off-topics

I just spent 12 more hours in the recording studio, interrupted only by a short lunch break where Bill and i debated the merits of Britney and Christina again those of Motown girl groups. Before lunch we finally nailed down Bill’s awe-inspiring all-vocal rendition of Rusted Root’s “Send Me On My Way” in all of its glory, and afterwards we started to play with my stuff.


First on the agenda was sorting through the “Under My Skin” backing vocals from last night, which was not easy. I had to go through each set of vocals to see what parts were keepers, then decide if any of the keeper parts would interfere with each other, then mix the keeps down to a separate tape. Next came the bass, which was all fuzzy and un-bass-like. We separated it into a clean acoustic bass (which it is) and the fuzzy electric sound and mixed the two versions to separate tracks on the mixdown tape. Finally, my vocals and the guitar were mixed down as is. So, the mixdown tape now is in possession of all of the right parts, but at none of the right volumes. I made a wan attempt before leaving the studio at getting all the volumes correct into a final mix for cd, but my vocals were too low and some of Laurel’s backing parts were fuzzed over. However, the rough draft mix might be the one that gets debuted on here… we shall see.


After much UMS foolery, we moved on to recording some other things. We decided the “Bridge” from last night sucked and tried it again once before giving up. Then we recorded (mostly in a single take) “Never Say Goodbye,” “Deadweight,” “Relief,” and an obscure new song “will it ever come.” “Never Say Goodbye” was a simple thing to do, whereas “Relief” was awful. It just sounds bad. My guitar has way to much treble for the sound i like from the song, and all of my vocals sounded disinterested. Nevertheless, i finished it and recorded a second take of vocals, and then mixed the song down with the best parts from each vocal. Yummy.


“Will It Ever Come” was weird. Bill was just waiting for me to do something, so i told him i was going to attempt something new and launched into it. What’s hard for me about the song is that there’s lots of little fills on the lower strings of my guitar which i tend to be rather random about, but the vocals must follow the guitar, so i have to duet on the fly with whatever i’m playing. I somehow made it through in one take, and as we started playing it back i found myself singing along in the next octave, so we recorded that too, and now i’m starting to think the octave version is going to be the lead vocal.


Our final endeavor of the night was overdubbing on “Never Say Goodbye,” which right now features two of me, a guitar, Bill, and two pianos. I was planning on just adding my own backups, but Bill seemed to have lots of good ideas that weren’t ever going to be coming out of my mouth, so we got him behind a mic a recorded. Bill’s harmonies were too-perfect at points – pulling me into that dreaded adult-contemporary sound that i am desperately avoiding, so i’m not going to use all of them. My backgrounds mostly involved me singing non-existant harmony and cursing, but there were several pretty bits that i saved. As for the pianos… i was just fiddling with our keyboard while Bill listened to his harmony mix, and he (almost without telling me) patched my fiddling into the tape. After my first pass through we made one more just to be safe, and then called it a night (the song is in “B,” so i basically just played B and all of the sharp keys. Lovely and simple…).

Anyhow, Bill’s off on his Spring Break now, but i’ve got sole possession of the studio until Monday morning, so i’m sure i’ll be spending all of my free time within it. Which means i’ll either starve to death or have my own cd by Monday. Aww yeah.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/03/2867519/