"Nightingale" (Day 1)

After a hearty breakfast at the Americana Diner in Shrewsbury, Brian, Clint, Michael and I headed over to Big Ed's Audio Pharm to begin work on the new record. Thursday's pre-production session proved to be well worth the effort as we were able get going with only some minor tweaking of the recording levels. 'Nightingale' is a pretty straight forward mid-tempo rock tune - one that we've already discussed as an opening track for the record. There were several false starts before getting a take that everyone was happy with. Some of the false starts were attributed to an instrumental free-form jam section that we decided to add to the beginning of the tune. It turned out to be well worth the effort though, as it really adds a bit of dynamics to start off the tune/record. Most of the false starts were the result of attempting to play the song to a "click" track. For those who may not know - a click track serves as a metronome, keeping perfect time. It's used as a reference to make sure that the tempo of the song does not speed up or slow down. Because of the nature of this song, we found that in order for the song to breathe the way it is supposed to - playing to the click track was inhibiting the performances - so we ditched it. Once the click track was gone, it only took about one or two more takes to get the one we wanted to keep.

One of the things that we've decided to try with this record, is to see if we can record the songs "live", rather than tracking each individual instrument. We spent quite a bit of time on Thursday evening cordoning off the amplifiers in seperate rooms in the studio, doing whatever it took to keep the instruments from bleeding onto each other's tracks. This will give us more control when we go to mix - but will still leave us with a "live" sounding recording. Unfortunately, the take that we kept had a great performance by Clint on the drums, however, both Michael and myself decided to re-do our tracks, recording them seperately to get better performances.

After the main guitar tracks were finished, Michael and I worked on adding some additional tracking to the ambient beginning of the song. Michael providing some cool sounding feedback - me adding some extra "fiddly bits". My main guitar track proved to be a bit frustrating to get onto record as I was plagued with a case of additional string noise coming from my guitar that I did not want on the recording. With a bit of work, I was able to get a take that I'm satisfied with. After that, Clint, Michael and I left Brian to re-record his bass track. He was getting a bit flustered with all of us standing around watching him (making wise ass remarks, of course) - so we made a run to the Spirits Mega Store for some beer. Brian recorded his track while we were gone, but plans on recording an even better take during the week.

With only one spare track left on the 8 track recorder, we decided to lay down a "scratch vocal" (a vocal track added for reference that is normally later scrapped for a true take. After a very quick mic set-up and sound check. We recorded a take -- and we were so happy with the performance that this will probably be the take that makes it onto the record. At least I redeemed myself as a "One Take Johnny" after floundering through my guitar track a bit.

Next, we threw a really quick mix of the song onto CD so we could see how things were progressing. One of the things you learn about recording is to listen to your mix of a song on several different stereos. I always believe that the best place to listen to a mix is in on your car stereo. Most people listen to music in their cars - so you want to make sure that it sounds good where people will most often hear it.

After playing back the mix a few times, we were all convinced that we had tracks that we could work with when we start to mix. This coming Thursday, we'll start 'EQ'-ing the tracks, giving each instrument its own unique tonality.

All in all, it was a great first session. A very productive seven hour day.

The recording has begun.

Today's Beverage List:

Amstel Light
Rock Green Light

Studio Session Time: 11:00am - 6:00pm
Total Hours This Session: 7

Grand Total Studio Time Carlos is a Jive Turkey Sessions: 11 hours