Same Room

one thing that was different about this recording from past recordings we've done is that we were all in the same physical room together. in the past, we've tracked basics as a band playing all at the same time, but everyone had been in thier own rooms with thier amps and i was kinda isolated in the big drum room. what we did here this time was acoustically isolate each instrument in its own room, but run cables out to the main live room so that we were all standing close to each other just like at a show or at practice, but still able to achieve isolation if someone wanted to go back in and punch in a part or something. except me. i had to play everything right all the way through all the time. but these two photos show you the room layout from behind the kit. liam was like 4 ft away, then rachel like 10 ft, and patti 15 ft - just like at our practice space. everyone's amp was in another room, but we could hear them all over our own custom headphone mix. so for example if i wanted tons of bass and no scratch vocals, i could hear that while playing, but if rachel wanted tons of gtr and scratch vocals, she could hear that and control that independently of anything greg was doing in the control room. the joys of the furman headphone system.

Pre-Mastering

just to get all out of order on everything, one of the demo tracks was sent to resident mastering svengali and hotrod car tinkerer trevor sadler @ mastermind for inclusion on an upcoming thick comp. initially we planned an album track to go on it, but time - she doesn't allow it. once we finish this record, trevor will once again do mastering duties at his milwaukee bat cave of audio.

YOUR KIDS SHOUL D BE GHOSTS

....Or your neices and nephews, or your neighbors kids.....It doesn't matter. We're shooting some 'publicity photos' next weekend (SATURDAY APRIL 30TH), and we need some small children to dress as ghosts. We're hoping for two dozen. The plan is thus: we'll meet up at Humboldt Park around 11:00 AM, dress those kids up, shoot some pictures, and eat some pizza or hotdogs or some other kid friendly food. It'll be a hoot. A REAL HOOT.

So, if you know any kids somewhere between 3-7 years old (they have to be smaller than us, and some of us are pretty small), please drop us a line at nuevoblack@yahoo.com and let us know you're interested. The photos may be used in print ads, or in press releases or in the liner of our record. THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS.

My Commentary On Some Of These Pictures

So, I really hate being home. I hate going to work, I hate cleaning my apartment, I hate making my own coffee, I hate not just working on music 24 hours a day (although, truthfully, we didn't work for 24 hours a day, but we were atleast thinking about it).....

This was the updated solution to my buzzing bass problem. Instead of clipping the thing to the skin on my leg (which hurt like all get out), Greg clipped it to a spoon, and taped the spoon to my leg. So, I had a spoon taped to my leg for a couple of hours...


The Savage Amp was in the bathroom, and it sounded like hell. It's the main guitar sound on a couple of songs, was used for a few guitar overdubs, and was used on the keyboards in place of the busted B12 Organs that Rachel had planned on using

This is the guitar the Nick got all Jim O'Rourke on with his drumsticks. For another song, I did the same thing with Rachel's knitting needles. She made Patti a scarf and a little kerchief for somebody's rat dog.

This is a picture of Nirvana at Pachyderm

This is New Black at Pachyderm. The log is Francis Bean

Nick and I in the sauna after our first day of tracking. Saunas are awesome.

This is Jim, who was the second engineer for our record.

This is Adam, who was the assistant. Adam's alter ego is building bass enclosures for cars, and is a world record holder for building the loudest car-stereo system. He is currently building a speaker box out of steel and concrete that he hopes will reach 180db (which is louder than a jet engine). His dream is to build a stereo that will be loud enough to emit the 'brown sound', which is a noise so loud that it makes people lose control of their bladder and bowels. That is an awesome goal.


Rachel and Patti doing what they do best.

Greg chasing a wild turkey. He didn't catch it, but he tried his damndest.

The axe murderer strikes again.

More Pictures

Jim took these - check em out here.

Pretty Pictures - Round 1

jim from pachyderm was nice enough to send us these pics he took, you can start to see how awesome the place is.



greg at work



liam beeing grounded. this requires an explanation. liams bass was giving off a buzz when he wasnt physically touching the strings - which was a problem in quiet sections or when he wasnt playing. greg's genius solution was to electrically connect liam to his bass providing a constant ground. he clipped a wire to the bridge of his bass, and the other to a chunk of skin on his leg - outcome: perfectly silent bass - and reportedly a quite painful liam. suffer for the art dude.



ax murderer leaves his warning sign for us.



console labeling. top is tape returns, bottom is channel inputs.



pro tools: not turned on. greg inspecting some shit.



sitting on the couch



rachels keyboards



patti's regular setup

Micra-mafones

i rounded up some info on some of more esoteric mics used on the basic tracking - high nerd factor here in this post. overheads & piano, mono room & many overdubs, drum ambient room and overdum room. one song used these mics for ambient mics, with the m-9 omni capsule.

How slick is this cross post?

I also left my half-finished copy of Daughter's Keeper in the nightstand of the master bedroom, with a note for whoever happens to visit Pachyderm studios next (and can figure out how to open that thing), which you can read about here.

Crap We Left...

cell phone charger (mine), toothbrush (unknown owner) and dead bear cub. it's gonna take a little longer to get the photos up, they're all on greg's laptop right now, so i gotta get with him to make that happen - be patient.

the drive home was tedious and it is both good and bad to be back home. i give it a day till im back to city stress level. once back in the city driving down sacramento like 4 different people ran in front of the van nearly getting ran down, and some jackass casually rode his bike through a red light nearly getting ran over by the car next to us on chicago ave. being removed from the city sure makes it seem insane once you're thrust back in it. one of the best things about recording was i didn't leave the pachyderm compound once in the 4 days we were there. the only people i saw or talked to were directly involved in making the record - so it was very good and focused.

after unloading our gear at our practice space we went down to the skylark and had dinner and some beers with normo. it was a nice post-game review type of meeting, reflecting on what we did, and where we're going for the next phase of the record. greg seems really excited about it all which is cool - he was like a kid in a candy store all weekend.

in the end we only used 3 of 6 reels. my head hurts from hearing our songs so much, i need a break - so this is cool to have a breather.

other quick additional notes i remembered - ua 2610 was used on gtr. d112 was close mic on bathroom gtr, and 57 room and hvac duct. bathroom gtr used the tube tech stereo compressor. marching snare used 451 and tlm 170s. piano used km-54s and tlm 170s. fet 47 was used on a lot of other various overdubs, as were the 170s.

That's it.

Fifteen songs tracked. We'll drive home tomorrow and do vocals and mixing in a couple of weeks. Everything sounds great, and we're all beat.

Fire Up the Grill - Take 2

we're hitting the tail end of our stay here at pachyderm, and just finished a monstrous intro that has grand piano, orchestral bass drum and snare drum, suspended cymbal and 3 guitar amps feeding back (at both real speed and half speed). sly stalone better watch it because this shit is over the top. uge as they say. too big to put the H in.

anyway, i just lit the grill for our last meal here. patti's doubling some parts over at the studio, then i think we're gonna try and put vocals on a couple numbers - then put together some rough mixes. we also made drum samples for stv slv to remix from - so takers can get the "pachyderm drum sound" library. it will be hot: coming to a computer near you.

today was essentially unnecessary overdub/fuckaround day which has been great. i've also done my share of jim o'rourke impresonating (circa his experimental guitar days) playing tabletop guitar with drumsticks and pick. liam did a similar take on another song that was recorded backwards - which will freak out all the stoners.

when i woke up mysteriously all my dirty clothes were gone (including my pants) so most of the day i've been wearing a silly pair of xxxxl red soccer shorts that make me look like an idiot. the laundry was actually in the dryer - so now that it's clean, you'll be happy to know i have clean jeans on.

i hear the crew coming back now. patti says "we did a cool thing to 17"

Recording Almost Finished

Taking a little break on our last day while the Pachyderm dudes disassemble the drum mics to set up the piano for our final bit of recording. I've still got a little hope that we're going to get to vocals today, but I'm not counting on it. We've finshed all of the overdubs and tracking for all of our real songs, and come up with some pretty awesome stuff. Nick and I did some really crazy noise overdubs for 'Devel In My Car' and a pretty overdub for 'Red Bandit' that we played with markers and knitting needles. Greg did some backwards recording, and those two songs are pretty dang trippy sounding, which is awesome, as trippy is what we are going for.....

Time for a Swim

well, so far we've reviewed all our work so far, and everything's a keeper save for unhappy birthday. we tracked red banded (formerly nick was right) and y.l.g.e.t.e.t. both on first takes - so i've been pretty much watching everyone else work. i explored the property and walked down by the creek and dam (but i missed the bear cub) and now i'm gonna hop in the pool while patti redoes her parts on devil. then we get new guitar tones for the last 2 songs and im back to work.

let me reiteriate how awesome this is - even if the pool is not heated.

Carpet On My Tongue

We might've won the battle last night, but it's apparent that the whiskey is winning the war. I feel like tenderized ass this morning. The casualty count is unknown as of yet. With the exception of Rachel and Adam the Assistant, everybody else is still in bed.

Wildlife Update: We have seen a wild turkey, a crane and a DEAD BEAR CUB. The bear is in the river, down by the dam. Its questionable how long it has been there, so I'm on the lookout for a mama bear. If she comes around, I'm gonna do some bear boxing.

Charles Bronson Update: Deathwish 3 is pretty fucking amazing.

Actual Record Recording Update: As Rachel mentioned, the basic basics for eleven songs are 'in the can'. I'm going to be reasonable realistic and suggest that the recording of those cover songs weren't maybe 'up to par' (hopefully, you can all keep up with my 'industry speak'). The plan for this fine day (and it really is beautiful outside) is to give what we tracked yesterday a listen, punch in some fixes, and then map out what's going to happen to the five songs we have left, along with a piano intro part. I'm confident that we can get through all of that today, which will mean that we can spend all day tommorrow totally destroying everything we've done with completely unneccessary overdubs. That is my favorite part of recording. In theory, we may put some vocals on tape tommorrow as well.

The camera we brought with us is now filled up. Hopefully, Kraska will FTP those bad boys up, and we'll have some pretty pictures to show you.

I'm going swimming.

I Think I'm in Heaven

This place is awesome. Really awesome. I tried to post yesterday and the computer ate it - hopefully this one will make it. Suprisingly, I made it as number 3 to arise (I'm always the crabby late riser) this morning and my pre-emptive heavy water chugging before sleep prevented the whaskey (technical industry term for whiskey) and beers from getting the best of me.

The other clowns have covered a lot of the goings on. Technical wise, lemme see what I can pull off memory right now what I think's going on recording wise.

THE TEUTONIC DRUM MIC'ING SETUP (all mic manufacturers are german or austrian)
bass drum in: sennheiser 421
bass drum out: akg d112
snare: akg 451
rack top: akg 451
rack bottom: sennheiser 421
floor top: akg 451
floor bottom: akg 414 buls
overhead left: neumann km-54
overhead right: neumann km-54
mono kit: neumann fet 47 (compressed through tube tech compressor)
room left: neumann tlm170 (17ms delay to tape, tc m3000 delay)
room right: neumann tlm 170

default channels to neve 8068 console

BASS
sm57 > manley compressor
shure beta 52 > manley

gtr
oktava ml52
akg 414
sm57 room

key
dx7: sennheiser 421
sequential: DI

everthing's going to the studer 827 24tk.

i know there's more and i think i have some of that wrong, but that's the gist of it for now.

we just ate breakfast and actually have to do some work today. we got a ton done yesterday so that's awesome. jim and adam here at pachyderm are taking great care of us. i took a sauna the other night and went swimming in the frigid pool and it was awesome - that's in my plans for tonight again i think. once we get over to the studio i'll transfer the photos to greg's computer and i'll see about getting them online. greg's doing a kick ass job. and yes, after dinner last night patti and i were messing around and did some pj harvey covers that greg secretly taped a few seconds of that are really awesome. also, everyone's done theier best to do high school band interpretatinos of songs from in utero. liam and i did a shockingly awful version of all apologies.

i need some coffee.

Eleven down. Kind of.

After lunch, we went back in and tracked Nothing Scares Us and (Mind Of A Girl, Body Of A) Spaceship. Patti added some insanely rocking overdubs that prompted producer Greg E. Normo to announce "Patti's a good guitar player." Which is a real nice compliment when you consider E. Normo's power of understatement.Meanwhile, Nick heated up the grill and we all took a dinner break of hambuger for the real men and chicken breasts for the screaming pussies. I had one of each. Oops.

When the sun went down, we went back in and did Toaster, which sounded totally trippy and Devil in My Car, which consisted of six minutes of Nick playing mind-numbingly awesome drums while the rest of us stumbled along behind him. That's OK, because it's most important that Nick's take is right, followed by Liam then Patti and finally me. Which is because the band brings in a studio musician to overdub my parts while I'm sleeping anyhow (Yes, that was deadpan and yes, I said six minutes. This will not be the radio hit unless seventies rock makes a comeback NOW).

Everybody was drained afterwards, so we brought out the whiskey and recorded our covers: Jane Weidlin's (the Go Go's) Automatic and The Smith's Unhappy Birthday. We think Automatic was a keeper, but Unhappy Birthday might need a little re-record--by that time, E. Normo had grounded an alligator clamp to Liam's leg to keep his bass from buzzing, the Whiskey was having its effect on our playing, we'd applied autotune to the scratch vocals and everybody was laughing their asses off.

Before we went back up to our pimpin rockstar pad, we decided that we'd take a listen to everything this morning and decide what we want to try again from yesterday. Unhappy Birthday will probably need another try, and Nick is still not sold on his drumming in Der Spook.

And here's an interesting end note. We all sat around the TV watching The Surreal Life when we got back, which was featuring Jane Weidlin (whoa!), who was crying because another washed up and forgettable musician was calling her washed up. Well Jane, you made an indelible impression on the rock scene around the world, and we love your songwriting best out of all the Go Go's stuff. If washed up means that my favorite band in Chicago is recording your song 20 years after you wrote it, then you must not be as washed up and irrelevant as you feel (although appearing on The Surreal Life is probably not helping that impression).

Kisses!

addendum It has come to my attention that I got Jane's last name complete wrong. Let me just say, Jane, that this is testament to the fact that I am hopelessly out of touch, not that you are hopelessly out of date. Everybody knows it.

Five down.

It's 4:47, and Patti has just put on her fancy wristband. Liam's pants are down below his ass, and yes, we have done basics on five songs: Time Attack, Big House, Khalil!, Mere Cats and Der Spook.

We just stopped for a turkey and ham sandwich break, and sent Adam, our trusty studio assistant, on a beer run.

We're heading back in about 30 seconds. I think we are going to try to do Nick Wuz Right (now Red Bandit) and then Nothing Scares us. We're waiting till it gets dark to hit Toaster and Devil in My Car.

I'd feel like a rockstar if I weren't on my third pair of Hanes Her Ways (white with blue flowers) and scared shitless to play Devil.

xox
rachel

Take Fives eaten: Five

Drum tones, check.

I'm on my second pair of Hanes Her Ways and my second pair of socks. Same jeans and shirt as last night. Showered but didn't wash my hair.

It's now evening, and Team New Black has finally finished getting drum tones, by which I mean that Liam, Patti and I have gone shopping and made breakfast, Patti has watched two movies, I've taken an afternoon nap, and Greg and Nick have finished drum tones. Betcha didn't know they could take so long, did you? Yeah, neither did I. But apparently, drum tones are one of the most important aspects of a good album (or so Nick would have us all believe).

After a short break, we just sent the team back to the studio to get bass tones. In about a half-hour, Patti will head down to do guitar tones, and I'll be the last one in for keyboard sounds. In case I didn't make this clear, Pachyderm is two buildings: a guest house and the studio.

Update: Holy shit! Greg just paged us through some kind of phone intercom, and we are supposed to head down in 10 minutes. I kinda feel like a rockstar, if you want to know the truth.

This means that we can start tracking in about an hour. OK now, I'll talk to ya'll soon.

xox - rachel

Number of Take Fives New Black has consumed: 2

At The Pachyderm

We got to the studio at around 2:30 this morning, after a pretty okay show at the 7th Street in Minneapolis. This place is a little beyond amazing.....The house has enough bedrooms for everyone, a swimming pool and a sauna. It's this old F.L.W. style house out in the middle of nowhere. There's a little creek running behind the house. It's totally beautiful in a sort of were-gonna-get-hacked-up-by-a-mass-murderer type of way.

Greg and Nick are setting up drums and microphones and changing drum heads and all sorts of other techie-nerd shit (I'm sure that Nick will give you all of the boring details)....everybody is so ready to make this record happen, super nervous excited.

Minneamonapolis

We're taking off in about an hour, and I'm all packed up and ready to go....My fears last night that I may be coming down with a bit of a cold were confirmed this morning, which is about a million different colours of awesome. Hurrah!

A couple of predictions:
1. Rachel and Patti will both be asleep by 11:00 every night. In some cases, they'll probably pass out closer to 6:00. Sloth is the new punk.

2. During one of their 'naps' Greg, Nick and I will commit something to tape that will ellicit a response similiar to one Rachel put forth at the recording of our first record: "Maybe when you guys sober up you'll realize what a bad idea this is".

A list of songs to be recorded:
1. Khalil!
2. Valentine
3. Time Attack
4. Der Spook
5. Merekats
6. Seventeen
7. (Mind Of A Girl, Body Of A) Spaceship
8. Big House
9. Nothing Scares Us
10. When You Sleep Tonight, Your Toaster Will Rise Up And Kill You (completely a tenative title at this point)
11. UNTITILED (although we've been calling it 'Nick Was Right', as a sort of ironic joke. Nick is never right.)
12. Devil In My Car
13. Fonzie Cool
14. You Look Good Enough To Eat Tonight
15. Automatic (Go-Go's Cover)
16. Unhappy Birthday (Smith's Cover)

That's a whole lotta songs! Can we do it, or will we waste all of our time at the pool? Holy Crap! Holy Holy Holy Crap! I'm one excited turd.....

Come out and watch us play tonight at Seventh Street with The Bitter Tears

Last-minute shopping

So what does every good keyboard player pick up at the superstore the night before she goes on the road?

1) a four-pack of Hanes Her Way, hipster style (note: it was this or wash)
2) a six-pack of socks (why do they sell more socks per package than underwear, i wonder?)
3) Chex mix
4) gummy bears
5) granola bars
6 - 10) yarn, needles and scissors for a new knitting project (hey! i'm gonna be spending a lot of time on my ass)

Tape's Here

luckily it showed up. it appears to be in good shape, but we wont really know till it goes up on the machine. i'm slightly concerned about sticky shed syndrome, but this is a later formulation that they seem to have worked out the kinks by and we should be fine. awesome.

Crap I Need to Do Today After Work, Before Practice

- buy new heads/sticks
- pull extra snare stand from 2nd kit's hardware
- buy a slurpee and take 5

Where's Our Tape?

we're narrowly squeezing in on a roadblock with tape. some more background, a lot of people make records on computers these days, we're still all on tape. we have a lot of reasons, maybe we'll talk about them later, but it's how we do things. this is a little complicated because the last remaining analog tape manufacturer closed it's doors for restructuring in january, and since then tape's seen a classic supply and demand price jump. the plant is now on very limited production, so supply is scarce. most people selling new old stock tape on ebay or whatever for a lot more than what you would have paid a year or so ago. so what do we do? like the good hippies we are (just kidding, we're no stinking hippies) we recycle. or we buy used. since it's cheaper (and available) we're able to buy more reels to allow multiple takes of songs. we've ordered 6 reels of 3M 996 tape - which is the predecessor to quantegy GP9. this may all be totally boring, but they are high output tape, sometimes referred to as +9 tape (long of the short, back in the 50's/60's - your zero reference point was at 185 nWb/m a measure of fluxivity of the tape, sort of a saturation point. as tapes and machines got more evolved they could put more information on the tape, or had more headroom. your loudest parts could be louder than before, so the tape hiss is reduced in comparison, and there's more dynamic range. before i bore you any more, there's tons of info on this stuff here and here if you're into that sort of thing).

at any rate, we need tape to make the record. studio time has been booked for months and we can't just move it. we've ordered the tape, but it is not yet here. we leave tommorow. fedex had the shipment scheduled to arrive yesterday, but it did not. after about an hour of phone calls with fedex and instigating a "case" - we finally track down the packages of our reels at the wheeling sort office. the driver apparantly gave up delivering our packages - and at some point in champaign they lost the mailing labels. great. you can see the tracking results of our fiasco.

bill from tape tape is a wierd dude. he sounds exactly the "the dude" in the big lebowski on the phone. when i placed the order he sounded like he couldnt find the pencil and was scrambling to keep everything together. when i told him about our time crunch he said, "for an extra 10 bucks i can get in the van and drive through downtown LA traffic to get your package to fedex today" which i took him up on. at the end of our call he says with much enthusiasm (imagine "the dude" when he's talking about the nihlists, and say it in a stoner/surfer voice) "let's keep analog alive man!"

The Ultimate Recording Experience

T minus 24 hours till we leave for recording. Of course I am perusing the Pachyderm website rather than working while at the day job, and while doing so, I discovered the equipment list, then sent the following email to Camp New Black:

Pachyderm has a Bosendorfer piano?!!??? Never in my life have I played on one of those. Whoa.

xo
rs

p.s. They also have lesley speakers for their Hammond. As if I should be surprised...

Getting Started - Backstory

some background for first time readers: new black is a rock band in chicago. we've already got a record out on thick records and have played a bunch of shows in both the U.S. and europe. the first record has been out for about a year now, and we're about to go back into the studio for our second record in a couple days. this blog will keep you up to date (or bored) with events as they happen leading up to the release of the record.

to fill you in on the last few months, we've been writing new songs and playing them out at shows to get tighter in preparation for this. we're going to be recording with our long time friend greg norman - the same guy who recorded our first record. we'll be tracking this record at the gorgeous and famous pachyderm studio, outside of minneapolis. our last record was done at the equally awesome electrical audio - which greg calls regular home - but we wanted to get out of town and hole ourselves up in a foreign location without distractions for this record. both places are world class studios.

we've already gone into greg's home studio to demo a majority of the songs we'll be recording for the record. for the first record, we demo'd the songs before going into the studio as well, but i (nick) recorded them last time at our practice space. this time we wanted greg to demo them because:

a) we'd have the tracks on 2" for future use
b) so i didn't have to worry about recording junk, and could focus on playing
c) so greg would have more time to come up with brilliant ideas for the actual record and be more familiar with the songs.