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01/06/12 - Thomas listened to our percussion recordings from last week. He then recorded several guitar parts for Wrong Star using the Les Paul. Played us his edit in Summer.

01/03/12 - Thomas played us the most recent mix of Riding A Wave/It's Summertime. Patrick added some Juno parts. Talked more about my Sue's Green Dress idea. Patrick pulled up the nude Playgirl centerfold of Burt Reynolds on his iPhone and proclaimed it "tasteful." In fairness I encouraged him, and I suppose in the grand scheme of things, it is.

01/17/12 - Started working on Domino. Patrick brought his acousitc (Alvarez?) and put down several tracks of the primary part. Thomas jokingly nagged me for never helping with the engineering tasks. I replied that I write the songs. That was all the encouragement Thomas needed to dial up Copacabana. Anyhoo, both Thomas and Patrick are proper engineers so why excactly am I being asked to put down an article about Bill Wyman in the new Vintage Guitar magazine?

01/24/12 - So, I set up a Twitter account for the Girls and was instantly reminded of the old MySpace days when someone like HotHeatherXXX would friend a no-name band and post a porn link on their profile. Inevitably the member who managed the band account would reply with something like: "Hey HotHeatherXXX, thanks for checking out our tunes. Will be posting some new stuff next week!"

Thomas recorded a fretless bass part for Domino and some pretty guitar noodling on the Smith Strat. Patrick found a vibraphone for next week. If that works we should be ready for song number 4.

01/26/12 - We have TWO followers from Mega-Frackfest.info. We always were a big hit with the ladies and dudes pretending to be ladies in order to get you to come look at naked pictures of ladies.

02/07/12 - Started the ball rolling again on the 12 remixes inspired by an exuberant review from Thomas after listening to it on pain-killers. Patrick and Thomas agreed to meet on the 28th to find some middle ground on drum mixes. Thomas had another go at his solo on Domino.

I brought up doing some gigs when this album is done to a mixed room. Predictably, Patrick enthusiastic and Steven/Thomas silent. I also tried to whip up some interest in discussing the decline in usage of the word "boogie" with unsatisfying results.

02/16/12 - Had a listen to the latest mixes of Domino, Harriet & Summertime. Thomas did great things with the drums. He is going to re-cut the solo in Domino. Patrick brought a nice vibe part that he recorded and imported it into the master tracks. Spent the balance of the evening feeding a midi version of a piano part that Thomas recorded for Harriet through a Fender Rhodes sounding patch and into an amplifier ala the bridge on "12." Thomas is going to cut an intro section out of Summertime so that it goes right into a verse from the bridge.

02/21/12 - Spent most of the evening talking about arrangements and parts. Decided on how to trim Summertime down by a few measures. Talked about the placement of the vibes in Domino. Flat fifth. Thomas is going to work on new mixes and mail them out.

Worked on scratch vocals for Wrong Star. Tried a flat, above chest delivery with an octave harmony.

Sent Patrick home with some alternative shots of the "12" females for the remix cover art. Our friend Carrie is going to tackle the project.

02/28/12 - Spent the evening tracking percussion parts for Wrong Star. Recorded gallops and tick tocks with the wood blocks and a variety of bits with tambourines.

03/27/12 - Got a little behind documenting our progress. We had one session where we just talked through it and then I was out of town one week. We tracked Wrong Start and started on Blacktop. Thomas brought his sequencer part over and imported it. Steven recorded his bass part. We decided to tweak the drums in a Instant Karma-y kind of way and liked the results.

Thomas introduced a nice new ditty using the A31 patch on the Juno. He's going to bring a midi file next week.

04/03/12 - We started off trying to run the sequencer part for Blacktop through the Vibratone. We mic'd it using Patrick's new ribbon microphone. It the signal out of the board included feedback which cost us the session to troubleshoot. Thomas and Patrick got frustrated while Steven read guitar magazines and I played chess and read NFL news.

Patrick has gotten some flak for the Burt Reynolds thing. Did the people teasing him look up "the picture" for context. If so, I wonder if they Googled it and found the same site as Patrick, causing the person hosting the image to wonder about the recent burst of interest in Reynold's furry frame.

05/01/12 - Came back from a 3 week hiatus. Thomas recorded some slides parts on the lap steel for Blacktop the last time we were together. Next, Patrick played some crunchy parts runing the Les Paul straight through the old Gibson amp. Tried a Ramble Tamble bit during the chorus builds.

05/22/12 - Yet another 3 week hiatus. Steven recorded the bass for Follow Me and End Of Summer. Thomas had a go at an alternate line for End Of Summer and a practice run at How Do You Sleep.

06/18/12 - More breaks. I was sick a few weeks ago and then covered with poison ivy last week. The week before last I spent the whole session playing the rhythm guitar part for End Of Summer but Thomas was never happy with the tone. Thomas will be gone for a while but Patrick brought another amp and I think we got a good result tonight. Also recorded the little doodoodoo hooks.

We listened to My Wing and Stupid Cloud and talked about what to do next. Getting an acoustic set up for next time. I tried the piece-of-paper-under-the-strings trick to simulate a banjo feel in Stupid Cloud but it sounded more ska-ish.

06/26/12 - Thomas still gone. Steven strung up his acoustic from his youth and Patrick had a go with it on Stupid Cloud. Talking about a I Want You (She's So Heavy) ending with white noise etc.

07/31/12 - Things went horribly wrong when we spent the first part of the session watching a pre-game interview by Howard Cosell with Len Dawson and Johnny Unitas. Then Patrick and I had a go at the clarinet which should have been filmed. When we relaized we had about a half hour left in the session I hastily added some white noise tracks to the outro of Stupid Cloud. Then we topped off the session talking about NFL Football, Starcrash, Kraftwerk, "Flying" by The Beatles, Google Fiber and Devo.

08/08/12 - Worked on the outro of Stupid Cloud. Patrick added some horny low guitar feedback. He then sped the song up and I added a rhythm guitar part which sounds deadened when slowed back down. Patrick added two Ringo-inspired vocal parts following the clarinet part. I dashed off a double tambourine part right before we ran out of time. Next week we'll work on sequencing the events so that it builds to a noisy finish.

08/14/12 - Spent most of the evening arranging the sequence of events during the Stupid Cloud outro. Added some slide parts and the Two Pale Blackberries/Spiders Last Stand theremin part. In addition to having that part in common, all three songs have either the number one or two in the lyric. Patrick had a really bad day and couldn't go the full session. I told him about Elvis Presley and white cotton panties. That wasn't related to him having a bad day. Just two things about Patrick.

08/21/12 - Another session spent on Stupid Cloud. Re-cut some of the slide parts and added parts to the outro. Patrick recorded some simple piano bits. I tried to coax him into doing something like the outro of Street Fighting Man. This started an adventure that resulted in a part that sounded more like a track from Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite. That is an acceptable trade.

08/28/12 - Tonight SHOULD be the last night of noise making on Stupid Cloud. Recorded cello scrapes and cascading wheeeees! Patrick suggested trying the ebow on the cello so Steven dashed off to buy 9 volt batteries. Didn't work very well. We came to the conclusion that it doesn't work on gut strings. I re-cut the slide solo part towards the end and Patrick added some nice harmonies. We finished the session with Patrick singing along with most of the slide bits right up to the end of the song. Looking at starting My Wing next week.

09/04/12 - We were supposed to start on My Wing tonight but ended up doing more Stupid Cloud edits. Here's what I remember Patrick doing:

Edited the guitar slide solos
Re-introduced the electric guitar part
Took the acoustic out of the start of the outro
Fixed some notes during the splashes
Toyed with the build of the outro
Brought the Ringo vocals and cello bits up in the mix
Started the white noise earlier in the song
Brought up the cello scrapes at the end

Steven showed us a dead bat.

(Me, not having the NFL Network and knowing that Patrick does and hoping that with some delicate hinting I might get an invitation)

"Gosh, I don't have the NFL Network so I'll miss those Thursday night broadcasts of NFL games this year."

Patrick: (walking away) "Yeah, that's tough."

09/11/12 - Steven had an idea for the slide solo in Stupid Cloud so back we went. I recut my part and then Patrick recut his harmonies. We're using this old hollowbody Conquerer and this 1950s amp and when you power on the amp the guitar just squeels, groans and howls. It literally trembles in your hands. This means that everytime we got to the end of our bits we would record addtional time of the instrument's demon possession. We pulled up My Wing and talked about it. Decided to bring wind instruments next week. 4th grade tittering (OK, girlish squeeling) over Steven using a flashlight to find his flute.

09/18/12 - We were prepared to try some melodica parts on My Wing tonight when we discovered that the computer was shutting down and failing to restart. Tested the hard drives in other computers and it's possible that we lost the album to date and the backup. Thomas has some of the songs off-site so we have that to fall back on if we find out for certain that the drives are toast. On a lighter note, Patrick kept discovering spiders and screaming as he was rooting around in the computers. Finishing on a darker note, the sky was filled with bats as we were walking to our cars.

09/19/12 - Got a message from Steven indicating that the computer and disk drives are now in the hospital. Motherboard has issues. Verdict pending for as long as a week on the drives.

09/28/12 - Received an upate from Steven that while the computer is kaput both hard drives are readable. That's 6 months worth of feedback we don't have to re-record.

10/06/12 - Computer should be built (with the old sound files copied over to new drives) next week. Also should receive a newer version of Sonar around that time so we could potentially resume recording in October.

10/30/12 - Computer built, new copy of Sonar Producer and new sound card purchased. Patrick spent the session installing the card and plug-ins. Took the whole session so hope to resume recording noise next session.

11/13/12 - Patrick's notes from reviewing what we have recorded so far:

Wrong Star - Synth solo in interludes, something needs to happen on the outro, perhaps a quick fade.

Domino - sounds great, kudos Thomas

End of Summer - Carl Douglas bit, real strings

Blacktop - needs a pad, parts that need to feel like hard rock but don't yet..perhaps a hard rock guitar bit ala Little Joe

Follow Me - guts are there, just needs color

Gander - no bass

Harriet - oohs and ahhs on the end section

Mary - needs bass, acoustic

Stupid Cloud - just needs vocals

My Wing - everything

How do you Sleep - needs everything

It's Summertime - just needs vocals, Thomas did lots of work on it

(I introduced "hiding a slave" as a new metaphor for having a secret.)

12/04/12 - I think this was our first evening recording sounds since 08/28. Patrick recorded some ghostly keyboard parts on My Wing. We also added a lot of reverb to the drums. Listened to Meninblack (for the keyboard sounds), I'm Your Captain (for the outro) and Hey Paula.

12/18/12 - Spent most of the session talking. Here are the Girl Business accomplishments/short-term goals:
Patrick and I have restarted the 12 remix machine.
Patrick purchased and installed the encoder that will allow us to burn mp3s for internal use.
Steven is going to get ready to record bass for My Wing after the holiday
Talked again about naming this album Harriet. Mary was on the table but Steve was concerned about it getting lost in searches.

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