BKB/SOF Pre Production part 2

Yamaha O2R. Digital console.
A 20 ft. green screen.
8 cameras on Vicon MCS.
1 hour to do our set. our special hour set.

So, this Yamaha O2R console is really nice. It's meant for live recordings in particular, and has a built in DAW for strictly on-the-fly mixing. Needless to say, this thing puts out some nice high quality mixes, this console in particular doesn't run through anything else but it's own console and the racks upon racks of pre's this hall has. No PT, no RADAR, no GarageBand or Sony Acid. I guess that's really all you need when you're taking a "Live Recording" class at a digital media school.

Speaking of which, a class of students will be mixing our songs. I'm pretty excited about this because this will be the first time in a very long time someone I don't know personally will be touching our tracks. Usually, Maxi, Tambo, or myself do mixing and mastering on our own... but now we got 10 - 20 soon-to-be sound techs doing our mix downs.

It's Monday. Last Saturday we had an explosion of songs come out of our hands and minds... four new songs on the table, almost all finished now. Don't know what got into us Saturday, but we're pretty much all but done with the instrumentation for not only our split but a full length at the end of the Summer.

Frankie, Brett, and myself found out that we can split our session on Wednesday (it's so soon!) into two sessions playing the same songs, so we're opting for that instead of our original plan of all our songs and choosing the best played four.

We are playing these 5 songs first:
Winner Tambo
Loser Schau
Friend Like Family
Swimming to Drown
Dracula

and we will have these two songs on reserve if we feel we played very well on two of the past songs:
Stranger Stages
Can You Dance to Redemption?

Priority wise, Winner Tambo and Loser Schau are the two songs we're definitely aiming to be gold. Friend Like Family is Frankie's choice, Swimming to Drown was my choice, and Dracula was Brett's choice in some weird way that I believe is kind of correct. The option for Stranger Stages and Can You Dance... as "side deck" songs was a group idea, because there is a (high) possibility we play two songs (Winner Tambo and Dracula probably) very very well.

And that's it for preproduction on this one... Wednesday: Doomsday. See you then!

BKB/SOF Pre Production part 1

Wow, no wonder why no one was commenting on the preproduction stuff for this record... it didn't get posted for some reason! Anyway, it's up now... and here's the second installment!

BKB:
We've secured our recording session. It's just that, a session. One session. Why? I don't know... but we're recording at Ex'pressions College in Emeryville, CA (a tad south of Berkeley) and it'll be a live take of all our songs. This includes some songs we haven't even played live before... aka "Bumper Stickers Make it Easier for Me to Judge You" and our untitled new song. We're going into it with about 30 people on the guest list and hopefully we'll come out with at least 4 songs that sound phenomenal. I mean... we've got 10 songs. Two of which we're hesitant about putting on the CD (Stranger Stages and Friend Like Family)... but we got another 8, and we don't suck live (at least, I would like to think so) so we're hoping for a good session!

Personally, I'd like these four songs on the CD:
Winner Tambo, Loser Schau, Can You Dance to Redemption?, and Swimming to Drown

However, that list changes between me and the mates every day. And we won't know what's going on the CD until we start listening to the tracks and rock, paper, scissoring our fucking lives away until we agree upon 4 songs.

This recording session will be on July 2nd. Meaning, if all goes well, then this CD should be out and about by the end of July if all the pieces fall into place.

PS if things don't work out here, we'll run back to Shedaluma and The Shed and throw some shit down and you'll love it.

PPS PopSmear wants us to record there. But their rates were $$$. Even with the deal. :(


SOF:

They've discussed two recording spots
Portrait Recording Studios - http://www.myspace.com/portraitrecordingstudios
Delicate Studios - http://www.myspace.com/baseballrockmusic

I believe Eddie said they're leaning more towards Delicate Studios... which is probably a more economical move since Portrait Recs does a lot of work for bigger bands so they are probably looking for bigger band prices. Delicate is decked out with a Digidesign rig, meaning they aren't analog'ing any recording. There isn't even an ADAT option at this place from what I can tell. Just some stacks of PT HD3's. Which... I have my gripe about... but industry standards are industry standards. You can't argue with the most used professional industry software of all time.

They're picking out four songs as well. I don't have a clue what they've been talking about, so that'll just be another day.

Until we meet again

Bare Knuckle Boxing + Skies on Fire going into Pre-Production!

After I've talked Eddie Cuddy through some chemistry exams, and after he thought NWN - IFHYP1 was the hit of the year, we decided we might cross paths musically in a serious realm.

Eddie Cuddy has been in and out of bands, some successful some not, for a few years strong now. I also have had this same blessing/curse. However, now, it seems that we are in two stable bands that aren't all about breakdowns or overly offensive topics, so what better way to start "crossing the country" than with a split!

Now, if you haven't heard Skies on Fire yet, make sure you hear their demo. Much less, make sure you hear the Bare Knuckle Boxing demo as well.

For pre-production, we've decided we're going to choose 4 songs each for this CD. BKB will be treating this release as the predecessor to our hopeful full length at the end of the Summer. We are not sure whether or not we will put our "different" versions of songs on this CD or if we will just put possible b-sides on this CD, but whichever our decision might be I believe it will be a very good release.

The name of this split will be called "Nationwide Broadcast". This CD will also be the hype machine that will hopefully allow both of our bands to tour either side of the coast a little easier.

Since recording isn't taking place at the same studios, BKB being local to The TriShed Area (The Shed, Shedaluma, and Shedbastopol [or "Maxi's" for short], and SoF being local to the PDL Studios area (however, it is unconfirmed whether or not they are using PDL again), we have both decided to master everything here at The Shed. This CD will be flying the 402 Productions label flag, however we do not know what it will be flying from SoF's camp... whether they will promote PDL's label (Lynch Recordings) or if they will choose to release under the 402 Productions camp name as well.

As for album art, we are on the fence from the BKB camp as to whom will take this challenge this time. We are always open to new artists, but Megan Kondrasky (she did the artwork for our demo) is always a top choice. Another prospect would be Matt Jehly, who has been working on our July show flyers, which would be fantastic as well. We haven't heard anything from the SoF camp on people doing artwork, so I guess when we get it all in we'll figure it out. It might be a "collect them all!" cover battle. Possibly an East Coast and a West Coast cover... most likely reversible. Who knows.

Anyway, here are the songs we're choosing from, with the top songs being the most looked at:

Winner Tambo
Loser Schau
Can You Dance to Redemption
Swimming to Drown
Dracula
Gus
Bumper Stickers Make it Easier For Me to Judge You
Stranger Stages
Friend Like Family

and since this is also the pre-production for our first full length, you can bet your sweet cent that all of these songs will be recorded and out for the public by the end of the Summer (hopefullyhopefullyhopefully fingers crossed!!).

A. Lenarsky Sessions: Day 4

Tambo, A. Lizzy (it's definitely shorter than Ariana Lenarsky), and myself decided that it'd be a good idea to set a due date for this project when we last met. We said June 22nd. We'd be lucky to finish this thing by June. That includes the recent exclusion of the song Sneaky Vegetables.

Oh yeah, before I continue...
Turns out, that Audio Technica mic we were using for some guitar tracks that I couldn't figure out was actually an MXL mic. A 603S to be specific. This mic is very very similar to my AT PRO24, except this is a higher quality cond. mic. Great for high attacking tones from brighter instruments!

We worked on two songs Saturday, Moon Lullaby and Nonsense. I think we worked on Nonsense... I'm not very good with names. Ask Shahin Shane Sultin Abdaaq Maaqmaar Kalantari.

We were very focused on getting all rhythm tracks done with. That mostly meant percussion. Actually, I think it was only percussion. For Nonsense, Tambo brought out most of all the percussions, covering everything from hand claps to fistfuls of shakers and a tambourine under his foot at the same time. The only thing I helped add to that track was the verse and outro percussions, which was nothing more than hand claps and tambourine hits on every three-beat. However, the Beatles-esque hand clap outro was my idea as well... and I always love that for an outro if possible.

For Moon Lullaby, Tambo again brought some beast of a percussion to the table, almost giving off this very hard rock almost Mars Volta-y percussion layer to it, using this stupid wood block instrument thing we've always had trouble using, as well as a fistful of a shakers, a djembe, and finger cymbals. I had the lovely task of lap snare and tambourine. We've had our sights on this song for awhile, and A Lizzy said this would be a "production masterpiece". So far, we're very happy with both tracks on the percussion side, so it might be headed in that direction.

Next week, One Fish Two Fish hopefully...