If you LIKE my band on Facebook, then you probably know that a couple weekends ago I spent about 18 hours at Inner Ear Studios in Arlington VA. This was easily one of the coolest, most entertaining weekends of my life.
My band has gotten to the point where we felt it was time to do some serious recording. Our demos, which as of this writing are still at our ReverbNation site, were done in Tom's basement by us. They sound pretty good, but we wanted to have something that sounded great, done by a real producer in a real studio. A lot of this was vanity. Like I have said before we don't have any delusions about quitting our day job. Music for us is a fun way to express our creativity and let off some steam. The experience of working at a real live recording studio was something that excited us all.
We were originally supposed to work with TJ Lipple. He was on the roster of Inner Ear producers, actually had a website, and produced a record by Boris Milic I wound up buying a couple days later when serendipitously seeing a show at the Rock n Roll Hotel. This seemed sort of like karma, so I emailed him and we exchanged messages and agreed on a date to meet at the studio just to get to know one another. The entire band came out and we met and talked and hung out for a good 90 minutes at the studio. We went away with a settled date and feeling confident that TJ would do a great job.
The first name on the list was Don Zientara. He owned and ran the studio and was the engineer for a ton of great DC hardcore and straight edge bands like Bad Brains, The Dismemberment Plan, Minor Threat, and all of the Fugazi records. When I saw his name I laughed, thinking "yeah, that guy will want to do our little record." I actually got a call from Don a few days after I sent the deposit check in. I wasn't going to answer the ring but it was a local Virginia number. "Hi this is Don from Inner Ear! Just wanted to say we got your check and are looking forward to you guys coming in!" I think I was kind of in shock. He seemed like a really nice fellow and I was looking forward to possibly meeting him at the studio.
Fate would step in. Maybe a month before we were to record TJ wrote that his wife reminded him of a prior commitment on the date we had arranged. He said we could either move the date or he could find another producer for us. We liked the date so TJ kindly went to find some one new for us to work with. A day or two later I get an email saying Don would work the board for us. Don Zientara, the guy who worked on this. And this. And this. And this.
At first I admit I was a bit intimidated. Mainly because I thought what would he think of our songs. My neighbor Steve had done recording at Inner Ear and said Don was cool and just another guy. So intimidation turned to real excitement, knowing we were going to work with a guy who had worked on some sensational albums. Like with TJ, we met up with Don a couple weeks before hand. We found him very personable and friendly. He asked if we had our demos with us, so I pulled out my iPhone. He seemed to dig the music and we parted all looking forward to recording.
So studio day came and we were all pretty psyched. Don had told us to bring everything we had and I pretty much did that. Even my acoustic guitar in case the spirit moved us. The drums took a while to get set up right because you have to microphone them just so. Don actually kicked us out of the room so that he and the intern Nick could finish the job without us milling about. So we hung out in the lounge and ate cookies and drank French press coffee that Mike the drummer brought. Every now and then Don would summon one of us so that he could test the levels. When it was my turn he had set up baffles around the amps so there wasn't too much room to spare. After about two hours we were ready to start playing.
The room itself was divided into two sections. The far end was where the drum kit was set up with around 11 microphones carefully set up. The room bottlenecks in the middle before expanding again and that is where the other three of us were set up. It was kind of cramped but not bad at all. A window looked into the control room where all the cool recording tools were. This wasn't just a guy tapping a keyboard, though there were computers and monitors, but a big giant control board with 30 some tracks available. It was very impressive, and looking at it was pretty much like reading Greek. There were chairs on a raised area behind the board so we could watch as Don fiddle about with controls.
The recording itself was a great experience. We did 6 songs in one day, averaging about 3 takes per song. We did a guide vocal track as we played to help keep the time but those vocals were naturally tossed out and we re-did them after clearing out the room of all our gear. I took maybe 2 or three tries per song; one gave me a particular hard time because I had to sing pretty high. Don did a neat trick where he would tell me to sing just the chorus on one pass and on another to sing just the verse. This allowed him to mix it together and not have me fighting for breathe in between.
It was all good-humored and fun. There was zero tension. For my part I took to Don's suggestions without any argument. At one point he said "Good, I like compliance!" I feel we were pretty easy to work with and we didn't obsess over every little point. None of the oh-I-missed-a-note-there stuff. It wasn't absolutely perfect, but we didn't need it to be. Nor could we afford it to be. I can easily see how it can take a year to make Hotel California where you just start obsessing over things, tinkering constantly to iron out the performance.
After 10 plus hours we broke for the day. Tom and I were coming back the next day to do the mix. Patrick and Mike had family duties to attend to. Afterwards Tom and me and Patrick went for beers and dinner at Hard Times. We all enthused about how fun it was, how good it seemed to go, and how much fun it was to work with a real pro like Don.
The mixing process was interesting. It was here we really got to tweak the songs. He sort of level-setted the first track and instructed us to start fiddling. Tom and I thought it sounded great and were hesitant to start but after a bit we got into it. We agreed that his solos needed to be brought up so that took center-stage at the right point. For one song I did start fretting over my guitar tone. I had a specific sound in my head and me being an amateur I couldn't really describe it. Finally Don says to be "do you want more bass, mid-range? More treble?" I didn't know what I wanted, so I just said "I want it to sound Black Sabbath-y." Don nodded and said "mid-range." He turned the knob and there it was...the opening chord to "Iron Man." Funny that the most romantic song in our repertoire, the most overt love song, is the one I wanted to sound like Tony Iommi. HA!! The best part was when Don turned to me at one point and complimented me on my singing. What an awesome thrill!
We took about 2 hours per song and were really happy eith what we had. Don put it on flash drives we had brought and also did a very rough master so that we would have something to listen to before we had it officially mastered. TJ was going to do this for us. Tom and I left with CDs for the car ride home and were both ecstatic with the results, even though they weren't finished yet.
So as of this writing the tracks are with the master engineer, who in our case is TJ. He also said some nice things when he listened to them. Hopefully by Early August we will have some real CD-ready songs for you to enjoy!
If you want to se photographic evidence, I recommend checking out our Facebook page. I have a whole album of pictures there! And be sure to LIKE US!!
No comments:
Post a Comment