Tranny on and knocking back anywhere from 1 to 5 db. Sounds like a lot, but it was super SMOOTH. Derek put down some beautiful takes for Vulnerable and Skyscraper. More to come tonight.

5/17/06 - 7 PM more Derek lead vocals. It took about 3 hours to get through I'm Coming Down. I pushed him a bit and nagged him a bit too until he started giving some emotive performances.

Derek is a consumate entertainer. When he's on stage he can be captivating, mesmerizing, and fully engaging. But when he's in the studio he gets way too analytical and unsure of himself. It's like he has trouble just letting his instincts take over, or maybe he's thinking about what to do so hard that he loses touch with his feelings.

So I push and prod and get him a little upset and then I make him laugh at some stupid idea of mine until he finally settles into a great vocal take. Oy vey! The things we have to do for great music. No wonder the 60s and 70s were lost in a drug-induced haze.

Off until Saturday.

By the way, for anyone that has been reading this crazy stuff that is my life, you might be interested to hear the demo versions of three of the 15 songs that we are working on.

Go to my songramp.com site (in my sig) and you can listen to the old, demo versions of Vulnerable, A Room Without Walls and Likewise. The ones we're working on now are better, but the songs remain the same.

Last day for Derek's lead vocals. Finished up Where The Heart Is and Goodnight. He has become more confidant and more sure of his gut level ideas of what he wants his vocals to sound like over the last two weeks.

I messed with him a bit and tried to get him to do Goodnight from a harder edged approach, but he didn't like it, nor did the rest of the band. They wanted a softer sound, and when Derek tried it their way, he was dissatisfied. Finally he followed his instincts (which was what I've been trying to get him to do in the first place), and when he did, the sound was kind of halfway between my idea and the band's. Whatever it takes.

We ended today setting up 7 mics and auditioning Jordan on them. Jordan has a wider range of vocal stylings than Derek, and to audition mics we chose the song Divine Comedy which shows off Jordan's falsetto, soft natural voice and his belting/shouting/just-shy-of-a-scream voice too.

The setup procedure was the same as it was for Derek, using the metronome to get them all the same level, but Jordan did first a soft voice and falsetto verse at one hand span, followed by a belted chorus at two hand spans. I dropped the faders by 5db for the belt stuff as well. Here are my observations.

Rode NTK - Missing lower mids, but nice on the falsetto parts

Gefell UM70s - Airy and natural, falsetto great and good mids

Soundelux U99 - full, rich with nice air, sweetest sounding mids overall

MXL V67m - Slightly tubby lower mids, clear and full, but breaks up a bit on the louder spots

CAD E300 - clear and open with decent mids, but slight sibilence and lacking excitement

AKG C4000b - full, but tubby lows, less pleasing lows than the V67m, nice fullness on the louder parts

BLUE Blueberry - very clear, great air, pillowy sounding on the softer, up close stuff, but the louder stuff lacked fullness

Soundelux U99 won for the overall range of his vocals. I guess we'll start tomorrow or Monday.

Monday, May 22 - started Jordan's lead vocals. He did a nice job on Goodnight and Clara Can Wait. We also started on Oh Mischief and Divine Comedy.

We used the Soundelux U99 to the Seventh Circle Audio N72 (input gain 7, output at 1:00) to the Fatso (1.5 input gain, Tracking Comp, Tranny on and output 7) - rich sound.

Update:

We finished all of Jordan's lead vocals fairly uneventfully, except for one particular evening.

He seemed a bit lazy sounding, so after a couple of lame takes I asked him to get his breath up by doing sit ups and then some hopping on both feet. When his heart got pumping a little we resumed recording, and got some of the best choruses to the song.

Whatever it takes...

Next percussion, background vocals, efx and strings.