Something Human studio journal 08. DONE! 05.24.04 The final CD has arrived and is available now! Thank you to the many people who helped with this project; they are listed in the CD liner notes. I am very proud of the final product, and we're already receiving tremendous compliments from the first round of listeners. Hear samples of all the songs and purchase your copy from the merch page. See you on the road! 07. KEYS & MIXING 03.18.04 The talented Adrian Duke lent his musicianship to the project with outstanding organ and keyboard performances on several songs. I'll leave the specific details a surprise for your ears when you hear the final mix. But I will say that Adrian -- who sings, writes, and plays for the band Grady's Hat -- injected a heavy dose of soul via Hammond organ and Fender Rhodes electric keyboard. Grant recommended Adrian and arranged the session. It was precisely what the project needed. The keys add an extra dimension that really put the icing on the cake for a couple songs. I feel like every time I report the progress of the CD to friends and family I say, "You're going to be blown away"... Well, yet again, you are! In related news, most of the mixing is done! The songs sound so big. Jaws are going to drop. Fans of The Path should be seated before hitting the play button. Grant and I spent two twelve-hour days mixing four songs each day. We're pleased with our efficiency and thrilled with the results. We're back at it this weekend for another 12 hours. After that... the home stretch. It won't be long now. 06. VOCALS: DONE! 02.17.04 Vocals are done! Rachel laid down her final tracks tonight. Her vocal performance on this CD is out of this world. And soon I'll be able to prove it to you! It's been a while since my last update. It's not that we haven't been working hard, it's that there's little to report when you spend the night singing, re-peating, writing harmonies, and singing more. I'm very happy with the way the vocals work with the songs. We put a lot of great harmonies on some parts, but we also let the delicate texture of a single voice carry the song where needed. If you're used to our live sound, you're going to be pleasantly surprised by the new depth to these songs. All that's left is some keyboard on a few songs, and then the mix down. An April release is looking realistic. 05. PERCUSSION 12.12.03 Percussion is done! After sessions Thursday and Friday nights I am able to put another X on the chart. I played tambourines, 2 sets of wind chimes, cymbal swells and scrapes, vibraslap, vibraphone, maracas, cabasa, congas, shaker, triangle, finger cymbals, and even a glass bottle. It went great. I have a renewed respect for tambourine players. Laugh all you want, that is one tricky little instrument! Like anything else, though, with a little practice I started to get the hang of it. By the time we were all done with it, I was pretty much warmed up. From now on I’ll try to work a tambourine practice session into my weekly routine. Yeah, sure. The vibraphone was another challenge. It’s in the same family as the xylophone. I promise you’ve heard it a million times and probably didn’t know what it was. It’s in almost every TV commercial. I really wanted to capture its unique sound for the intro to Stupid. However, it’s more like a piano than a drumset, and I don’t play the piano. So I wrote a simple part and got my hands on a set of vibes. After a few minutes of memorizing the notes, and several takes, I rattled off a rather competent performance. Who am I kidding? It’s awesome. Exactly like I imagined! Definitely one of the highlights of the project. We’ll be hitting vocals hard starting this week. Could we really be so close to finishing? 04. RACHEL'S UPDATE 11.20.03 At last, I am here and able to share my experiences in the studio with you all. I apologize for my absence. It's been pretty hectic these days with studio, shows, school, and work. Whew... that's a lot! Guitar tracks went well -- creating new riffs and perfecting old ones was tedious, yet productive. Playing lead parts was a tad bit out of the norm for me but it definitely added a lot to the music. Being a three-piece band it can be hard sounding like a five-piece so guitars are pretty important in filling the void. Aside from the guitars I own, I've always had an interest in Gibson Les Paul models. (With the gracious generosity of Steve Gohlke I was able to rock hard on a vintage Les Paul. Thanks Steve!) In the past I always had aspirations of owning one, but I never had the money to purchase nor the strength to hold it up. Those are heavy! Anyway, with the guitar, bass, and drums tracks already down now comes the fun stuff – vocals. Working in the studio it is always a challenge to exude strong emotions through speakers. Think about it – watching a performer on stage it's easy to see the passion they are performing with. Now try putting that passion on tape with close to perfect notes. So much emotion is put into singing. That's why it's great. I've never thought highly of my voice, especially when heard so clear and concise in the studio, but I sure do like using it to piece the music together. Tonight was yet another successful session. We worked on vocals to Carpe Diem and, boy, did it make the song complete! Harmonizing with myself is definitely an oddity in contrast to my past experiences. At typical vocal sessions I tend to expand my range and learn more about the possibilities of my voice. Interesting. John and Grant have been working great together to make this project the best. Daniel was there tonight and he has definitely kept me in good spirits with his support. Melissa J. even joined us to show some love! (Thanks for taking time to join us guys!) Even without hearing the record many of you have showed mucho support on this project. Just taking the time to hear my ramble means a lot to me. Thank you and we appreciate your patience and guarantee you the wait will be worth it! Signing off until next time... Rachel 03. MAJOR PROGRESS 11.04.03 We made major progress tonight. Guitar tracking is very near completion. We finished up with the Marshall amp. (Thanks Pete and Jeremy for lending the gear!) The high gain works great on heavier tunes like Wonderful, but we also found plenty of use for the vintage-sounding gain of the “clean” channel. It’s very warm, and not too crunchy, so it complements acoustic guitars very well. We used that sound to fatten up From Her to Him, with great results. Rachel blasted through Stupid, Wonderful For You, From Her to Him, and Grip. We hadn’t touched Stupid since recording the bass over a month ago. Listening to the old tracking is like finding money in a jacket pocket. You feel pleasantly surprised and a little proud. Similarly, we tracked most of the electrics on Grip a while ago through Rachel’s Fender amp, and it sounded great so the final touches with the Marshall didn’t take long at all. We should be finished with guitars after one more session. Progress feels good! At the beginning of the project, for the sake of studio precision, we decided to record as many songs as possible to a click track, or metronome. Certain styles of music, or even particular songs, don’t benefit from the accuracy of a click, but during our pre-studio rehearsals we were able to find tempos to satisfy all 13 songs. Some of the tunes required sampling a click track with more than one tempo, like Cape Diem and Stupid, which start with quieter, slower intros before kicking you in the pants. It’s not always easy to drop a click track into a song. There are subtle tempo changes that occur naturally during almost any song played live. Recording to a click can be quite challenging, if not frustrating. You can be playing a song right – the way you’ve always played it, the way it was written – but that little click may have a different opinion. So as if to add to the complexity of recording, you have to re-learn the feel of the song. At the beginning of the project, right before recording my drum parts, I practiced frantically with a metronome to ensure that the subtle changes required to accommodate the click would not feel forced. I had two days to record the drums for all thirteen songs. It wasn’t as hectic as I thought it would be. We’re recording entirely digital, so -- not to give away too many secrets -- the digital domain offers a good opportunity to fix little problems that you would otherwise have to play perfect onto analog tape. Digital won’t make a bad musician good, but it will save you some time trying to be perfect. But the analog vs. digital debate is a topic for another time. 02. MARSHALLS ROCK 10.21.03 It's good to know people. You see, unfortunately we're not one of those bands with loads of cool gear stockpiled in our basements and garages. Old, vintage tube amps and exotic percussion instruments collecting dust in their road-worn cases; that's not us. Sure we have some good stuff, just not a lot of it. So when it comes time to record we have to hit the phones and beg the cool gear from our cool friends. Tonight we were graced with a Marshall JCM900 guitar amp and a JCM800 Lead cabinet sourced from two such individuals. Yes, even the Les Paul was on loan from a third. To me, it was like heaven. There is nothing like the sound of a Marshall, and to have that tone on some of our tracks now... let's just say I'm very pleased. We tracked some more of Drive, Carpe Diem, and Something Human. The new guitar sounds really help to bring out the vocals on Drive which we recorded a couple weeks back. It was another night of great progress. Daniel was there with his camera. Check out some of our action shots. That's Grant at the computer. 01. STUDIO UPDATE 10.08.03 Hi friends. John here. The studio project is coming along great! I'm having trouble containing my enthusiasm even as I write this. Recording is a painstaking process, but the results are well worth the effort. At this point the drums and bass are long since finished, and we're actively chipping away at the guitar and vocal tracks. That means Rachel is working extra hard these days. She continues to impress us with her chops and voice. Given that RLB has only one guitar player, we've been writing new guitar parts in the studio to add more depth and excitement to the songs. Rachel just rattles them off like the pro that she is. It's very cool to hear a tune grow from the bare bones three-piece arrangement that we play live, to a complex, stereophonic fiesta of sounds. I could do this every day. So, while Rachel sings and plays, I have the privilege of assisting Grant Rutledge with production and engineering. We work very well together. Sometimes I even get the feeling that I know what I'm doing... if only briefly. Scott has even been making the drive from Williamsburg to support the studio efforts. It's great to have the whole band together to kick around ideas. We've been hitting the studio on various nights at random intervals, missing an occasional week here or there due to hurricanes and scheduling conflicts. So it's not entirely accurate to say that this CD is on the fast track to being finished. It is however sounding - by far - like the most incredible thing RLB has ever done. And it's going to strike fear in the hearts of other, less worthy CDs. Allow me to try to illustrate this point. If you've heard us play Carpe Diem live, you've hopefully felt the excitement and energy that comes across in that song. Ok, now pretend that killer live version of Carpe Diem is a cup of coffee. Actually, pretend it is a cup of lukewarm, street vendor decaf. Now, the studio version is a piping-hot double shot of espresso from that expensive coffee boutique. I'm talking about quality; energy; and several other things that can only be expressed by strange noises and the accompanying facial expressions. It's going to be BIG!