Thursday, May 26, 2005

From The Road

I'm currently in Monroe, Louisiana, on an travel/off day of the Zincs/Monade tour. In several ways, it's a world apart from a NB tour.....we're traveling on a tour bus, and playing support for a band that features one of the founding members of a highly influential band (Stereolab) that has toured with Sonic Youth and REM (needless to say, this sort of pedigree brings out some pretty creepy superfans)....I like the not having to drive, and the waking up in the town we're going to be playing with enough time to wander around and relax before the show, but I'm missing playing my own songs, and it is a pretty crazy switch to go from being one of the lead/front people of one band to being a substitute in a support role. I'm having fun though, and these French people are swell.

I am excited to hear the final master of the record, and anxious to see some of Jef's artwork for it. I'm doing what I can to find a computer (atleast one without a French keyboard) in each town so that I can check the progress. This computer hunt has now gotten me lost two days in a row. I'M AN EXPLORER

Even listening to my unmastered copy, I've got to say that I have never been so proud of a record before.

edumacation

go learn something. if you're too lazy to read, sit back and watch.

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

pretty pictures

here are some pictures from mixing and overdubbing at studio greg studios ii.


cool guy on the gtr.


every song from the demo playing simulataneously slaved to the 24 tk.


calibrating the 2 track.


me spinning around like a tape machine about ready to pass out but the picture looks like im sitting still.


doesn't liam look good with a bag over his head? (dont try at home)





ehaustion mixing at 5am.


final mix checklist

nerd alert

rachel's posts sure are a lot more exciting to read huh? i know there are recording nerds reading this too, so i will keep up the nerd details.

oh shit, the mix started on tape (did i mention - 1/4" quantegy GP9 (i used my older stock from 2k3 instead of a recent 2k5 batch, lame i know), standard 520 nWb/m fluxivity, no NR, NAB EQ, 15ips, standard tones, 1k,10k,100hz,50hz @ 0db vu. the interim computer work was through a motu 828mkii at 96k, 24bit using digital performer. i love the top end on the record. clear and open without being brittle. overheads sound so good.

mastering started on the atr, then i *believe* the lavry a/d converter, to the requisite limiter, to the avalon eq, to the chandler/neve limiter to the system 6000 eq. slight boost at upper mids for snare/vocal/gtr, hair on top for air, some slight notches in low end on the system 6000. all of that through the monster dunlavy speakers. ask the guy doing your bedroom mastering if he uses $8000 speakers to make critical decisions on.

but at this point being done - i want to emphasize how great it is to work with super experienced professionals throughout the process. the record sounds soooo good in my opinion, and i dont think that's an accident. we didnt cut corners on the things that matter. we chose an awesome live room at pachyderm, (who provided us amazing assistants in jim and adam, who were clearly trained in the old school of studio professionalism) with an awesome engineer who we have a great repoire with (greg) and also went back with trev, another awesomely seasoned veteran who's super down to earth in the way only a canadian living in milwaukee could be. everyone involved is super respected in thier fields. bonus info - trevor worked on nine inch nails - broken. and has new age mastering grammys. fortunately - our record doesnt sound like yanni. if you're making a record, work with people who you're on the same page as and can understand where you're coming from - who have benefitted from experience. between greg and trevor, those guys have literally hundreds and hundreds of credits to thier names - and just cuz you buy an mbox at guitar center, doesnt mean you can make a great sounding record.

i had beers with greg last night, and some things he noted that he was real happy with are the bathroom guitar (so good) and the shure beta 52 on bass gtr. it's not clicky like a d112, but has super good low end. he also thought it could have been the neve console that it went though..but that was a pleasant suprise. i feel like i've learned so much in making this record, and thank those guys for teaching me a shit ton of stuff along the way so i can help other bands make great records too.

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

We did it!

Friends, music for the record is done. Last night, Nick, Patti and I drove up to Milwaukee's Mastermind Productions to master (duh!) with the lovely and amazing Trevor Sadler, who also makes a mean latte. We returned to Camp New Black at 3:45 am with three reference copies and our new CD.

Mastering is now my favorite part of the recording process. As opposed to mixing, in which you listen to a bit, make a few small adjustments, listen to a bit, make a few small adjustments, and listen to a bit more (ad naseum)*, mastering crunches the process down to just a few hours. Trevor's ears are amazing, just like Dog Ear Norman's! And he makes everything look easy. But it's not, so don't think you can just master your own stuff on your home computer, you idiots. Get it done professionally!

Anyhow, we worked out the last few details and made the final decisions, staying in touch with Liam through the magic of the wireless community to provide updates and obtain approval on song titles. We decided to name the Intro Mere Cats and its sister ending Meerkats Stand Tall. We left the intro on Red Bandit intact on the Red Bandit track (moving it to a hidden track wasn't an option thanks to modern technology, according to Trevor, assuming we wanted it to actually play on everybody's DVD players. We went with the Toaster version with the BIG BASS, which I think will make Liam very happy and sounds fucking rad; de-muddified the low end of Nothing Scares Us, which made me happy; and added a record sample to the end of Devil in My Car that Nick picked up from a symphonic recording.

In an amazing twist of events, I stayed awake through this entire process and drove us home to Chicago. Kraska was wrecked, after staying up till 6am Monday morning tossing and turning. I'm giddy now, but I think it's more from excitement than lack of sleep. It's a real attitude adjuster to take one for the team when you have a record to show for it, rather than four or five more days of torture ahead of you.

So what now? Thick Records pays Mastermind and gets the master version of everything so they can send it off to get burned. Our awesome designer, Jef, has a few sleepless nights to finish the jacket. We hustle to get Jef content with thank yous, credits, song titles and all that crap. And then we all sit back and relax for a couple of months and wait for this shit to hit! Wow.


* note: By "you" I mean Greg, Nick and Liam, of course. Patti and I are generally passed out on the sofa for this portion of the process.

Monday, May 23, 2005

last minute panics, fuck our neighborhood

the reference cds are awesome, but we found a small glitch in one track so normo and i scrambled to make sure our asses are covered for mastering tonight. he's holed up mixing the shit out of milemarker's new record right now. basically since pachyderm, our two bands have been playing time share with him. they'd do a few days, we'd do a few days, and so on. it's been a strange "ships passing in the night thing" - we've been milemarker fans for a while, so it's a cool coincidence. anyway, so i went to electrical to pick up a backup digital copy of one of the songs in case the reel version has the glitch on it. (long story - basically some tracks were mixed straight to tape, and others went to hi-res digital, the ones with more complicated changes and wierd shit which were then assembled and dumped back to tape for archival/consistant sound). on the way out at 12:30 last night i noticed some fuckers shot our van window out - looks like a pellet gun or something - but nevertheless, fuck our neighborhood. thank you to milemarker for suggesting a good, cheap place to get the glass fixed - apparantly their van has also seen it's share of chicago mishaps.

liam's out of town now, so it's all up to rachel, patti and i to head up to milwaukee tonight and get this mastered. so, so close to being done. sort of. at least the audio portion of the cd.

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

stab me in the eye we're done! sorta..

we worked till about 5am last night mixing the shit out of the remaining songs and holy halalujah we're done. unless we find something wrong, but i'm gonna say we're done. it is both awesome and crappy to be done with the recording part, on one hand we've been working so long on it, it's nice to have some closure and a full on completed version there instead of "works in progress" - but i'm sad to bid greg an adieu for now, we were pretty seriously in record mode there. there will be more though, we're going to go back at sometime in the next few months to finish up the outtakes and b-sides, so it's not REALLY over i guess.

is it too lame to say you love your own record before it's even done done? cuz i do. hearing some of that stuff back is like, 'holy shit, is that really my band? cuz that's fucking awesome!'

we are all very sleep deprived and crazy right now. so the recording/mixing was done spread over 11 days (2 days demos - though one album track is partly from a demo session) working btw 8-14 hr days. something like that.

i want to be a haberdasher when i grow up.

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

what we do when in the studio, but not actually working

enough of the on-topic stuff, right? greg has tivo and we've been watching a lot of aqua teen, south park (you don;t need a link) and sealab. greg & liam have been nerding out on clone wars too and about the upcoming star wars movie. liam has been nicknamed "lord palpatine" or "lord palatine" (non chicagoans may not get the reference, palatine is a chicago suburb) depending on the mood. the girls are generally repulsed by the star wars, i'm indifferent about the clone wars, but am kinda looking forward to the actual movie. but, i'm also not making plans to see it on opening day (cough cough liam and greg). there's also some backstory here, when episode 1 came out, my old, old band ng kindheit was recording with greg and he was all about star wars and talking about it constantly. during mixing of the last new black record we bought him a jar-jar binks costume mask that hangs in the studio still - he is a total star wars nerd. oh no, we's a gonna die?!

also, the wiffle ball field in the walgreens loading bay has treated us well. last night's discovery is that we can have night games - the lighting is pretty good there. i fucked everything up last night though. normo was on the mound doing his maddux (he's got a hell of a slider - and a pretty deep arsenal of pitches all around actually, but he's a bit of a loose cannon, not a lot of discipline - i've had to charge the mound a few times on him.) kimball was in deep center/left/right field, and greg pitched a fastball that i popped up onto the top of the pharmacy so we have no ball now. greg's talking of stealing one from electrical today. the best part is we're using a real aluminum bat, so you can really get a full swing in on that fucker. it's also pretty fun to yell "NORRRRRRRRRRR-MAN!!! NORRRRRRRRRRR-MAN!!!" and "KIMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM-BALL!!! KIMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM-BALL!!!" and "KRASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS-KA!! KRASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS-KA!!". go ahead and try it out now - it's just like you're playing wiffle ball with us now! the girls don't seem to interested in wiffle ball, they usually lay on the couch and watch tv while we play stick.

also - i think we've eaten from piezano's on 47th about 4 times now. yesterday was lunch at apache grill on archer/damen. i still think piezano's has the best pizza in chicago - though the people who work there seem brain damaged. we've also eaten at huck fin's donuts, and the archview. it's been the world tour of archer diners.

we also went to mckinley park and liam hit me in the back of the head with a superball and i wanted to kick his ass - but we made up since it was an accident. greg caught a dead catfish in the algae overflowing pond - although actually it was sleeping so we left it to nap.

these are the important things about recording right?

stealing bandwidth

What you got in that suitcase?

What's in the suitcase?

This? Nothin.

Seriously, what's in there?

Oh......a monkey in a sumo diaper.

Seriously? Let me take a look

Nope. Sorry

C'mon

No Way.





....We've got two songs left to mix, although we're probably about halfway through one of them. The record is looking to have this track sequence:

Intro (I'm calling this intro Merekats)
Khalil!
Time Attack
Nothing Scares Us
Devil In My Car
Big Haus
Der Spook
Red Bandit
Seventeen
Toaster
Mere Cats

....everything is finished, with the exception of Red Bandit and Der Spook (which will be a whole different mixing experience than the rest of the songs, as we've decided to use the demo version instead of the Pachyderm one. It's a good choice.) Everyone has agreed, without actually voicing it, that Khalil! needs to be remixed as well. Honestly, the mix we've got is a bit conservative in comparison with the rest of the songs, and if it's going to lead off the record, it had better kick ass.

Right before we left tonight, Greg took the ending of Red Bandit and cut it up and recorded it backwards. That'll probably intro the song now. DON'T TELL ANYONE, but Norman's using the computer for some of this stuff. DIGITAL AND ANALOGUE RECORDING, TOGETHER. Truly frightening.

We worked until six this morning, and my sleep schedule is dicked up. Tommorrow, this part of the record will be finished.

Monday, May 16, 2005

Mixing it up.

I'm here at work while everybody else is at Studio Greg Studios doing all the work. We started mixing in earnest yesterday after breakfast at Huck Finn's family restaurant and donut shop, and if I weren't about to drop under my desk and pass out from exhasution, I think I'd be jumping up and down I'm so excited.

Mixing, for the most part, is drawn out and tedious work, especially for Greg, who has to listen to everything AND make it sound right. On analog. But it's also the most rewarding part of recording. Because once you're finished, you actually have a real live song. Except for the mastering part, but that doesn't happen until next week.

We started with my dramatic grand piano intro, then did Khalil, then Nothing Scares Us, and finally Devil in my Car. Nick drove me home at 3am so I could get up and get to work this morning, and I left the team with a list of songs I promised to trust them with completely. I'm pretty sure they finished Seventeen after Nick got back.

Just got a call from Patti an hour ago, who had to relay the bad news that I needed to redo my vocals for Time Attack cuz they were out of tune (the hazards of writing parts for yourself that you can't really sing. Oops). So I passed the task onto Patti. I'd rather have them done and done well sooner than later. I'm off work at 5:30 promptly, and will take the Orange Line back to SGS for dinner and more mixing.

We're supposed to be finished up by tomorrow night. Holy cow.

Sunday, May 15, 2005

mix

fuckinay, greg's had some pretty aweomse idears so far. as of now we've got the intro mixed, and khalil (2 versions - v2 is probably the keeper with a more defined bass drum). just getting the mix of nothing scares us up and it sounds raaaad.

Rock Show VS The Awesome Jam

It's pretty ugly out today. Thank goodness. Ugly is the perfect sort of weather to spend a day in the basement of StudioGregStudioIII.

We retracked the vocals on a couple of songs yesterday, including the finally finished 'Red Bandit'. After giving everything a listen, we played some wiffleball. Greg and Nick were amazed/horrified at how bad I am, despite my switch hitting skills.

Lastly, before heading out to our show, we fired up the 2 track and began mixing the piano intro to the record. Greg had an idea to add even more noise to the scareyness by mixing 5 or 6 of the songs from the demo together on his computer and adding that in sparingly. It sounds neat. And creepy.

A big thanks to everybody who came out to the Hideout last night, especially The Like Young, The LDW DJ's, and Meat (I love my tie). It was a fun show, I love playing at the hideout (everyone there is so nice!), and it was a fitting way to begin our 'summer break'.

Today: We get into mixing this fucker.

Friday, May 13, 2005

uk release / art update / more recording

shooting for a sept 5, 2005 uk release, which means basically everything has to be done by may 31 - that's just the way it works, crazy huh? seems so far away. jef said something about sculptures - it is clear he is already thinking of things far cooler and greater than we could imagine. that's why you work with professionals in thier field eh? (though he's an awesome musician too under the name spies televiv) it's awesome watching someone else go through thier creative process, especially when it's somewhat tied to your creative process.

tommorow it's back to the studio to do some keyboard overdubs and more vocals. then at night to our last show for a while at the hideout.

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

tentative street date/ new thick comp

september 20, 2005 is hereby known as the day time attacked.

tentatively.

now we just have to like, actually finish the damn thing.

details for the "mean it man" thick comp that seventeen is on are here. for extracurricular points, i also play on the live hanalei song "Chamomile" - and this is the first time i've heard the title. i've always known it as "newer fast one".

while we're talking extracurricular, go see liam on tour with the zincs in a few weeks.

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

vocals - day 1

back at home, not at looking forward to the day job tommorow. should be up in about 4.5 hrs. vocals at studio greg studios. got a lot done, not all - but a lot. i'm sure liam will write more - but nerd details are that most of liams tracks are through a beyer m88 to sony 3036 pre to dbx 160x compressor at about 3:1 and patti is to at 4033 to hardy pre to dbx 163 to tape. if track space allows an at 4051 room mic track delayed at 20ms though hardy pre. i did some overdubs into a sm 58 to a combo amp miced with a gefell um70. compressed w/valley dynamite. patti also doubled her part in seventeen using this setup.

this is silly, i'm going to bed. we didnt bring a camera, sorry - no photos.

Thursday, May 05, 2005

Artwork, vocals, sequence

Last night we got together with Jef to talk about the cover art for Time Attack. It was an incredibly different conversation than the when we met up with him to talk about the first record, in that everyone was so much more comfortable knocking around ideas; it was so much easier for us all to talk about it. In my opinion, it would be just fine if that was the end of it. Whatever Jef comes up with will be perfect, as was the first record's art.

We have plans to do some third-shift vocal recording with Greg, after his regular session at Electrical, tonight. I've loaded the rough mixes of the songs I sing into my computer and have been practicing actually making the words reasonably clear. I've got a whole lot of words that I'm trying to fit into little places.....

Team New Black is going back and forth on the track sequence, but it should be finalized soon.

Sunday, May 01, 2005

Baby Ghosts

A million thanks to all of the moms and dads and young people that came out to help us take our pictures today. What did we learn? We learned that just being incredibly talented, attractive, well-read and overly sea-worthy does not mean that one can have any sort of control over 15 three year olds. Live and learn.

Kraska and I just had a talk about the sequencing (or track order) for the record. I like it. I REALLY LIKE IT.