Recording WTH#4: Day 21

July 19, 2006
This was a day of rough mixes. After retrieving Krissy from the hospital after her surgery (she’s doing much better now), and seeing that she was comfortable, I decided to do a little mixing. My tactic was to mix a song and then check up on her. I decided to proceed [...]

Recording WTH#4: Day 20

July 18, 2006
This was the night of Faris.  After work, Faris Albayya of Custom Deluxe dropped by to help us out with some vocal tracks.  We started off reworking some lyrics for “The One”, and ended with him tracking a little on “Turn Around”.  Meanwhile, I did a little work with the EQ levels on [...]

Recording WTH#4: Day 19

July 17, 2006
Armed with my recently gained EQing knowledge, I went back and remixed “Demons” and “The Peak”.  The instruments are present with a little more clarity now.  I’m starting to use panning as a method of separating the instruments as well.  After much trial and error, the songs are starting to sound decent.  We [...]

Recording WTH#4: Day 18

July 16, 2006
After Custom Deluxe practice, I decided to remix “Phantom Limbs” and “Inferno” using the following guides on EQ and mixing:
Recording and Mixing Drums by Bob Dennis 
and
Tweak’s Guide to Recording Success
These are both great guides for micing, recording, mixing, EQing, effects, etc..

Recording WTH#4: Day 17

July 15, 2006
Before heading out to the Italian festival in Nonantum, I did some rough mixing of “The Peak”, “Demons”, and “Inferno”.  I was then able to burn everything onto a disc for an assessment of the tunes.  We listened to them all the way to and from the Dave Alpert show at Toad.  Remixing [...]

Recording WTH#4: Day 16

July 13, 2006
What would recording be without some sort of caffeine?  In California, we had a bountiful supply of Starbucks.  Here in the Boston area, we have a different friend, Dunkin’ Donuts.  Thanks to them, I was able to stay up until 4am.

The mixing began after Custom Deluxe rehearsal (~11pm).  The task ahead of me [...]

Recording WTH#4: Day 15

July 12, 2006
After rehearsing with the Dave Alpert Band for the show at Toad on 7/15, I returned home for a late night mixing session.
11:30pm: First up was Turn Around. Fortunately, I had already gotten rough levels for the drums and bass on Monday, so initial leveling didn’t take much time. There were a significant [...]

Recording WTH#4: Day 14

July 10, 2006
So, I started doing the rough mix of the album.  I figured I would start with “Phantom Limbs”, since it’s the first song.  Unfortunately, I discovered that the harmony guitar track was missing.  That was a bummer.  I ended up rerecording it after about 30 minutes of searching through all the wave files [...]

Recording WTH#4: Day 13

July 07, 2006
12:00pm: I woke up and had some coffee. I proceeded to head to the studio and play a slide guitar solo for “The Peak”. It got pretty chaotic, so I decided to add a tapping guitar solo to the mix. It’s going to be interesting mixing down 4 concurrent guitar solos. I have [...]

Recording WTH#4: Day 12

July 06, 2006
12:30pm: Lunch with Krissy at Taqueria Mexico.  Great burritos.  Possibly the best I’ve had in the Boston area.   Check out the Burrito Blog for more worthwhile burrito locations.
3:00pm: Got to work on the remaining guitar solos.  I started with “The Peak”, as this was the tougher one.  Very melodic, and hardly suitable [...]