Rock Monument Day 5

Day 5 was yet again slowly productive. We just look at it as chipping away at our tiny little monument to Rock, so any progress is good progress. I’m counting the days only because I didn’t have the blog to look back on while making the last studio thing and it would have really been interesting to see how much time we put into it. That thing took over 3 years and at times seemed destined to fade away. We had an issue with the recording system last time too though. Jack was storing a Pro Tools rig for a friend at his house, so we (at the time Jack, ROGER and I) decided to put it to use while we had it. But then halfway through it got confiscated for a year or more and we were unable to keep up the momentum. Meanwhile we changed the band around, thankfully getting the true missing pieces on board with Big Daddy Dave and Greg Rice. Hopefully, this record won’t be so much like pulling teeth now that Jack owns his own rig and so far it hasn’t.
Also, let it be noted that when I say “day” that it only usually means 4 to 6 hours of work depending on how much time we all have to spare.
I got to the 411 Pod studio a little after 6pm and Jonathan and Jack already had the song of choice for the evening “You Had Me at Get Lost” up and ready for me to re-sing, this time for real. The scratch vocals on there were entertaining since I was a bit tipsy while performing them, but they were also a bit sketchy in pitch. This time I had to hit the notes. Yikes! The new Logic Pro 8 system just installed this week made the vocal comp thing about 50 times easier than the previous program so this was a breeze. I just sang it about 4 times and Jon went through each separate take of each line on repeat and picked the best one. The best take was selected to the master vocal track. The total time for “comping” the entire song was about 10 minutes, stupid quick. We worked on drums and percussion for a while and I set up a little “noise station” and we put 2 Russian microphones up and let it rip.

 

I pretty much nailed it in one take, not using drumsticks but a jingle stick (thanks Roscoe!) and a maraca instead. Adding this track gave it a really loose feel and listening back you would almost swear that Jim Keltner was in the house.
Then we stepped into some uncharted and VERY deep water. Oh yes, the world of orchestra loops! At the risk of coming off sounding like 50Cent, we dabbled in using strings as a bed for this really cool falsetto part in the song. The #8 version has literally millions of variations of orchestral noises that you can select. You just tell it what key you’re in and pick from only piano to full philharmonic. It is freakin’ wild and you can easily see how lost you can get in THAT world. But I think cooler heads will prevail in he end and we’ll just turn the guitars up really loud..just like we always do.
Onward and upward on Monday night!