12/29/10

It’s been a little over a year since I’ve posted in here. Heading out to Sonic Ranch with the guys in Avindale to document the recording of their new ep January 3-5. Going to stay over there instead of driving back and forth. I’m excited. First legitimate studio I’ll ever visit. The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s and Jenny Lewis have recorded there. It’s just an amazing/exciting experience that I’m really looking forward to. Hopefully nothing goes wrong and the video comes out nicely. Anyway. Here’s a video excerpt from a DVD I made the guys. Recorded it using iMovie, Garageband, and Oscar’s living room. My mixing is sub-par in my opinion. Also, the video quality you choose to view it affects the audio quality dramatically.

10/19/09

Just for the hell of it, fun times messing around.

02/21/10

Recorded We’re Home Again late February at Ish’s house. Put down three songs, but really, only 2 came out sounding ok. Due to the lack of an actual guitar cab, we recorded guitars direct. Tried adding my own distortion to them but it wasn’t really happening, so I cut it. Bass came out pretty sweet, so did drums. Had a bit of a hard time with the toms, but trying to work through it. Anyway, here’s a video for Lock Up Your Daughters.

8/7/09-10/14/09

Monthly wrap up for September, got a surprising amount of recording done. Every Star I See, Edgemere, and 4D and The Square Dance. Good times. Recorded Edgemere at their place. Put down two songs in 4 or 5 hours, which was great. Although two or three days later I got a text from Miggy letting me know they’d started jamming with their old bassist and that they were throwing those songs away, and to not worry about mixing them. Mixed them anyways and just drive around listening to them. Cool deal. After Edgemere I power sessioned Every Star I See and 4D and the Square Dance.  Every Star I See put down one song, Where’s Rion, while 4D put down 4. Every Star I See were done pretty quickly, 4D took a bit longer. Problems with bass, having to re-do vocals and just kind messing around through out the process. Barely finished with the 4D rough tracks, cuase yeah, I’m a lazy ass and it took me like a month to even look at them.  The Every Star I See track is giving me problems, but I’ll work through it. Dudes apparently got themselves a new singer and a keyboardist. Not sure what to think about that. Mostly curios I guess. Anyway, feeling like I’m leaving something out, not sure what though, so I’ll end this post with a video of Every Star I See, I Hate The Remix, Avindale[rip] and Myself in a van on our way to Roswell.

7/5/09-8/6/09

I’ve decided to start doing monthly wrap-ups. As long as there’s recording going on at least.
So July wrap-up, bleeding over into August. All pro-bono minus the Untitled sessions.

Ended up recording I Hate The Remix. Fun time, put down 6 songs in one 4 or 5 hour power session. Didn’t finish vocals though, which is a bummer. What’s worse is Eskimo is living in Austin now, so who knows when that will be finished up. I need to finish mixing what we put down though so I can send them out to him. Maybe he’ll be able to do it himself using his Mac-rophone. Thinking of copyrighting the word haha. Good time though with great friends. Guitars were recorded direct, so let’s see how those end up sounding.
After The Remix, Tony Everyglory and I recorded Untitled. I’m not too sure on the correct spelling of their name. I believe it’s UNTLD. Not 100% though, they have no myspace as of right now so I can’t link them either. First session was hard, ended up sending the guys home to practice the song a bit more. First time we’ve ever had to do that. Came back in a week later though and got it done quick. Favorite part? Bass dude rolling in with his girl, laying down his track in one take and rolling back out. Way too sweet.
Homesick Alien never came in. Mistake on scheduling, showed up at the studio, band never showed up, attempted to re-schedule, never heard back, just how it goes sometimes.
After Homesick Alien I went over to Tury Every Star I See‘s house and recorded his side project, The Cymatika. Good dudes, head over to their myspace to check out the video they made for one of their songs, way too crazy/hilariousbutnotsupposedtobe. Recorded one song, took 7 or 8 hours, but we got it down. Unfortunately Tury chose how he wanted guitars to go down and you can hardly hear what’s being played. They need to come back in and re-do them for sure. Good song though, enjoyed the whole thing.
Hung out during Avindale‘s pre-production sessions as well. Apparently I’m the videographer [real word?] for the entire process. Had a great time, lost my keys for an hour or two, and got some pretty decent video. I’ll put up the final project at the end of this blog. Excited for the album though. Definitely something I’ll be driving around jamming.
And finally recorded Aaron Strutters! Favorite local dude for sure. Put down four songs in a few hours and he’ll be coming back in a week or two to record 4 more. Excited, dudes music is super good. Only guy I’ll be recording for free from now on. And Eskimo of course. But dudes in Austin like I’d mentioned, so who knows when that’ll happen again.

Anyway. Kind of busy month I guess. I feel like I’m forgetting someone, but not too sure who. This next month we have 4D and the Square Dance, Cris from Every Star I See‘s side project, scheduled along with some more Avindale time and I think one other at Everglory Studios. We’ll see how that goes.

Next update in about a month. Hopefully there’ll be something to write about/more videos.

3/15/09 – 7/4/09

Forgot about this thing.
Recorded a few bands since the last update, The Known, a weird Christian mix of metal and something less heavier. Barbarian, a great, great hardcore 4 piece, and Liberty The Dog, Eskimo’s Folk project. Probably my favorite so far.  Also sat in on random sessions with Tony Everyglory. Avindale, the tail end of Intoxicated Slaughter, and one or two others that I can’t remember right now, which sucks.
Anyway.
Recording I Hate The Remix on Sunday, then a grunge, post something band called Untitled on Monday, Then The Strutters on Tuesday or Wednesday, and finally Homesick Alien July 14th, 17th and 21st. Going to be a busy month.

As far as videos go, I have one ready for Barbarian, just waiting on the audio for one or two tracks from Tony Everglory.
I do have this though:

More once everything happens.

3/14/09

A little late on this, but after a pretty lengthy break from recording due to unfavorable health conditions on my part, I finally got back into it in a pretty insane way.
14 hour session, showed up a little after 10, packed up and closed out a little after 12.
Felt bad for Tony, dudes back was wrecked.
Finally wrapped on The Valley Rats after who knows how long though. Way longer than it should have been that’s for sure. I’m not making excuses for it either, completely my fault. Going to head over to the studio right now to start on mixing though, so hopefully we’ll have it completely wrapped soon.

1/10/09

Worked with Architect Effect last Saturday. Hung out, ate pizza, watched Zack and Miri then got down to recording. Tony and I grabbed one of Beto’s old kick shells and put a Beta 52 inside to isolate the kick more. Sounded sweet. We’re going to get some studio foam, a new shell, and build our own kick isolator. Should be fun.
I recorded the guys playing the scratch track for the song they recorded and lined up the audio with the video. Came out pretty sweet, I think.

Watch it here:
www.myspace.com/architecteffect

Or here:

12/20/08

Recorded Edgemere at Everglory Studios this Saturday. Sweet session with sweet dudes and sweet music.
Honestly, those guys make some of the best music I’ve ever heard. Really one of the few local bands I listen to just because I love the music.
In total we recorded 3 songs on one long track. 15 minutes was difficult for drums, but Alex pulled through like a champ. Mixing and everything that goes along with it is going to be taken care of by Tony Everglory. I’m excited to hear what he does with everything. I’ll probably do my own mix as well, just, getting all those files is going to take some serious time. There’s so many of them and mixing them down takes so long.

They’ll sound sweet as hell once everything is done though.

http://www.myspace.com/edgemeremusic

12/18/08

I have to say.
I’m really disappointed with what the guys got back as their final product.
It sounds like they got the raw, unmixed versions I’d played for them the last day of recording. Only, a few days later with some echo and reverb thrown in on the main vocals, and some kind of echo, reverb, tremolo, phaser combo on the backrounds.
The deal with The Studio was that they would get professionally recorded, mixed and mastered songs.
I think we failed them.

I’m going to try and do my own mixes, but we’ll see how that goes.