Song A Day 2011: 2/24/2011

We're in the home stretch! I'm wiped out. Here are some more notes on the latest recordings.

Halfway Through Song A Day: 2/16/2011

Nothing much to say about this straightforward recording of acoustic guitar and voice. The lyrics worked out to two lines of mention for each of the nine participants. If we had just one more participant - or one less - it wouldn't have worked. Got lucky on that one.

C1: 2/17/2011

My venture into pure Electronica. I did the bulk of sequencing in Reason and added some more tracks in Cubase, with all Reason sounds being merged into Cubase via ReWire.

At this point of the month, I was feeling burned out on writing pop songs and struggling to sing them. This track helped to recharge my batteries.

Could It Be Meat?; 2/18/2011

Another simple, one-off acoustic + vox recording. I wrote this one while sitting in Taco Bell.

2/19/2011

I took a break this day. Just too worn out to even think about recording

Long Way to Anaheim: 2/20/2011

I came back full force with this one. Used a nice blend of Miroslov low legato strings and mellotron strings. Still struggling with getting a good bass sound. There's no easy answer to it. I just have to try different things - play with amp settings, graphic EQ stompbox settings, moving mic around (aimed at center of cone or off to the side? closer or further way?) and mixdown effects such as 1176 compression and multi-band compressor, plus EQ.

Here Come the Vegans: 2/21/2011

I absolutely LOVE this song. Just two guitars (Jay Turner and Les Paul into Tremolux through graphic EQ - nothing else) with the usual two mic setup (U87 on bottom speaker and Senheiser 906 on top speaker). Had lots of problems with tuning the Jay Turner. It just cannot be tuned. I noticed that the 906 gets a thin, strident sound and the U87 picks up some muddy, woolly signals. When combined through the multi-band compressor, it usually results in a decent recording. But I'm not satisfied with this approach. Next time, I'll swap mics and see what happens.

For the life of me, I couldn't get a good bass sound. I worked on it for hours, but never achieved what I heard in my head. Used tons of EQ/compression/multi-band, etc to forge a usable sound out of it. Blech.

Had fun singing this one. Finally got a decent vocal performance. I was hoarse the next day after singing the high-pitched la-las at the end.

For the drums, I used the U87 in place of the SM81 for the overhead, simply because I couldn't get enough beef out of the SM81 for this tune. I think it worked ok. The U87 doesn't pick up cymbals as nicely as the SM81, but it captures more of the body of the drum kit. There are some insane drum fills on this one, particularly near the end. I'm proud of the drum performance overall.

2/22/2011

Took a break from recording and just worked on remixing Here Come the Vegans. Spent 2+ hours on the remix, but not satisfied with the results.

What Do Ghosts Like to Do? 2/23/2011

I close mic'd the Martin guitar and played fingerstyle. Also sang VERY close into the mic and used a lot of compression. Threw on a spooky organ from Reason and that was it. This one came out very nice and spacious.

Afterward, finalized the mix for Here Come the Vegans and uploaded it. I think it's better than previous efforts.