02.21.08 We've experienced some major delays in the production of this CD. As if a year-long gap in the journal wasn't enough indication. Major, legitimate, and substantial life occurrences forced us to put the project on the back burner for almost a year. In early 2007 I jokingly told anyone who asked about a release date, “2007,” because there was no reason to think anything would keep us from finishing up probably by the summer, much less before the end of the year. While I’m now not even promising 2008, I am happy to report that we are back on track, actively working on completing the CD. Since the new year, Grant and I have been meeting weekly to make final edits and mix adjustments to the songs, and Grant has been putting much of his own time into it between our sessions. At this point, we’re enjoying the freedom of not having a deadline, and we’re making such improvements week-to-week that we’re confident the final product might even be worth the wait. To us, our progress is refreshing and motivating. To you, any detailed updates would sound dreadfully boring, because what we’re doing now is adjusting EQ on the kick drum, mixing background vocals, applying amp simulators to a slide guitar, and countless other tedious modifications that are not nearly as substantial or tangible as tracking drums and guitars. So my studio updates will not be frequent, but I hope to make an announcement very soon that the project will be in your hands in the not-too-distant future. - John 01.26.07 Who’s the slacker who hasn’t updated the studio journal since October? That would be me, your trusty drummer. My friends keep asking me when the CD will be finished. Early on I had been saying Fall 2006, so they expect it to be done any day now. Well, not so much, but I can guarantee a 2007 release! RLB took a nice rest during October and November for Rachel to take care of wedding-related business (ie: get married, go on a honeymoon, move into a new apartment with her husband.) At the beginning of that break we recorded keyboards with our friend Adrian Duke, who also played on Something Human. Mostly, though, we just enjoyed the time off. Indeed it’s the longest break the band has taken in over 6 years. Then December was here and all the holidays kept us distracted until the new year when we realized we have no dates on the books and we have a new CD to pay for! So we’ve been plugging away at every band’s favorite task; booking. Meanwhile Grant and I (but mostly Grant) have been chipping away at editing the songs. We worked on A Thousand Things last night, and it is sounding great! I mean great! I’m excited to start making some serious progress now and have the tracks mixed by, dare I say, the end of February? We’ll see how that goes, but I think once we get into the swing of things the songs will start coming together pretty quickly. Until then, keep buying copies of Something Human so we can pay for this thing! 10.19.06 Sorry for the lull between updates. We’ve been slowly chipping away at some of the nitty-gritty of recording – bouncing tracks from one hard drive to another and making some edits. Ok, we’ve also been enjoying a little break from the project. Rachel has been making final wedding plans and moving into an apartment. Scott’s been repairing guitars like it’s going out of style. (Look him up if your axe isn’t in top condition – the man does it all!) I just found some new motivation to get back into home improvements and I’ve been working with Grant on some non-RLB studio projects. Last night, however, we were back at it full force. The whole gang gathered in the studio for Scott to recorded a 12-string guitar on Fiddler. Did you know our kick-ass bass player is also a kick-ass guitar player? Scott came up with a cool part that adds just the right touches to each section of the tune. We’ll have guest musicians over soon to add keys, banjo, slide guitar, and who-knows-what-else to our project. Stay tuned. 09.20.06 What a fun night! I love tracking guitars – dialing in the right tone and creating the perfect texture of strums. Scott brought in his Telecaster and Rivera amp. We added some electric to Jacket Pocket and Good and Bad, which were all acoustic up to that point. What a difference the new guitars make! They boost the energy and make the background vocals fall right into place. Fiddler is the only other acoustic guitar song, and we decided it shall remain electric-free. Lastly, we added a few embellishments to So It’s Everything. Speaking of which, So It’s Everything is turning into quite the challenge. We’ve having trouble making the lead vocal all it can be, after recording two versions on two different occasions. So we’ll try a third next week. 09.13.06 We are almost done tracking background vocals. Scott and I are singing on this record! Last time around (Something Human) we had Rachel sing all the parts with beautiful results. This time we’re trying something else. Sometimes it sounds grittier, sometimes it sounds fuller, but it will definitely make for a noticeably different sound, overall. I humbly report that we have recorded some seriously cool vocal parts! Big energy, big sound. We now face the challenge of adapting those parts to our live show. Tonight we’re back in the studio for some additional vocals and final electric guitar overdubs. 08.16.06 Well, we wrapped lead vocals the other night. "Wrap" is a film term, but I like to use it because I feel it adds grandeur to our project. Try saying it, "That's a wrap!" See what I mean? Put some gusto on it -- really project your voice. You can use it anywhere, too. Step out of the shower, "That's a wrap on my shower!" Or finish a turkey sandwich, "That's a wrap on the turkey sandwich! It was delicious!" Fun, isn't it? It's fancier than saying, "Rachel's done singin'." I took time to listen to all our rough mixes and made copious notes on percussion parts. So when we started recording percussion last night I was ready! I borrowed a bunch of percussion gear from my reliable and generous source -- you know, shakers, tambourines, cabasa, maracas, cowbell. That's right, America's iconic percussion instrument just happened to fit into a song. We're moving right along. Trying not to worry if we're over-doing it at this stage, since we can always take it out later. But it's really easy to put tambourine on everything. It's like the ranch dressing of percussion instruments. 08.04.06 Greetings faithful readers! We're making progress on vocals, after taking most of July off. Rachel has now tracked the lead vocal on seven songs, making us more than half way there. 06.29.06 So much to report. Ok, not really, but I’ll give you the low-down. We finished acoustic guitars. It took no time at all. We tracked Good and Bad and Jacket Pocket, which feature the acoustic as the primary guitar, on June 22. We threw some cords and strums on various tracks like Don’t Wake Me. Fingertip fatigue postponed work on Fiddler until last night. That put a wrap on acoustic guitars for now. With so much time left last night, Rachel started on vocals. Good and Bad was the first to get the treatment. It sounds great. Vocals and acoustic guitars were recorded in the “amp room”, a spare bedroom with the mattress and box spring leaned up against the wall to create a dead space. You’d never guess we didn’t rent a pricey studio. Unless you’ve read my studio journal. I promise some pictures soon. 06.08.06 We pretty much finished electric guitars the other night, June 6. Scott showed up with another amp, a 1963 Fender Bassman. (Wow, is that a different sound than the other amps we’ve used so far.) In the Stars and Video Killed the Radio Star are now crossed off the list. Acoustic guitars are next, but once those are laid down we’ll do some touch-ups with electrics here and there. We’ll start on acoustics after taking a week off to tour the north east. 06.02.06 Two more down. Last night we tracked guitars on Don’t Wake Me and In Translation. Don’t Wake Me starts with an ethereal and gentle guitar and vocal. The rest of the band erupts halfway through the song for an anthemic finish. It demands an attentive audience, so we don’t play it all too often live, but it really comes to life in the studio. It provided a perfect opportunity to try out a trick I’ve had in mind for a while; mic’ing the strings of the electric guitar. (Normally you just mic the amp.) We set up a second mic in the room with Rachel and the effect was spectacular. Mixed in right, the string noise adds a percussive brightness to the track. I’ll definitely keep that in my bag of tricks. In Translation is one of our favorite live tunes. It’s up-beat, melodic, energetic, and fun. The catchy bass riff could get stuck in your head for days. The guitar part is rhythmic and tight, so after a single track of the PRS through the Fender we were pretty much finished. It sounded great and definitely didn’t need a bunch of overdubs. We hit it once more with the SG through the Goldtone, and that was pretty much it. 06.01.06 Grant and I took a few minutes before Rachel arrived last night to finish a short drum section on A Thousand Things. It’s a 4 measure section during the second verse where the bass stops and I play a hip-hop style beat. When we tracked the regular drums on the song I left that section blank so I could go back and play a different kit. I used my 20” Ludwig kick drum almost entirely unmuffled for a real “tubby” sound. The snare is a custom 6.5” x 14” maple shell (also unmuffled except for a small piece of tape). I played rimshots right on the edge of the head for a bright and ringy “pop”. The only other piece was my old A Zildjian hi hats – really light and trashy. It took longer to get the sounds right than it did to play the part, but it should be well worth it in the final mix. Just as I predicted! Rachel flew through Come Away With Me and Firefly. We’re getting comfortable with various guitar tones, so it takes almost no time at all to select the right combination. We wrapped up the two songs in under three hours. Firefly is so cool. It’s a really mellow song. The riff is delicate, so I wanted a warm and full tone to carry it without sounding fragile. The neck pickup of Rachel’s PRS Santana running through the clean Goldtone was ideal. I describe the riff as “call and answer” because the second half repeats the first half with a little extra embellishment. To add some shimmer to the warm tone, we recorded the SG through the clean channel of the Fender Deluxe just on the “answer” part of the riff. Subtle indeed, but very pretty. I’ll think you’ll like it. 05.31.06 Last night was a productive one. Rachel laid down guitars on So It’s Everything and A Thousand Things. Scott, injured finger and all, was with us and helped dial in some great tones on the various amps and guitars. Now that the entire fleet of gear is available, we’ll go back tonight and finish up Firefly and Come Away With Me, which we started on the first day with only one amp and one guitar. We listened to them last night and they sound really good, but need some more depth. Scott had a guitar repair accident the other night, sending a chisel through his finger tip. A visit to the hospital and 6 stitches later, he now sports a nice fat bandage on his left pointer. Lucky for us we have a few days off from gigs. A full recovery is expected, along with a stern lecture on shop safety. 05.26.06 Slow but steady progress on the guitars. We tracked a couple songs last week and Awkward last night. Shuffled up the amps and instruments and acheived some really nice sounds on the Fender Deluxe and Gibson Goldtone amps. Here's hoping we can speed this process up a bit. 05.10.06 Celebrate! Basic tracking is FINISHED! Grant and I met in the studio (my house) at our usual time last night, right after work. We listened through all the material and decided the band should re-cut Good & Bad and A Thousand Things. It was mostly issues with tones that we wanted to correct. Thousand was the first song we recorded, and while there were no real problems with it, the drums were sounding a lot better by the end of the sessions, so I wanted to capture some of those great tones on such an energetic song. The snare on Good & Bad wasn't doing it for us and there were some less-than-perfect drum fills. We ended up slowing down G&B just a tiny bit on the retake to help with the feel. Presto, the last of the album tracks were done. Then we blasted through Video on the second take. I can't tell you how pleased I am with the sound of my birch DWs. They were an eBay acquisition as of last November. Maple is the most common wood used in custom drums, but these birch shells absolutely sing! They have much more attack and they're louder than my Workshop Series DWs. The toms record beautifully. We think they won't need any EQ during mixing. So nice. Next up, Grant and I will run drum sub-mixes to free up some space on our 16-channel console for guitar tracks. The drums recorded to 10 tracks, so we’ll mix them down to stereo to make room for Rachel. Let the fun begin! 05.09.06 We’ve accomplished a lot since the last update. On Tuesday May 2 we tracked Don’t Wake Me and So It’s Everything. I so badly want to give descriptions of these songs, but that's really hard to do, so you'll just have to wait to hear them in a couple months. Due to scheduling conflicts later in the week, we decided to record some scratch tracks on Wednesday and then record basic tracks on top of them on Friday – like we did for Something Human, as I mentioned in the previous entry. Wednesday went fine, then Scott and I tried playing to the songs on Friday and realized the feel just wasn’t there because the tempos were off. That wasn’t the case for Firefly and Fiddler, which felt excellent and we were able to wrap up quickly. But In the Stars, Awkward, and a cover of Video Killed the Radio Star were dragging. I was disappointed to lose some studio time, but shortcuts can backfire sometimes. We’ll write it off as a learning experience. The whole band reconvened last night, Monday May 8, and we nailed Stars, Awkward, and Jacket Pocket. It was a high-energy night. Now that basic tracking is pretty much finished, I’m finally getting comfortable again with playing to a click. Tonight we’ll listen to everything we’ve recorded so far, and re-cut anything that doesn’t hold up. I really don’t anticipate any song in particular not feeling right, but I’m pleased to have the opportunity to take another shot at anything that isn’t perfect. We’ll also work on VKtRS, which we plan to release as a B-side or maybe as a digital download, but will not be on the CD. We’re all very excited with how everything is sounding. Everyone is coming up with ideas for guitar sounds and vocal parts. I can’t believe we could be working on guitars by next week! 05.01.06 I finally found some time before Friday’s session to make notes about what drumset pieces I want to play for each song. We tracked In Translation, Good & Bad, and Come Away With Me. Rather uneventful, really. Each one took the typical few takes. This project is coming together differently than Something Human. For Som Hum Rachel recorded vocal and guitar “scratch” tracks to a metronome that we had no intention of keeping, but could use as a guide for the other tracks. Then I recorded all the drum tracks alone over two days. This time we’re tracking “live,” with all the band members playing in the same room. The idea is to capture the feel of the band playing together, but we’re still playing to a click which is not the most comfortable thing for me. I often find myself playing along with the click instead of with the song. Some of the intricacies of my live performance are unfortunately lost due to concentrating on the click. But I devised a new plan that will hopefully help overcome that. From now on we’ll play a practice run through the song with no click, to put the natural feel of the song in my head. We track more on Tuesday, so I’ll let you know if the plan works! 04.26.06 Welcome to studio blog update number one. Where to begin. Ah yes, the beginning. Grant (Rutledge, our producer and engineer for the past three RLB projects, starting with the Page 102/Walk Away single) and I worked Sunday and Monday to build a recording studio in my house. Maybe "assemble" is more accurate than "build." Anyway, we have a ton of gear and a whole lot of cables running every which way. The drums are set up in the basement. The guitar amp is buried behind some unused subwoofers and a futon to keep the sound from bleeding into the drum mics. The bass amp, also in the basement, runs up the wall to the bass cabinet in a bedroom upstairs. Down the hall is the control room, formerly my unused family room, mid-renovation. (I'm very happy to have an excuse for not actively working on that room.) Our first tracking session just ended. The neighbors didn't call the cops. We'll consider that a success! We wrapped up just after 11pm. That's polite, right? I must admit that I'm entering this studio project less prepared than usual. I like to have all the songs well rehearsed, and know exactly what drums and cymbals I'm playing on each song. For a live show you just play the drumset you're sitting behind, and hopefully all the pieces sound good on all the tunes. But in the studio you can trade out snare drums, different size bass drums, various cymbals, numbers of toms, and so on, so that each piece sounds PERFECT for the song. Tonight I was making it up as I went along. I'm not comfortable with that, for whatever reason. Perhaps mostly because it wastes quality studio time to keep switching out pieces on a trial and error basis. Nevertheless, we had a good session. We launched into A Thousand Things right off the bat, and nailed it within a few takes. Four I think. Cool. By the way, everything is sounding excellent. We record scratch guitar and vocal tracks that we'll later replace, so by "everything" I really mean drums and bass, although Rachel's scratch work is bar none! Next came Good and Bad. A couple times through and I decided it would sound better with a different kick drum, and I wasn't thrilled with the snare, so we moved on to In Translation. In Trans is a little tricky, because it has three distinctly different feels and a complicated tom/kick/snare bridge part on top of that. We came really close after a few takes (2 whole takes and 2 flubs) but our efforts to be good neighbors meant it was time to close up the shop for the night. We'll pick up there next time, and maybe, just maybe, I'll show up more prepared and feeling ready to conquer these tunes in the maniacally precise way that I hope to.