Saturday, February 21, 2009

Psyched for last day of tracking

Ah, as the sun is rising above a crisp San Francisco morning, I see my last day of tracking (recording) for this challenge: Background vocals, keyboard parts (mostly mellotron, little piano, maybe some horn stabs), and guitar solos are all that is left. Almost bittersweet - the last week has felt somewhat stressful but also incredibly rewarding and fun! The time actually recording the guitars and vocals is SUCH huge fun...well, somewhat moreso the guitars but it is also a trip slapping on the headphones and dancing around like a diva doing the lead vox:-).

So by the time nightfall comes around (the Animal's "warm San Francisco Nights" the imaginary soundtrack behind this paragraph) the recording of all (ten) songs for the sophomore Mile Long Post-It release - still tentatively called "2kMi" - will be "in the can" as the groovy cats say. This daddy-o is on-target to start mixing tomorrow, and with 07day:12h;57min left, I'm on schedule! Wow.

Also got to get going on artwork, duplication, website updates, etc., but not really in the mood now - sounds like a good Sunday task!

As promised and by request, here's the technical lo-down on some stuff done over the last few days:

All rhythm electric guitar parts were done on either an Epiphone Casino (think Beatles) or an Ibanez Artist (think early-80's double-cutaway). Guitar into a Fulltone OCD pedal (most amazing pedal ever!), into a Fender Champ 12 amp (snakeskin - a critical part of the sound), to an AT3035 mic, into Toft ATC-2 preamp/EQ. This was a nice change from last year where it was done direct (via a Line6 POD), and getting "the amp sound" REALLY opened up the guitar sounds - much more organic.

Lead vocals ended up thru a ribbon mic - the "TapeOp group buy" mic that is basically a Nady clone. Into the Chandler TGChannel preamp/eq. Tried a few other mics including some much more expensive ones, but the ribbon just sounded the best on my voice and was the most natural "in the track" with the other parts. My 1st time doing vox with a ribbon mic - learn something new every day!

Just over a week to go - kinda sad. But REALLY lookin' forward to completing this album - some real good stuff!

Rock on!

(Cross-posted to RPMChallenge.com: http://www.rpmchallenge.com/component/option,com_mamblog/Itemid,291/task,show/action,view/id,11805/)

No comments: