Saturday, July 11, 2009

Since We Been Gone


Hey folks. A lot has happened since we left you hanging. Actually, this cat has been doing all the work. In the previous episode, we had just finished the last day of instrument overdubbing. Mainly what remained was recording the vocal tracks. We returned to the studio this week to do just that. Tyler would come in and do background vocals in the afternoons and Mark would come in after work to lay down the lead vocals. On Friday, Tyler and I finished out the lacking solo portion of “Traces of Gold” and I added only four more tracks of synthesizer (plus some mellowtron later that evening). We did this upstairs in studio B with our favorite assistant engineer, Ricky, while John was downstairs comping the previous vocal sessions. John’s been putting us through the vocal ringer, making sure that they sound absolutely great. Mark is sounded the best he ever has. Getting to use some Neumann mics doesn’t hurt either. His superior vocal technique employs potato chips and a Coors Light. We rewrote/added a new verse to “Orion’s Belt.” Howard came to visit. That was nice.

Mark was going in this afternoon to finish the last song, “Rest.” Tonight we finish the last of the background singing and hopefully add a little tambourine here, a little shaker there. Tomorrow we start the final mixing process, which will continue through next Friday. We can’t wait to hear the mixes and see all the hard work begin to take it’s final shape. Then it’s on to mastering and getting the artwork finalized so we can get moving on the release details.

Stay tuned this week for more posts, photos, and tweets.

cheers,
Matt