Handed out a CD with some of my demos for the next record. I'm looking to Pat and Steve for
intro, bridge and/or outro suggestions. Temporary titles include Honey Pie, Worms, I Want The
Things I Used To Have, Both Hands, Robins Poking In The Yard, Marbeck, Shaking Off The Sand
and Disarray. We spent some time talking about when we anticipate wrapping up the current
record (August?) and how long the new one might take.
06/20/02 - Pat worked on the lead vocal for Terry The Pirate.
06/25/02 - Pat laid down strong vocals for Terry The Pirate. I uploaded a sample to
the Sounds page. I added some harmonys. Steve stained wood. Started talking about where
to do mastering. John knows a guy in Minn. that is supposed to be good.
06/27/02 - Added gurgley and shrieky guitars to Terry. Messed with mix and reverb.
Stuck a vocal line from Peteena's drum tracks into Peteena's bridge.
07/02/02 - Pat tweaked some of the lower roars from the guitars we recorded on the 27th.
Added some harmonies to the verses that we may or may not use. Talked again about how
important it is to come up with a backup solution. This reprise ends with money.
07/10/02 - Pat sang verses and chorus for Little Joe. We toyed with singing the song
straight without color or tails at the end of lines. I think it worked nicely. Pat has a
beautiful voice and it's a good song for him. Thursday I'll redo the scratch guitar part for
Little Joe and Rosalie and add a scratch vocal for Noggin.
07/12/02 - Ended up not working tonight. Talked with Steve over the weekend about
marrying a bit he has called Bystander to my bit Marbeck.
07/16/02 - Pat added the little vocal ditty that I came up with several months ago
for the "frozen moon" parts of Little Joe. I did the vocals for Noggin and Pat added harmonys
on the chorus. I think the lead vocals are OK and we'll just have to do the chorus vocals
in earnest. Still have to do guitars for Little Joe and Noggin and the bass for most of the
songs.
Gave the boys three new bits - tenatively titled Right Here, I Be Safe (reprise) and Recipie - to
use for new collaborations.
07/22/02 - Got an E-MAIL from Scott Stemmermann!
07/23/02 - Re-sang the ahhhs during the chorus of Noggin. Recorded the arpeggiating
guitar part for the chorus of Little Joe and Rosalie. This is the part that used to be the chorus in Fishies and Ala's Wing's
Fry in the Burning Sky song. Thursday we'll record the guitar for the verses of Little Joe and for Noggin and we will be
ready to start recording drums for the remaining songs.
07/25/02 - Messed around with recording Steve's bass part for Little Joe with a
direct line in and with a mic on the amp. I added more guitars. Messed around with a hook
for the E major bit in the chorus. Some discussion about whether the guitar is the best
voice for the hook.
07/30/02 - Spent most of the evening editing Little Joe addressing performance and
arrangement issues. Agreed that on Thursday we would convert the bridge to another 12 /
Babblesque wackyscape. Steve and I worked on Bystander/MarBeck while Pat edited.
08/01/02 - As planned we rebuilt the bridge for Little Joe. We started with Steven
playing 8th notes on his A string and then piled everything on top of that including
Rhodes, vocals, drums and guitar. Had to tack on a ride cymbal wash coming out of the chorus
to keep it from sounding too abrupt.
08/06/02 - Little Joe: Redid the ride cymbal build into the bridge for continuity.
Pat recorded the keyboard part for the main hook. Did some editing on the ending so that
the song now fades with the ratatattats on the snare drum. We don't use many fade outs
because the songs will all built with endings/resolves.
08/08/02 - Ate giant Salmon steaks with Steven and then worked on marrying Marbeck
and Bystander. Worked out a rough arrangement and then recorded it so that we could both
play with the wav files with Sonar.
08/13/02 - Worked on a lot of little Little Joe bits tonight:
Added a heavily chorused reverse cymbal build during a drum fill. We were just going to copy and reverse the cymbal that I
added last week before the bridge but it fades in and as every hippy with a basement studio knows if you want the sucking
sound at the end of a reverse cymbal you have to bash it. I actually bashed 2 simultaneously.
I sang a harmony in the second verse with the voice of an 8 year-old boy.
I used Steve's MacBass to record a melody at the end of the song which Pat thinks I nipped from a Star Wars scene.
We faded Steve's humping bass line in during the bridge for a building effect.
Killed the MMMMMM part during the first chorus.
Backed Patty's guitar bit during the chorus off until the repeat.
Let Pat's keyboard part drain into the outro.
Steve showed Pat what we have done with Bystander/Marbeck so far. Right now it's 8 minutes
long.
We agreed (shouting over the griding of the hard drive) that we need to address backing up
our work as soon as possible so Thursday is dedicated to making this happen.
Determined that once we add the guitars to Noggin we will be ready to record the last 4 songs.
I noticed that I have 5 left under the "songs we are currently recording" heading so there's still
some question as to which 4 will make it. I believe that Always Something and Flap are "for sures" so that leaves Parade,
Animalpeople and Two Pale Blackberries to pick through. We still haven't done anything about sequencing, cover design
etc.
08/15/02 - Went shopping for an external hard drive and a fire wire card. Ended up
getting an 80 gig drive which should be plenty. We'll actually back up the first 8 songs on
Tuesday. While driving around we listened to an old practice CD from last September.
08/20/02 - Backed up the first 8 songs to the new drive. Thursday we'll finish up
Noggin.
08/21/02 - Pat verified that the backups worked. They took up 3 gig so the 80 gig
drive is going to hold our entire catalog.
08/22/02 - Determined that we have only spent $500 so far and nearly half of that was
for the backup system. Of course this excludes stuff that we already had like microphones,
computer, recording software, mixing board etc. These are just expenses incurred since
recording started in earnest - 09/22/01.
This also means we've only been at this for less than a year - omitting song development and
rehearsal time which we've been doing since 06/26/00 when Pat joined up and I moved from
guitar to drums. So, 52 weeks in a year at about 3 hours a week will put us at 156 "studio"
hours (time spent in front of the computer, tracing cable or playing an instrument) as of
09/22/02. That's the equivalent of 13 twelve hour days.
Bone and Pat recorded rhythm guitar parts for Noggin. We've used the Telecaster on virtually
every song so we were hoping that Bone's Jackson would give us a different guitar noise but
the track was scratched because there was a tuning issue. Pat redid the part with the
Tele. I recorded a slide part at the beginning with Steve's old L5. This was
to replace a harmonica part that I heard but Steven and Patrick have an aversion to the mouth
harp. Or maybe just to my skill on the mouth harp...
08/29/02 - OK, we did a lot tonight:
Steve re-recorded the rhythm guitar parts for Noggin using the Tele straight in.
I added a little 4 note bit at the end of the chorus lines.
We recorded the L5 like an acoustic to fatten up the chorus with a washboardy sound.
For some reason the drums are huge in this song and Steve's catchy bass part didn't
seem big enough in comparison so we experimented with tuning it down and recording it. The
result was stunning but for some reason it was distorting at the board so he will fix that
issue and re-record it.
Decided that we still need to monkey with the intro, add a voice to the chorus and
develop a bridge.
09/03/02 - Should have worked on Noggin but instead we layed down frames (drum
machine and guitar) for Flap, Always Something and Parade. I'll work on Two Pale
Blackberries and we'll import it on Thursday. Finishing this by Christmas is starting to
look like a reality!
09/05/02 - Sent Pat and Steve an idea that I had for the bridge of Noggin.
09/07/02 - Some "note to self" memos for later:
Peteena - Back off the laughing.
Little Joe - Intro needs to be more interesting.
Little Joe - The Em and B downbeat builds aren't convincing. Need more ooomph.
Little Joe - The drums during the climax of the bridge into the last verse need more definition.
Terry The Pirate - Need more rhythms playing off of the kick during the verses.
Babble - Steve suggested that Babble needs a mid-range tone counter-melody during the verses and I agree.
09/10/02 - Worked on the new idea for the Noggin bridge. Wrestled with call and
response guitars. Also had a hard time simulating the bass sound I got at home. I used
a Roland vocal effect on the bass that gave it a slightly warbly, spacey sound. We tried one
of Bone's Boss effects rack but couldn't dial up the right sound so we reverted back to the
Roland processor. We started off using the hollow-body Mac-Bass but the tone was too high so
we reverted back to the GL - which was still in the low tuning for last week - and it worked
fine.
09/11/02 - Came up with some falsetto bits during the chorus of Noggin' that I sent to
the boys.
09/17/02 - Ended up mostly talking all night. We are working all day this Saturday so
we did a little game-planning. Monkeyed around with the intro to Noggin. Tryed singing
some ahhhs and ooooos through various effects with marginal success.
09/21/02 - Worked 6 and 1/2 hours today.
Recorded the guitar parts for the chorus of Parade. Pat recorded vocals.
Recorded the acoustic for Flap, Always Something and the end of Two Pale Blackberries.
Recorded vocals for Flap and Always Something.
Recorded vocals for Two Pale Blackberries.
Recorded 2-3 minutes of the waterfalls in Steve's pond.
Added some pictures we took today to the website. Steve got cheated as usual because he
generally sits in front of the computer and mixing board pushing real and virtual buttons
while Pat and I are there and then records his parts in the dark of night. Just didn't see
the point of updating his "sitting in front of the computer" shot. Finally retired Bone's
pictures since he is living in Colorado and is no longer involved in the project. Godspeed
little doodle.
09/22/02 - Recorded the drums for the first 9 songs one year ago today.
09/24/02 - Added bridge and chorus backing vocals to Noggin. Added some harmonies to
Two Pale Blackberries.
09/28/02 - Uploaded early versions of Parade, Flap and Two Pale Blackberries. These
are pretty much in a scratch guitar, drum machine and scratch vocal state but I thought it
would be entertaining to truly share the layering stages. These are chicken wire frames
and the strips of newspaper are soaking in corn starch as we speak.
10/01/02 - I'm a little sick so I wanted to dash off a vocal take of Two Pale
Blackberries for the effect but we ended up spending the whole night working on the
part that bridges the last chorus of Noggin with the bridge. Pat ended up playing the
keyboard with me on Macbass and Steven playing a simpler variation of the original melody.
Experimented with a lot of tones on the Tele.
10/08/02 - Noggin has 2 bridges - a short bridge after the last chorus and a longer
bridge before the end of the song. Tonight we worked on the transition between the bridges.
We replaced the staccato guitars with a droning keyboard (after spending an hour trying to
do it with a guitar) and an edited bit of me singing ahhh through a tremelo effect. We
then added cabasa and tamborine and some ooooos at the end. Pat was having some problems
with my phrasing of the backing vocals so I did his part and 2 Dons seem OK. Steve's still
unhappy with the tone of the guitar and we have to find a way to get out of the song but
we are getting close. I got a blister from playing the cabasa.
One interesting gear note. We have been using a Fender Telecaster almost exclusively
for electric guitar bits. I think Bone used a Jackson Flying V on Peteena and we used
Steve's L5 for the intro of Noggin. We all own a handful of guitars but the Tele was
the only guitar at our space. Anyhoo, Steven picked up a Strat today so now we have
a second noisemaking choice for the last 4 songs. BTW, not once has anyone asked me to
bring my Bronco.
10/11/02 - It occured to me today that the final Girl for Samson lineup does not
inlcude a single human being from the original ad that I placed soliciting musicians. So,
if you are building a band and looking for players I would suggest that networking is as
beneficial as local newspaper ads.
10/13/02 - Added a compilation of images from the 1st year of recording to the Pics
page.
10/17/02 - The plan tonight was to work on the intro to bridge(2) in Noggin and
finish the ending. Spent the first hour coming up with the proper vibrato sound and
then recording me hitting an open A string with one of Steve's inch-thick picks
and letting it sustain for about 6 seconds. Decided to start work on the ending by just
duplicating what we did in bridge(1) with Pat playing the keyboard, Steven the guitar and
me on the MacBass. One sound that has provided us with a subtle continuity is the
donsingingthroughthevibrato bit that we used with the slide in the intro. This is
repeated in the intro to bridge(2) and at the end of the song. It sounds like an organ
from the First Pinkbyterian Church.
10/19/02 - Spent the first 2 hours adding vocals to the chours and last verse
to Noggin. Then tried recording a xylophone but couldn't get it to sustain or ring enough
(Steve predicted this months ago) so we ended up using a digital sound. Tried
unsuccessfully to add some water sounds to the end of the song.
I re-recorded the vocal for the 3/4 part of Two Pale Blackberries and added guitars in the
chorus and verses. Spent a long time trying to nail the chorus bit.
Worked on a recorder part for Flap. Also added a ringing guitar and a hook in the chorus.
Uploaded new .mp3s of Flap, Noggin and Two Pale Blackberries and new pictures.
10/20/02 - Public notes to self:
Noggin: The old vocal of Pat's that got unmuted and has now been left in the slide intro part of the song also makes an
appearance during the moody bridge part with the cabasa. Daddy no likey.
Flap: I think we should ADD a clean guitar to the shimmery guitar during the chorus and then back off the shimmery
guitar some. That way there will be a nice ring and also some left over spacey tone at the end.
10/24/02 - Didn't accomplish much tonight. I heard some vocal bits in the end of
Delirious which Pat dutifully layed down. We tried adding a higher *recorder to Flap but it
was out of tune so that was aborted. Spent the rest of the time trying to replace my
shimmering guitar bits in Flap with no success. Could have spent the last 7 minutes setting
up backups but Pat didn't bring the FireWire cable.
*This second recorder deserves to have it's history shared with the world. It originally
saw life in the late '70s - early '80s during the famous Wilsons rock opera about Darius,
Alexander the Great and the fall of the Persian Empire. It resurfaced in the '80s when Porps would do Gilligan's Island
during live sets. Cris would play it after the "the Minnow would be lost" line and then
bash his cymbals with it.
And he carries the reminders
Of every glove that layed him down
Or cut him till he cried out
10/28/02 - Did you know that most of the ideas for bits that were eventually converted
into bytes were born from listening to the songs away from the studio? Many of our
hooks, fills, washes, changes, bridges, ooos, ahhhs, melodies, intros, outros, lines, bits,
riffs are individual inspirations strained through a collective experience. Thinking about
the songs away from the studio means that you arrive at the studio with ideas.
Next lecture is on considering leftover sounds, pops, hiccups, flutters, honks and squeeks
as gifts and not mistakes. It's Thursday at 8 PM in the conference room at the Carmichael
Building. There's a reception afterwards with cherry punch and sugar cookies.
10/29/02 - We have talked about replacing the guitar as the main instrument for
the verses in Parade. Tonight I layed down a organ climb with an old Casio SK1. We
later used the SK1's sampler to add some noises to the opening of Little Joe and backed off
some of the doo doo doo doo quarter notes on the bass and guitar.
Some terse debate over some potential changes in Always Something. Kind of interesting
because we rarely have legitimate conflict. The beautiful thing is if we ever do squabble
it's always over music.
11/02/02 - Mani gave us some wonderful candies, breads and tea from her trip to Iran.
Steve showed us some guitar bits that he pictured in the beginning of Little
Joe and Rosalie.
Pat intergrated Steve's idea for Always Something and it sounds great. Crisis averted.
Spent the first few hours today re-recording the acoustic parts for the song to reflect
the change. Pat detuned a couple of the strings on the guitar for the part which I found
inspiring (while performing in my "sit down at the mic and play the guitar while Pat and
Steve knob around with the boards" role) and a song plopped right out of my bottom. The
dummy name is Sometimes Nothing. We spent the next hour dashing down vocal parts, bass,
a guitar hook and a chorus. First new ditty that we've had time to come up with in a long
time.
Pat said that he liked my hair and I confessed that I too liked his. Curlys and straights
always envy each other.
Recorded an acoustic for Parade and spent the duration of the session messing with the mix
and getting ready to do backups.
Found out that Pat is left-handed. Steve said that he bats and golfs as a left-hander but
does everything else with his right. My left hand is useless.
Realized that "beginning" was mispelled a million times in the journals. Made the appropriate
corrections. Uploaded new pics from today. Will upload new versions of Always Something and
Parade once Slappy sends them to me.
11/03/02 - Things to do on Thursday:
Work on Little Joe and Rosalie intro
Add a harmony to the 3rd verse of Peteena Says
Work buckministerfullerene into the sitar line in Babble
Address Steve's thoughts about the "round round" bits in Babble
Share Delirious guitar trade off idea
Sample the baranet.
11/07/02 - We had planned to record drums next Saturday for the last 4 songs. We
have now decided to wait until we upgrade some of the equipment (CPU and sound card) and then
record them then. This will enable us to record drums whenever we please. The problem is
that this upgrade is a month or two away so it means we probably aren't going to have a
product until the end of the winter as we still have mixing, mastering, cover art,
record label ahead of us and we aren't even done recording yet. It's our delaybut.
Patty couldn't work tonight so the mice did play. We messed around with the MacBass line for
Flap. I added the harmony to the last verse of Peteena. We tried the Delirious trade off
idea but Steve wasn't buying it. I could of used Pat there to help me outshout him. We
tried sampling the Baranet and adding it to the intro of Little Joe and Rosalie. After a
while there were so many ambient noises going on that it was refreshing to mute it all and
just open with Steven's new little diddle guitar line and then fade in the bass, guitar and
keyboard. Also monkeyed around with some guitar bits to color the second keyboard phrase.
11/11/02 - Pat signed off on the Flap bass revision so up on the server she goes.
11/14/02 - Spent the first part of the evening going over a list of things to work
on that Pat showed up with. Ended up fooling around with the intro to Little Joe again.
The main thing that happened was the addition of a guitar line mimicing the keyboard line.
Here's Pat's list:
Terry The Pirate
- Needs a new lead vocal.
- Needs a build up at the end (last chorus), for some reason it seems to loose momentum.
Maybe a synth build up or a crunchy guitar would help.
- Feedback guitar continuing into chorus needs to come down or have the bass filtered.
Always Something
- Needs a new lead vocal
- The "ooh ooh oohs" should be replaced by another instrument and the "carry on's" should
be held out in the new choruses (perhaps turning into another instrument as Don suggested)
Babble
-"Taxman" solo is way to loud and has no space or ambience, it doesn't seem to fit (in other
words it needs reverb and compression)
Delirious
- "Lie" back up vocals need to be mixed down (done on 11/16/02)
- Steve's modfied version of Don's guitar lick is slightly out of tune (done on 11/16/02)
Hey Paul
- Album should being with Hey Paul
- Acoustic guitar needs to come up or have some sparkle added to it (done on 11/16/02)
- It would be way cool to slowly pan the congas from left to right (deleted)
- vocals need reverb (done on 11/16/02)
Little Joe
- The more I listen to the intro the more I am loving it. I would almost go as far as to say
the song is done. (We made multiple changes just minutes after reading Pat's thoughts.)
- Don's "fa fa" on bridge needs reverb (done)
Noggin
- Transition into 2nd chorus seems a bit rough (done on 11/16/02)
- 1st part of the song seems to be missing something on the bottom and spatially
Parade
- Main chorus vocal needs to come up
- Low vocal on chorus needs to come down a bit
- Synth needs reverb
- Drums should come in during the "I found you" bits - maybe use congas before that
Peteena
- The madness is beautiful
(how come we haven't made use of that weird little radio announcer microphone again?)
Tweleve
- Acoustic guitar may need to be re-recorded or augmented with an electric
- Acoustic needs reverb
- back up vocals need reverb and space (done on 11/16/02)
Two Pale Blackberries
- Not complete enough to pass judgement
Flap
- I still think the intro is too long, it drags everytime I listen to it
- I'm starting to like the smimmery guitar
- I don't like the call and response recorder on the "I found you" at the end. (deleted)
11/16/02 - Saturday. Struggled the first two hours with some ideas for Delirious.
Addressed Pat's list on Hey Paul, Twelve and Noggin. Took new pics. The highlight was
Steve playing a service bell on 12. This replaced the digital bell.
Ordered the new computer and picked up my amp from the shop. Bought some shirts at a vintage
store. While driving around I played Pat Captain Beefheart and XTC. He was offended.
11/21/02 - We got a new computer for our DAW (kill me) so the boys spent tonight
shopping for the best audio card. After much pawing through online reviews (Patty directing
and Steve driving) and debating the features and tradeoffs between brands (while I lay
writhing in agony) they finally settled on the new Masters Of The Universe card. Steve is
determined to order it this week so we should have a bigger and shinier pile of stuff in a
week or two that will enable us to record drums at our stadium.
Steve is going to send out mp3s of everything tonight so I should be updating a few things on
the site this weekend.
We are pretty much off until after the holiday though I'm going to try to knock-off a bass line
for Parade on Tuesday.
11/26/02 - Layed down a bass part for Parade using the Rick after a drunken issue with
the tuner. Next I tried it with the G&L and then with the MacBass for tax. We may end up
using bits of all three guitars. Also tried some guitar harmonies and hooks but I'm not sold
on them yet.
12/05/02 - Tonight Steve and Pat are gonna set up the new workstation.
12/12/02 - Patty and Steven worked on the new workstation again tonight. Also decided
to re-setup the board and get rid of some of the mysteries that cause us so many delays. I
wisely avoided the session. Got a mournful message from Steve afterwards indicating that
everything works, BUT... He even said "fuck" in his message. He and Pat are getting back
together tomorrow to hammer out the rest of the issues.
12/17/02 - Steve cleaned up the space over the last few weeks and it was wonderful
to discover after being gone for so long. More light and room!
Messed around with some keyboard sounds on the Juno for Parade. Settled on 2 and may end up
using both. Used the Strat for the first time to accent the E builds in the chorus of Little
Joe. Sassed McCartney for the whole Lennon/McCartney credit switch.
12/24/02 - Steve and I got together and worked on Two Pale Blackberries. I heard
a melody in the car on the way over that we transposed to a bass part. Also added a
couple of guitars during the waltz. Replaced a keyboard idea Steve had for Babble with
a guitar line.
12/31/02 - Last entry for 2002. Steven and I got together and did some editing. We:
Played around with drum and guitar accents for the Em and B builds in Little Joe and Rosalie.
Finally decided to boost the original floor toms and maybe even re-record the drums later.
Slip-edited some leftover tones leading into the bridge on Parade.
Sang a guide verse and chorus for Steve's new song.
Talked about adding more backing vocals on Noggin.
Toyed with the idea of shadowing Pat's acoustic in Terry The Pirate with an electric. I
think Steve is going to do this on his own time.
Go to the beginning of the journal.
