November 29, 2007: Catching Up

It's been quite a while since the last entry - a lot has happened between posts. Bassman John moved to Milwaukee this summer and we have yet to find another bass player. However, we continue to move forward as best we can and have amassed plenty of new material. We are still focused on completing a CD of original songs asap. The challenge from this point forward is to finish the many song 'sketches' we have come up with so far - all have been recorded as rough demos. Among the backlog of new material: Enuff Is Enuff; Lies; Call Me; Midsummer Rain and Hold The Phone.

We have talked with Mike Shoaf, a bass player and old friend of Bob's, about adding bass lines to a couple of our songs to help finish them up. We are focused on 2 songs in particular: Call Me and Enuff Is Enuff. Mike Shoaf has demo copies of both songs, so we expect to make this happen sometime within the next month or so. Mike Casey has stepped up to handle the vocals, although we still have thoughts of finding another vocalist to help out. We have a unique situation in that we are doing this strictly for the fun of it and as an outlet for our creativity and love of music, i.e., we are not interested in playing out on a regular basis or trying to make money, which we realize would involve more compromises than we are willing to make at this point. The downside of this is that it makes it that much harder to find other musicians with the same mindset and goals.

Meanwhile, we have completed the first 3 songs and put them 'in the can': Bad, Bad Man; Lightning and Rhythm Of The Radio (Favorite Position). We added the final touches and completed the final mixes ourselves using the Korg D888 recorder and Adobe Audition. We've learned a lot along the way about how difficult the whole recording/editing process is and know that we still have a lot to learn. All in all, we're pretty happy with the final results and are proud that we have come so far.

July 24, 2007: Cakewalk

Mike and I spent about 3 hours in Alan's studio trying to finish the 3 songs. The first step was to import the Audition tracks into Alan's Cakewalk software and confirm that this process will result in perfectly aligned tracks. It worked exactly as we had hoped it would, so we now have a 'proof of concept' that we can do all of our recording in Doug's basement (Korg D888 and Adobe Audition on the PC) before going to Alan's studio for final polishing by Alan. This process will speed up our recording efforts significantly and give us the flexibility to do as many takes and tweaks as needed, independent of Alan's studio. It also addresses the 'red light' factor (the stress of trying to produce a perfect take while the clock is ticking and the cost is rising). We'll be able to record in a totally no-stress environment in the basement.

As for the songs, Mike added some vocal harmonies to Lightning and a new lead vocal to Rhythm Of The Radio (Favorite Position). We decided to double-track Mike's vocal to Lightning, which added significantly to the song. We also remixed all 3 songs and came away with what we think will be the final versions. The final test will be to listen to the remixes on the home and car stereos.

July 15, 2007: Still Recording

This morning, after reviewing the latest mix of Lightning, Mike suggested that we re-do the drums in the last third of the song, because he felt they were too out of sync. We debated about the need to re-do the drums, then decided to go ahead and give it a shot. The major issue of doing this is that the bulk of the original recording for this song was done in Adobe Audition on the PC (because we only have 8 tracks on the Korg D888 in the basement). We can punch in the new drum track on the Korg D888, but whether or not it will be in sync with the rest of the tracks on the PC remains to be seen. Once the drum track is recorded on the Korg D888, the next step will be to transfer it to the PC and see if everything is still in sync. We proceeded with punching in the new drum track.

Once we were done with the drums, we then focused our attention on Bob's song, Hold The Phone. He had a setting on his drum kit for a ringing phone, barking dog and a knock on the door. The plan is to use these effects in a short sequence, with a spoken vocal track on top of the effects, as an intro for the song. We came up with a decent intro and will record the vocal later, once Bob comes up with a full script. At this point, the practice was over. The next step will be to insert this intro at the front of what was recorded last week and see how it sounds.

Mike also wants to re-record his rhythm track and re-do his vocal track (at Alan's studio). We also need to finish the vocal on Rhythm Of The Radio (Favorite Position). This should complete the three songs.

July 8, 2007: Working Out The Funk

This practice session was spent working out the structure and sounds for Bob's funk song, Hold The Phone. We recorded a 3-4 minute demo of the song and will let it sink in before expanding it further. We are anticipating having a bass player, a friend of Bob's, sit in on this song.

July 7, 2007: In The Studio Again

Went to Alan's studio with the wav tracks (from Adobe Audition) for all 3 songs. Once there, we discovered that the Audition tracks were not usable - the clips that did not start at the beginning of each track could not be synchronized. I will need to revise the Audition tracks and figure out how to export all the tracks with the same starting point. While we were at Alan's studio, we went ahead and recorded a new rhythm track for Bad, Bad Man, then remixed the song. The purpose of the new rhythm track was to add a harder sound.

A few days after our trip to Alan's studio, I discovered the secret to exporting 'bits and pieces' from Audition in a way that will keep them all in perfect sync when imported into Cakewalk (Alan uses Cakewalk in his studio). The solution in Audition is to mute all tracks in the session except for the one that is to be exported. Then, when the export is done, a full export wav track is created that is the identical size as the largest track in the session, i.e., any space preceding the actual sound bit in the track is filled with blank audio space. All tracks can then be imported into Cakewalk (or any other software) and left-aligned to sync up - an easy and effective solution.