Recording report: 3/25/09

Some new recording activity to report on today. Daryl finished all his backup vocals last night and Dave added extra percussion to “Don’t Look Down.” That means 5 of the 7 songs are completely tracked and ready to mix.

Daryl did backup vocals for “Pretend,” “The Stranger in You,” and “Catch and Release.” He has a deep voice and thus provides the bass anchor on choruses and other places where we do 4-part vocal arrangements. There are actually a lot of places throughout these songs where all four people in the band who sing (Lexi, Jen, Daryl, and me) are all singing at once - more than I thought. There is a lot of singing on this CD in general - I think that’s going to be one of the main impressions people will have right away when they hear the finished product. It already sounds quite striking in the raw, unmixed tracks. We're definitely a singing kind of band. Some bands are shy about singing. Not us!

“Pretend” only has Daryl singing on two lines in the bridge, so that took about a minute. “Stranger” features Daryl’s voice solo on the second verse and then all the choruses from that point on. He hasn’t been singing on the choruses when we’ve played the song live, so we had to take a minute and figure out exactly what his part is. We determined that it’s basically a mirror of Lexi’s part, an octave lower. Daryl picked it up quickly and knocked it out. That just left “Catch and Release,” which Daryl has never sung before, but again he picked it up quickly. On this one his part is a mirror of my harmony vocal, an octave lower. Every chorus on this song has different lyrics so I wrote some of it down for Daryl to refer to as he sang, and he did a nice job of matching all the eccentric phrasing of the various choruses.

So now that his voice is on the tracks, the final vocal ingredient is in place and there’s a complete, full-band sound to the songs.

Dave came in to add some tambourine and shaker to “Don’t Look Down” and arrived just as Daryl was finishing up. There was some discussion about which parts of the song needed what. Dave and Jason settled on a system where the tambourine and shaker alternate sections so that for the most part they’re never playing simultaneously on the same part of the song. So the prechorus has shaker, the chorus has tambourine, the bridge has both, and the verse has neither. Being a drummer, Dave had no trouble maintaining the rhythm even though there was a lot of fast 16th-note stuff going on. Percussion is harder than people realize, especially tambourine. You really have to be able to maintain an even rhythm because those high frequencies cut right through the mix, so discrepancies or little variations really stick out. And it’s tiring to the arm, too. But Dave nailed it in one or two takes, pro that he is. I think the additional percussion adds a nice new layer to the song, really brightens it up.

A week from Sunday is our big guest vocal session for “Edge of Forever.” We’re inviting pretty much everybody we know who can sing (plus some who can’t). Should be fun. I have to figure out how organized or disorganized that will be. Probably better if it has some structure instead of a big free-for-all…we’ll see. Also coming soon is a session with the horn section from The Metropolitans (Rocco, Jonny and Michael) who have agreed to add their magic to “Don’t Look Down.”

So we’re really getting close to being finished with tracking. Just in time for the nice weather, too. Life is good.

Blondes on the radio

There’s a little bit of a lull in band activity this week, since last night’s recording session was cancelled due to illness (me), exhaustion (Daryl), and plain ol’ unavailability (Jen). We’ll be back at it next week.

HOWEVER, the big news of the moment is that tomorrow (3/20/09) morning at 9:05 a.m., WYEP guest DJ Rege Behe is going to play our song "Don't Look Down" on the air. Even though it’s only my demo of the song and not the final band version, no one is complaining. This will be officially our first radio airplay anywhere ever, so it is a milestone. If not a moment for champagne, then at least really good beer. Later in the day, that is…not at 9:05 a.m.

So tune in to WYEP 91.3 FM, or if you’re not near a radio tomorrow morning, you can also listen online at the station’s website:

www.wyep.org

Our show last Saturday night went really well, by the way. Especially considering how long it’s been since we’ve played out. It was mostly a Seven Color Sky crowd of course, since it was their CD release party, but there was a healthy contingent of our peeps there as well. Good fun. SCS sounded great. Our new stage look seemed to go over very well. Lots of compliments about how good we looked. I could get used to that.

Update: Blondes are live again

Just a quick update to say we’ve started rehearsals for our upcoming gig with Seven Color Sky, so we’ll be laying off recording for the next two weeks. We just have a few sessions more to complete the remaining odds and ends and then we can start mixing. I’m hoping to get the CD mixed, mastered, and shipped off for duplication by late April.

It felt good to play together as a band again on Sunday. First time we’ve all been in the same room and playing music since November. It’s been way too long.

I think the recording process has helped us as a live band. When you record, you put everything under the microscope and can really figure out what’s working and what isn’t. Sometimes little problems aren’t apparent at regular band practice, just a vague sense that something doesn’t sound quite right…and then at the recording session you say “Ah ha!—there’s the problem.” After all the recording we’ve been doing, we’re all playing and singing our parts with more precision than we did before. I think right now we sound just about the best we’ve ever sounded. Everybody seems really pumped to do a show—I know I am.

So our long break from live shows is finally at an end and I couldn’t be happier about it. I want to do at least one show a month from now on. More, of course, when a really cool tour offer comes along…which I expect to happen any day now. :D