Day Thirteen - Twenty Six

MWM

This here is my tracking face. Whenever a member of the band is recording, it is important to keep quiet, and to analyse the track as it is being born. Hmmmm....... YES!!!

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Day Thirteen - Twenty Six (Vocal Tracking II)

Biiilllllllllllll

More from the vocal tracking sessions.

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Day Thirteen - Twenty Six (Bass Tracking)

Bass Tracking - Drum Maintainence

Sometimes at the studio we multitask. During this Bass tracking session for "Message from Headquarters" and "Sparrow," Tyson was giving his floor tom a face-lift.

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Tyson - Critical Listening

Critical Listening

This is always the defining moment of any "yeah... umm.. yeah... I think that might be 'the One'" take.

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Drum Tracking with Tyson

Drum Tracking with Tyson

We continued with drum tracking for "Message from Headqurters" and "Sparrow." "Message" has two separate drum parts, which adds to the dynamics of the tune.

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Day Thirteen - Twenty Six (Vocal Tracking)

Bill in the Booth

Throughout the last few months Bill and I have been at "The Studio" (it's name only when I'm recording, otherwise it is "The Space"). We've been ironing out the vocal parts for these first 4 songs, making sure the man's got enough rest, and that he isn't hoarse from a late night at a gig, etc...

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Ed's Special tracking sessions

Ed's Listen Back

Since Ed had busted his teeth when we were recording the first few songs, the other horn guys had to fill in for him. The man plays a pivotal role in the band, and demanded to be heard, so we re-tracked his parts once his new chompers were in blowing order.

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Blog-reader's Wilson Fix

Wil

In case you missed Wilson, here's a new pic of him touching his instrument from the Basic Tracking sessions fro "Message from Headquarters" and "Sparrow".

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Day Thirteen - Twenty Six (II)

The Snake, The Trap

Drums were then recorded for "Message from Headquarters"

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Day Thirteen - Twenty Six

Horn Panorama

Sorry to all blog readers. I've been busy like stupidness and have had to put ye olde blog on the back burner for a few months. Here are a few pics to quench your thirsty reading eyes. First here is a panorma of our follow-up horn session for 7th Kind's "Message from Headquarters" and "Sparrow"

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Day Twelve: Basic Tracks- "Sparrow" & "Message From Headquarters"

Rough Tracking Panorama

The recording sessions for 7th Kind's "Space Vacation" and "Job 40:8" are complete (except for a very small Alto Sax part on Space Vacation)! So, we're moving on to the Next two tracks:

"Sparrow" & "Message from Headquarters"

These first 4 tracks together are bound to be a really fitting representation of the bredth of the 7th Kind sound, so Bill is planning on putting together a promo/demo of the tracks for submission to record labels and the like.

We began our session at 7pm with the full band setup in the space: one mike for drums, one form trumpets, one for french horn, one for saxi, one for bass an done for guitar. We're leaving vocals out as we did with the first two tracks.

One take took care of "Message from Headquarters," the most dynamic of these songs so far.

After a couple of attempts with "Sparrow," we decided to skip the basic tracking and just build the song up from the drums. The issue was with the click track. Bill and Tyson had written some tempo changes into the song (one section in 13/16 or something). Tyson was playing along to the click track which Bill had exported from his notation program and some newer sections were missing, not to mention that there is some serious complexity to the changes and recording each part alone would probably get us th ebest results.
PS- CHECK OUT THE KILLER BAND PANORAMA!!! CLICK THE IMAGE TO VIEW THE LARGER SIZE.

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Day Eleven: Vocal Re-Hash

Vocal Take

There are two possible opposing extremes to the tightness of a performance, sloppy and sterile. The best work seems to be some combination of the two, meeting somewhere in the middle. Upon reviewing the vocal tracks Bill and I had captured a couple weeks ago. I decided that though he is in time, pitch, etc... we had lost the nuance and immediacy that comes with a real, honest, natural performance. We had become to sergical in the process. So, I decided we needed to come back to the songs with more energy and just go at it without all the technical preoccupations. So, I headed off to 7th Kind's Space at 10am. All went well and we captured quite a few tkes to choose from. I will probably end up using a combination of the earlier takes and the new, energized takes for the final mixes.

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AJ Sax Solo

AJ in the Hangar

When the horns were done, AJ showed up to trakc his Sax solo. This solo is not written in the chart, so AJ improvises it each time 7th Kind play live. The crowd always loves the hell out of it, and I think everyone gets the sense of immediacy from his solos being so off-the-cuff. Being that this is an improvised thing I had an idea that the recording might take a few shots. AJ would undoubtedly want to come up with his perfect version of the solo. So, 54 takes later, we had the Sax solo to end all Sax solos. We had also planned on tracking the final section of the alto sax part, but 1 1/2 hours of solo playing left AJ with a "Blown Lip." Next Time! (The solo is amazing by the way).

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Day Ten: Trumpet Soli

Trumpet Glis

Today is slated to be the final recording session for 7th Kind's "Space Vacation" and "Job 40:8." Of course these things never go exactly to plan and there will be at least one more session to finish off a sax part that was left undone.
At 8pm, Eric and Ed (who I had not recorded up until now, due to his broken front teeth) arrived to record the trumpet soli for "Job 40:8." I set everything up as i had in previous trumpet section with the AT4040 and the Ribbon mic in a spaced pair configuration about 6 feet in front of the players. All went well and everything was taken care of in 7 takes.

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More Mic's = More Better

More Mic's = More Better

We continued on to record Bill's vocals. To start, I set up all of the mics I thought would be suitable for vocals - AT 4040, MXL V67g, Rode NT1A, and AKG 3000. Bill's wife karyn stopped by and also helped us decide that the AT4040 was the best suited to Bill's vocal. It wasn't to harsh, and had just enough mid's to make the sound full.

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Day Nine: Guitar and Vocal Tracking

Bill Tuning Up

Today I started out recording guitar with Bill. We used his Marshall amp and placed it in the front room of the space with an sm57, AKG C1000, and the T.Bone Ribbon mic for the room. After a few takes and some listening, I found (surprisingly) that I preferred the AKG to the sm-57 for this guitar and amp. So, for the final mixes i will be using a blend of the AKG with the Ribbon mic for some room sound.

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7th Kind Live at the Beat Kitchen

7th Kind Live at the Beat Kitchen

Awesom show! Great venue. Upon first listen, you'd think you would want to dance to 7th kind's music, but I gave it a try with my girlfriend and I have yet to learn how to dance along to tempo and time signature changes, so we ended up looking like dumbasses on the dance floor. I guess the musical energy is best absorbed and expressed through irratic convulsing, because that seemed to work alright.

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Day Eight: The Sef on Bass

The Sef

John arrived at 8pm as planned and I had been setup to go for about an hour. It's always best to have too much time that not enough. So we immediately got the bass plugged in and the Sef began warming up.

Mic'd Bass Amp

I Isolated the bass amp up in the front room of 7th Kind's space, so John and I could monitor the sound in the main room through the NS-10 monitors instead of headphones. It's best to tweak the sounds through montiro speakers rather than headphones if possible, emulating the final mix as accurately as you can. I used the same basic setup as I had previously on our first day of bass recording: a beyer dynamic M-88 off axis the speaker cone and a direct out of the amp. Both channels went through the Sytek pre amps 1&2.

Action Photo - The Sef

Unlike our last bass recording session, both John and I had more than enough time to spend getting the performance and the tone right for these tracks, 7th Kind's "Job 40:8" and "Space Vacation." The first time around we were also attempting to record drums in the same night. That was a major misjudgement, as drum tracking can take a very long time. It felt like the bass recording was just crammed in.

So I had John play along with "Job 40:8" while I went back and forth between the 2 rooms tweaking the settings on the bass amp and adjusting the microphone. He actually brought 2 basses in as well, a 60's Fender Jazz Bass with flat wound strings and a hybrid Jazz style bass with standard steel strings wrapped in nylon. We opted for the bass with the nylon strings as it had a nice natural, almost upright bass tone. In the end, we only did about 6 takes total for both songs and got a nice rounded bass sound, with just enough mids, and a great performance - the most important element in any recording.
We both discussed our dislike for much of the intense synthetic polish of 80's bass tracks, and make sure to avoid that at all costs. The nylon strings helped quite a bit. There is a fine line between clarity on a bass track and that cheeez tone.

The Sef was kind enough to give me a ride home. We listended to Don Byron's jazzy clarinet Klezmer music, discussed the music scene in Chicago, the midwest attitude, my upright bass and live music experience, and stupid and/or elitist people and the shameful need to realize they exist and talk about them. Next week: an all-day session with vocals and guitar!

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Leave the Mic, Take the Canoli

Fiore's Deli

After a beautiful tour through downtown, I made it to 7th Kind's space at around 4pm. Drummer Tyson was there working with Bill's sister on her clothing design buisiness. She maintains the space in the front of the building as one of her studios.

I had become intensly hungry on the trip over, so I decided to head over to Fiore's Italian Deli around the corner and get a Italian Beef sandwich (again). They're amazing. I also had to grab a chocolate canoli, since I've been craving one of those bastards for more that a month. The whole experience was blissful. I sat outside in the warm pre-summer sun and munched. I also bought some fresh basil, my secret weapon when it comes to recording bass, which was what I was doing for this session. No I don't smoke it.

Before John Sefner, 7th Kind's bassist, arrived I was planning on resolving some old issues I'd been having, and making headphone mixes for the session. Since I've been having endless troubles with the timestamps on many of the takes that I've been transfering to my Pro Tools system, I decided to arrive a bit early and solve the problem. To reiterate what I explained before, any take that does not begin at 00:00:00:00 is importing at the wrong point on the timeline in my system. I figured the best way to take care of the issue was to make guide tracks that would start at 00:00:00:00 (using "bounce to disk") for all of the overdubs. Then I could import each guide track, and visually match up the actual overdubbed take next to it with perfect accuracy. Then I'd just delete the guide track once everything was lined up. There were only about 6 guide tracks that I needed to make, so it didn't take too long. I later tested my theory at home and discovered that it worked perfectly. I realize there ought to be a more sophisticated method for sharing files between Digital Performer and Pro Tools, but the few methods suggested by the manuals didn't work, so i'll be investigating other avenues further as we continue on with the 7th kind album.

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