Update - 5/14/2012
Firstly, apologies for the delay - for a few weeks, things were out of sorts. Chris let us know that he would be leaving for the Marines in early June - and that left us confused about how to move forward. We debated several different options, but have landed on issuing an EP of the new material that Chris has completed drum tracks for. We’ve got more work to do, but this will likely be released in the fall. Chris is a great drummer, and has been a huge part of the band. It is sad to see him go, but we wish him the best.
it’s your cousin, marvin, marvin berry?
Marvin - 3/13/2012
Dotson, Matt, and I went to the studio Tuesday night to lay down bass on Marvin. Tracking seemed to go smoothly enough, but I was having troubles getting the bass to sit in the rough mix. I tried compressing it pretty hard, as well as some intense EQ, but no dice. Finally we re-positioned the mic (slightly) and tracked the parts again. This time I didn’t have to fight with it at all, just pumped it through the distressor and it immediately sounded “done.” Moral of the story: if you’re really struggling to make a sound work, it might be the wrong sound. After that we kicked back a completely reasonable and adult number of beers and listened to some tunes.
Matt rids the world of evil. Meanwhile, Kretzmer mixes bass tracks.
the Josh Kretzmer “tower of power”
Marvin - 3/11/2012
Matt and I went to the studio on Sunday to lay down guitars on Marvin. I recorded Matt’s guitar in stereo for the first time ever, and it came out nicely. Granted, it’s just a stereo room mic setup, with a 57 on the grill still providing most of the sound, but even a hair of it mixed in gives a great deal up depth to the track. Shocking. Regrettably so, actually. As I now wish I could go back in time and do the same for some previous guitar work. Oh well. I did my guitar in mono, perhaps because I felt guilty about how good the stereo guitar sounded, and was trying to leave room in the mix.
Good thing I did. As Matt came up with some great Wurlitzer lines, which I sliced up and manipulated into some trippier material. The song took a turn that I don’t think any of us saw coming, but was a pleasant surprise none the less.
impedance mismatch + KP2
CNF + PC - 02/03/2012 + 02/04/2012
I went to the studio by myself on Friday night to tighten up the mix on CNF. This was the first song we had recorded for “real” and I thought that it didn’t sound up to par with the other tunes by comparison. We may have to re-track the bass, and there’s no vocal on it yet, but I’m much happier with the results. We originally went for a very dirty drum sound on it, which I’ve actually cleaned up a bit. I was a bit anxious that maybe I’ve made things too clean, but these are just scratch mixes anyway - at some point you’ve just gotta say “good enough.” For me, that point was about 1:30 AM on Saturday.
Matt and I got together on Sunday as well. There was a section in the chorus of Phil Collins that was bugging us a bit. It just didn’t match the mood of the rest of the song. Matt came up with this great keyboard line on top of it that really brings it all together. That one (and Dear Bones) will need a new mix as well, but things feel pretty “finished” from a tracking perspective. It’s definitely time to step away from it for a bit and see if it holds up given the test of time.
Marvin - 2/25/2012
All four of us were at the studio on Saturday, hammering out parts on a tune we’ve been calling Marvin. I think its got sort of a northwest-indie thing going on, but we’ll see where it ends up. We tracked drums for it. For the first time in my life, I used some reverb on drums and didn’t hate the results. Surely, this is progress.
Drum setup for “Marvin”
