New Sherwood Studio Blog
The latest studio blog from Sherwood can be read by clicking read more below."Hi, it's Joe. I was out of town on Monday, so David was kind enough to fill my shoes in the blogging department. Enjoy! ...
Hey, it's David. here's my recap of Monday:
Mikey, Nate and I walk into the studio sometime around noon to find Brad zoned out in front of the computer..."mixing Not Gonna Love"...sure Brad. Looks like you're working REAL hard :-) i kidd. We spend about an hour sitting and listening to the little blips, beeps and sound bytes being properly tuned and evenly mixed. At last, we get started with recording something. There are quite a few small, miscellaneous parts left to track for most of the songs. One such part is a simple guitar riff in the second verse of the very song Brad's been working on. Not Gonna Love. Now, I had recorded a take of this part once before, maybe a week ago or so? (sorry, not sure what blog# that's from) but it ended up sounding like a quacking duck when matched to Mikey's steel drum. lame. However, with a little experimentation and patience, we find a much better tone using Brad's "Beagle" amp. The result is a dirty/distorted sound which somehow syncs nicely with the steel drum.
We take a break to let Brad comp what I've recorded and continue mixing. My upper back has been hurting all day so I go out for a run to see if it can offset the nagging ache. Plus, it's always important to exercise, kids! :) By the time I get back to our place, I've totally forgotten about the pain! so, it worked! hooray. I take a quick dip in the pool, just to cool off, shower and head back to the studio.
At this point Dan has gotten back from his weekend trip to visit the 'ol g/f in Seattle. It was her birthday (HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JAFFREY!), good times. We talk over what we've done for the day and decide to press on with Not Gonna Love by recording some back ground harmonies and melodies. Between Dan and I, and since there are TONS of parts and layering, it takes a couple hours. Any one harmony part can sometimes sound weird or off, when listened to out of context, but once placed with the rest of the melodies, it gives such an awesome, full sound. This is pretty much how it is for us with this song. Singing an extremely high falsetto harmony to yourself, alone, in the sound room...it's a funny thing.
Finally, once we finish tracking all the bgvs and let Brad do his thing with editing and mixing, we listen back. I'm quite pleased with the way it all turned out and getting more and more excited and confident about the album, in general. I can't wait for you guys to hear it!!! Stay tuned. Bye bye.
(Okay, now it's back to Joe)
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
We're still rushing to get finished versions of a few songs turned in to our label, so we spend most of the day going through Maybe This Time, making sure everything is ready to go. If some parts have been recorded but are missing, we tell Brad and he finds them and mixes them into the song. This song in particular requires a lot of mixing production (whereas most of the others could get away with a pretty raw sound).
While Brad is slaving away on the computer I go for a bike ride and make a trip to the store to pick up paper towels, milk, and bread. It's pretty baffling how quickly five men can go through such things.
Later in the evening, the five of us sit down to discuss some pressing issues: album artwork, touring plans, b-sides, etc. It's been a pretty relaxed month and a half of recording, but now we're getting close to the end and we have figure lots of things out before we go our separate ways during the post-recording break.
After that, Dan and David record background vocals for Make It Through, which sounds really sweet. It's a stripped-down acoustic jam that sounds like it could have been done by The Temptations. Lots of "oohs" and "aahs" in the chorus. Really cool.
Later that night we talk about recording alternate versions of some of the songs for b-sides. Everyone has different ideas for various songs. I'm excited to work on these because I finished the drums almost three weeks ago! It's nice to have more things to do for the next two weeks.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
We spend the morning going through a few more "important" tracks to turn into the label (Hit the Bottom and Make It Through). This takes up most of the afternoon and basically involves listening through many times and nitpicking little parts to include or exclude (or make louder/softer). It's tedious, but necessary. This process is something that will go through later when he's mixing the album, and we wouldn't normally have to do this during tracking time but we need to get these particular tracks finished sooner.
Since most of the songs have been tracked and most lyrics finalized, we begin the process of recording alternate versions of the songs. For most of them, this means stripped-down acoustic guitar-based renditions, but for others it gets more experimental. I record Dan playing acoustic guitar for 4 songs, and then Mikey on piano for a few of them (using the baby grand piano in our living room), but it gets late so we call it a night after doing 2 songs.
While recording b-sides, Nate sings vocals for Around Your Finger (whose name will probably change since that lyric is no longer in the song) and Worn, which will be a duet with our friend Molly Jensen (see Studio blog #7).
Later in the evening Mikey, Dan, and I watch some episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, one of our favorite shows. Ridiculous."
