Studio Day 15

We spent about an hour and half in the studio tonight. It was just myself and the Mike's. Mike V finished his lead parts for Can't Say No. Really nice and tasteful playing. Just playing the raw mix the song sounds great and we haven't applied any eq or effects at this point. This is going to be best sounding recording to date.

We may get together to finish rhythm guitars on Saturday and then it will be onto the drums. Depending on how I'm feeling I may try to do a run through and get some scratch drums tracks recorded for Lonely One and All About You. Then we can break the parts down and determine if we want to change any of the parts.

The big news at work

Yesterday a project I'd been working on for the better part of 5 months finally was announced to the public. The group I work in now at EarthLink will be spinning off into a new company as a joint venture with SK Telecom.


The worlds most well funded start up with $440M of capitalization.

Here is the new company website
http://www.sk-earthlink.com/

Check the links
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110683606875037938,00.html?mod=yahoo_hs&ru=yahoo

http://yahoo.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2005/tc20050127_0436_tc119.htm

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050126/earthlink_sk_telecom_3.html

Studio Days 13 and 14

This past week we made it into the studio a couple of more days. Tuesday we recorded acoustic guitars. During the switch over to electric work I got a bit distracted playing with Protools so after about an hour of down time we worked through more of Mike's parts. Nothing worth keeping.

Thursday we worked on Weather Song, recorded some acoustic and got Mike's leads recorded. I'm pleased with the performance and sound of the leads.

Not sure whats next, since I'll be traveling this next week but I believe drumming is once again in my future.

Studio Day 12

Last night we worked on guitars. Katie got a new Martin acoustic that sounds great. We tracked her playing the part twice and it gave a nice full sound. It might be a tiny bit boomy in the mix but we have a good idea of how it will sound on the song.

We also worked on Mike's lead part. Nothing worth keeping yet but we tried a lot of different ideas and I think everyone was pleased with last night's progress.

Hopefully we can complete the rhythms and the lead parts next time and then basic tracks for Can't Say No will be complete.

Studio Day 11

Worked on guitars for The Weather Song. A lot of work is left and nothing was a keeper tonight. Toyed with guitar arrangements and will continue on Thursday.

6 degrees of music

I got a note from a good friend of mine the other day that he played a gig in LA with Paul Gilbert (Mr. Big / Racer X) and Donnie Vie (E'nuff Z'nuff). I've always loved the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon thing and applying it to music.

Get to Frank Zappa and KISS.

Dean Truitt -> Paul Gilbert (Racer X) -> John Alderete and Bruce
Bouillet (Racer X to The Scream) -> John Corabi (The Scream to Union)
-> Bruce Kulick (Union to KISS)
also gets you to Motley Crue, then you add the Scott Travis (Racer X)
link and that gets you to Judas Priest to Rob Halford to Pat Lachman
(Halford / Damageplan) back to Dimbebag (RIP).
Judas Priest gets you Simon Phillips (Drummer on Sin After Sin I
believe) that links you to Pete Townshend and The Who.

Now to Zappa and beyond.

Dean Truitt -> Paul Gilbert (Mr. Big) -> Billy Sheehan (Mr. Big ->
Steve Vai's Band or DLR) -> Steve Vai (Frank Zappa)
DLR obviously gets you to Van Halen

Frank gets you Adrian Belew which gives you everyone from David Bowie,
King Crimson (Tony Levin, Fripp, Bruford) to YES!!!
Levin gives you Peter Gabriel, to Genesis to Phil Collins to Robert
Plant and now you are linked to the mighty Zeppelin.

Oh come to think of it, Dweezil plays on the new Gene Simmons record, so no need to take the roundabout way to FZ.

Hmm lets see. Dave Navarro is on the new Gene record as well, that gets you to Red Hot Chili Peppers, which gives you Jack Irons, to Pearl Jam, to Matt Cameron (drummer on Geddy's solo album) to Geddy Lee and now we've got Rush.

I can do this all night....

Studio Day 10

A long Saturday in the studio. We worked exlcusively on The Weather Song. The bulk of the evening was me working on a drum part for the song. I've always had a very simple part, not many fills, and I wanted to spice it up a bit. I spent the better part of 3 hours trying different things out, likeing pieces but not happy with anything all the way through. After realizing how much time we had spent I more or less went back to the original drum part and after 3 or 4 very focused takes got a track I was happy with. Only about 4 bars in the song were rough. Some sloppiness on the snare with ghost notes and a little drag and rushing between the bass drum and the snare. I moved the bass drum to lock with the click and took out some of the ghost notes and lined up some sixteenth notes on the snare. I was pretty pleased with that being the only rough edge in the entire song. We will also be adding shakers and tamborine and likely some other production things to spice the track up a bit.

We next spent about an hour or so working and recording the bass. Mike G did a few run throughs and then he did a take with only a couple of glitches. I think either his second or third time through the song we used the bulk of that performance. My part was so locked into the click that he mainly played bass against the click instead of the drums. Only at the very end where the song loosens up did he have to lock into the bass drum instead. After we got his take we had maybe 4 or 5 punch ins across the track we had to deal with. Mike G punched in his fixes and we wrapped things up.

We spent from about 4pm to 9pm working on tracks. I was hoping to get some guitars recorded tonight but that will have to wait until Tuesday. The approach we plan to take will likely be setting up Katie's amp for recording and getting some good electric guitar sounds. At that point we will have drums, bass, and electric guitar set up for recording at any time and then we should be able to continue working through the remaining songs. My current estimate is we will have all the sounds recorded sometime in February. Add another 2-3 weeks for mixing and a week for mastering and we are looking at a March release. Assuming I don't have to go to Korea again.

Studio Day 9

Mike G made it to the studio tonight and we completed the recording of his bass part. A very productive night although only one thing got completed.

I got to the studio a little early and fixed the one drum section at the top of the verse I mentioned in my last post. I also ended up cleaning a stray tom hit that was making one drum fill sound a little too loose. Drums are done.

We decided to mic the bass amp instead of running direct. We used the mic from the lowest floor tom that is designed for low frequencies. I also placed some dividers around the bass. Honestly I'm not sure if it helped or hurt but seeing pictures of "real" studios I decided I'd give it a shot. The theory is it keeps the bass sound focused in front of the amp and prevents other noise from the room bleeding back to the mic. Here is a picture from a real studio of what I was thinking. I need to take a picture of our studio to show what we ended up with.



We spent about an hour and a half working on bass sounds and mic placement. When it was all said and done we got a much better bass tone than we had previously received going direct. Mike V thinks the active pickups on Mike G's bass make running direct a little bit of a challenge. We had Mike G's amp turned up so loud that the building we were in was shaking and rattling. It was amazing we couldn't hear it on the mic. We were joking that the "growl" we thought we were hearing on the bass was really just rattling of windows, walls and light fixtures. We agreed that a real recording engineer came into our studio they would cite it as unfit and impossible to record. When it was all said and done we are dealing with the environment we are in and we believe we are getting some real quality sounds recorded. The best we've done to date.

It took about an hour and half to lay down the bass track and we spent a lot of time working on locking it in with the bass drum. A very nice track with a nice groove behind it.

We get together next on Saturday to work on more guitars, and get The Weather Song to the same level of completion as Can't Say No.

Studio Day 8

Tonight we worked on rhythm guitar tracks for Can't Say No. Mike G, didn't make it to the studio again tonight, not sure why, so we worked exclusively on guitars. Katie didn't realize she'd be recording so she didn't have any of her guitars, she ended up using one of Mike V's Strats to record a clean track direct. Running direct to the Digi 002 wasn't yielding a hot enough signal so we ran it through our rehearsal mixing board. It changed the sound rather dramatically but we think it is good enough. A little eq to thin it out a bit may be used at the end, we also played with the Amp modeler plug-in inside ProTools and found a couple of settings that sounded nice.

Next up was Mike V's rhythm part. It took a couple of hours to track but we got a good sound into ProTools which is better than any of the last sessions, and we got a good peformance out of him. He takes a little bit of persistence to push the performance on the track. He was also giving me a hard time about me wanting to "perfect" the drum track. I really believe cutting ANY corners on a project like this shows, and also would show we aren't taking this as seriously as we can. I honestly believe a producer would kick his ass in the studio. If we aren't at the best we possibly can be it doesn't matter, and excuses like the Stones play loose aren't good enough either. The Stones haven't released a relevant studio recording in nearly 20 years.

Enough of the rant... I did go back in a tinkered with the drum track. I found three minor blemishes, one bass drum kick, the drums at the top of a verse, and one drum fill. Protools makes it a breeze to fix bass drums, I moved it up 1/32nd of a measure and got it to sync back to the click track. For the drum fill it was a little different approach. The fill itself started early, then I slowed down to get back onto the click, and then slowed too much so I sped up the last part of the fill. Pretty ugly, Mike V said he couldn't tell, or that it wasn't big enough to worry about. Fortunately I had played the exact same fill later in the song, so I cut from the good take, pasted over the bad take. Sounded great except for the early start of the fill, I cut that out and voila, a perfect drum fill!

I still have to fix the drums at the very start of a verse but that should be easy enough to fix. After one more session of a minor surgery I'll deem the drum track complete.

At the end of the night I did one pass of the drums on The Weather Song to get Mike V's feedback. Overrall he liked the part, just a couple of minor changes and I'll need to strengthen the backbeat on the chorus and that should be it. On Thursday I'll track the drums and we will continue recording guitar parts and the bass track for Can't Say No.

The Other Side of the Net

Wired has an article on the trading and distribution of copyrighted works on the net. The article makes a good read.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.01/topsite.html

It calls out about the old days of Commodore 64 trading. I wonder if an old friend "Ben" is still involved with these groups. He was definitely the king of Amiga trading back in the day.

Dimebag Guitar Pick

As I've been scanning tickets and picks from past shows I've been to, I came across a Cowboys From Hell era "Diamond" Darrell guitar pick that I got at the club show in support of Far Beyond Driven in 1994.

Check it out, along with Rex's pick.

Happy New Year

Tonight Jacki and I are going to Nava in Atlanta for New Year's and our anniversary. Its hard to believe its been 5 years, and what a fast five years it has been.

You may have noticed on the navigation to the left I added a new link with Past Events. This logs many of the events I've been to or participated in, and if available you can see concert tickets, mementos or even pictures from the events through the years.

Studio Day 7

Drums for Can't Say No are complete. We finished the overhaul on the arrangement tonight and collectively came up with some great changes. It took the better part of the night and my final drum track was pieced together from 3 different performances but it is rock solid.

Mike G, the bass player, will have some changes he'll need to make to his parts since he was out tonight and outside of any concerns he may have we have consensus from everyone else on the arrangement.

Next Tuesday we will lay rough basic tracks (rhythm guitars, bass), put together a rough mix and then tackle the drums for the next song. 1 down and 5 to go. We completed arrangement and drum takes over the course of 2 nights, so if all goes well we should be able to knock out 1-2 drum parts a week and be completed with drums and basic tracks towards the end of January.

Top CDs of 2004

Here is my attempt at a top 10 list. Just like last year the same rules apply, these are from the list of cds I bought in 2004, and may not have necessarily been released in 2004. Once again not in any particular order.

• The Thrills - So Much For The City - released in 2003 but I had not heard of them until an instore at Tower. Jacki, Darian and I got to see a small acoustic set and got the cd signed afterwards. Neil Young meets the Beach Boys with a knack for pop melodies against folk songs. Also this album is much better than their second release that did come out in 2004. Highlights Big Sur, and One Horse Town
  
• Damageplan - New Found Power - RIP Dimebag. This cd was one of the ones I listened to most in the first half of 2004. And with the tragedy in early December the disc as well as other Pantera music has been in strong rotation. The cd is good, not as great as Vulgar or Far Beyond but definitely one of the better metal releases of the year. Standout tracks Breathing New Life, and Pride.
  
• Norah Jones - Feels Like Home - What can I say. Although I don't like the production on this release as much as on her first disc, I do really enjoy the music. This one has been in heavy rotation in my car since its release. The Deluxe Edition has some nice extras, but is probably not worth the extra cost. Standout tracks Toes, and Creepin' In.
  
• Ryan Adams - Rock N Roll - Great disc. Much more rockin' than his previously released material. Some of the songs have the production values of U2 circa 1982. There are some standout tracks on this disc, highlights include This Is It, Wish You Were Here, The Drugs Not Working
• Bob Schneider - I'm Good Now - The best artist no one has ever heard of, at least outside of Austin. Bob continues to amaze and his song writing seems to get more creative and polished over time. One of Darian's favorites on this disc is Piggyback. Favorites of mine include Come With Me Tonight, I'm Good Now and God Is My Friend.
  
• Killswitch Engage - End Of Heartache - By far the best metal release of 2004. The band caught my attention last year but they brought it home with this release. Rose of Sharyn, and the title track, The End Of Heartache are worth the purchase alone.
• Dave Matthews Band - Live At the Gorge Box Set - This set gave me renewed interest in live DMB material. 6 discs is quite a bit to absorb but these performances from 2002 have some great moments. The 2nd of the 3 nights has the best performance with Loving Wings -> Where Are You Going and Two Step back to back. Carter plays some great drums on Loving Wings which is included on the 2cd/1dvd set available in stores. The dvd and box set also include my all time favorite DMB tune Seek Up. The box set is only available at dmband.com
• Green Day - American Idiot - This may get the vote for best cd of 2004. I think when the grammys come around in February they will bring home multiple awards. Buy this disc for Jesus Of Suburbia. It calls back to some old school riffs including the Crue, The Who, Sex Pistols all with Green Day's stamp on it. This song is one of those mini-epics in a similar vein to The Who's A Quick One.
• Frank Zappa - Quadiophiliac (DVD Audio) - This is disc Dweezil put together with the help of the Vaultmeister Joe Travers. These are the quad mixes FZ put together through the years and now with the advent of surround sound the Zappa Family Trust has been able to put this disc out in DTS and the high-res DVD Audio format. I've only heard the PCM stereo mixes and the DTS mixes and I've got no complaints. Chunga Basement is a rehearsal recorded in Frank's Basement and Rollo, as Dweezil states, is bitchin.
• Kings Of Leon - Youth & Young Manhood - After seeing them at Bonnaroo I was hooked. I had never heard of these guys and came away a believer. This was another release from 2003, and much better than their 2nd release which did come out in 2004, although as import only. Tracks to check out Happy Alone, Red Morning Light, and Wasted Time.
  

I'm now out of my top 10 but I'll go ahead and make a few honorable mentions.

• Mike Keneally in some shape or form released 3 cds and a dvd this year. The DVD that accompanied Dog is some of the most inspirational playing I've seen in some time. Seeing him jam with the Mike Keneally Band in a living room with minimal set up and taped with standard home video cameras makes you wonder why can't anyone put out products like this. Check out the following from keneally.com
  
• Dog w/DVD (The dvd is better than the cd)
• The Universe Will Provide (classical music with solo electric guitar)
• Steve Vai's - Piano Reductions Volume 1, performed by Mike Keneally (Mike arranged and performed some great Vai tunes for solo piano)
• Bon Jovi - 100,000,000 Bon Jovi Fans Can't Be Wrong - Much like the DMB 6 disc set, this 4 disc set with dvd is quite a bit to digest. The remarkable thing is 38 of the tracks nearly 3/4ths of the material is previously unreleased. These songs represent some of the rarities and outtakes through the years. The clincher is many of these songs are better than those on actual Bon Jovi releases. Yes there are a couple of duds (sorry Tico), but overrall you'll discover some great Bon Jovi tunes from the Slippery Days all the way up to their latest release. Jacki and Darian have accused me of being gay going through a Bon Jovi phase, but thankfully I think I'm out of it.
  
• Primus - live releases from primuslive.com - between the Bonnaroo show, the Atlanta show I attended, the Roseland show I bought from last year's tour and the DVD release of the final US show in Chicago Primus shows that it has the chops live. Maybe even more so than their studio releases. Check out primuslive.com
• Umphrey's Mcgee - Anchor Drops - Another Bonnaroo discover although indirectly. There was a huge buzz about these guys but I ended up watching Primus the night they were on stage so I missed their set. Nothing like a listening station at Tower Records to hook me.

And a few that require some type of comment.

• Velvet Revolver - Contraband - It's good but it should have been better given the talent. Check out Big Machine
  
• Col Claypools Bucket Of Bernie Brains - Another Tower Records listening station purchase. Check out Junior (Yee Haw!)
  
• U2 - How To Dismantle A Bomb - Vertigo is up with American Idiot for best rock song of 2004.
  
• Marc Broussard - Carencro - Once again listening stations really do work! Check out Home.
  

And the most overrated disc of 2004.

• Deathcab For Cutie - Transatlanticsim - Numerous people at work couldn't stop raving about this disc. I just don't get it. And as I've always believed my friend's music sucks :-)

So all in all you get 20 recommendations from me and one advisory!

And there it is for 2004...

If you have read this far please provide comments or suggestions of your favorites for 2004. I'm always looking for an excuse to check out new music.

Studio Day 6

We got back into the studio tonight and completed working on the drum sounds. It took another hour or so as expected but I think all of us are happy with they way things are sounding. I tightened the top head on the snare, left a little ring/overtone, loosened the bottom head, and muffled the head slightly. A nice wet snare with a tiny bit of ring.

For the toms I moved the mics farther back from the heads which oddly gave more clarity and definition. It is getting more of the stick and less of the drum.

We worked on the drum part to Can't Say No. Spent about an hour or so working out bass drum patterns and putting together a consistent part that locked with the bass. Quite a bit of work that I'm hopeful will pay off in the long run.

On Thursday we will record my track and if time permits begin working on the next drum track.

Studio Day 5

Last night we got focused on recording. We spent about 3 hours working on drum sounds using Can't Say No as our guide track. So far we are pretty pleased. We have much better fundamental sounds on the recording than we have had for any of our previous demos. We still have a little more work to do, possibly close mic'ing the ride cymbal and the snare has a little more room for improvement.

Oddly enough letting the snare ring and loosening the snares gave a much better recorded sound than naturally what sounds good to the ears in the room. However it doesn't matter what we hear it matters how it sounds on tape, not that we using tape, but recording to a hard drive doesn't sound right.

Mike G and Katie left around 10 or 10:30 but Mike V and I talked a good bit more about arrangements. We had some good ideas about letting the song breathe a bit more and altering the changes and breaks so each one isn't identical and predictable. He warned we may have a bit of a struggle convincing everyone to change parts but I'm pretty confident it makes the recording much stronger.

Not sure if we will get together on Thursday or not but if we do it will be another hour or so of working on drum sounds, maybe trying an alternate snare, and playing with the ride cymbal. Once complete I should be able to start recording tracks. By the end of next week I should have some tracks completed.

Back in the States

I got back from Korea yesterday. With the time change I actually landed before I took off. My departing flight was at 10:05am and I landed around 9:30am 13 hours later. It took about an hour to get through customs and out of the airport.

I got home about 11am, checked email and snail mail and got ready for the day.

My band The Superlatives played a charity event for Toys For Tots last night so since we hadn't played in over a week we got together around 3pm to rehearse our set list. Something like 10 songs running about 55 minutes. Strangely enough this was probably one of our best rehearsals, no problems with tempos, very few wrong notes and one of the first times Mike G and were locking in tightly as a rhythm section. We finished up about 4:20pm and decided to meet around 6:30pm at the venue for a 7:20pm start time.

The venue was a bit of a dive but not far from my house so it was fairly convenient to get to. I picked up Jacki and Darian, we went to Moes, and then got to the venue around 6:15pm or so. As usual with Butchy Rhythm productions (he coordinates these charity events) he was running behind schedule. Thankfully we were the 3rd band so the delay didn't keep compounding for us. We went on about 8pm and played our set. It was a good performance and we had a good crowd, quite a bit of cheering, some dancing occurred and it sounded like people were having a good time. With the lights and being behind someone else's drum kit I could barely see over the top.

Butchy likes to give our band and all bands for that matter an encore so we held back our last song and sure enough Butchy asked us to play more. Well he asked us to play 2 more, we added an unrehearsed "Too Far" to the set and closed with "Rejected". Great response to our finish and since we were probably going to be the best original band for the night we were asked to play yet another song. This was tougher but we ended up adding "Silver Lines" that went over well for the final track.

All in all we played about an hour and fifteen, and added 2-3 songs at the end of the set that weren't necessarily going to be played. For not playing live in 6-8 weeks this was a good and fun thing to come back to.

Today the plan is to catch up on rest and get ready for Christmas. Its good to be back home.

In Korea

I'm back in Seoul for another week. The trip yesterday was easy and uneventful. Left Atlanta with no issues and we got in about 10-15 minutes after our schedudled arrival. Today the first of a week of all day meetings focused on IT / Billing / CRM.

Someone says it might snow here tomorrow. I'll be sure to post some pictures if it does.

Horrible shooting of Dimebag Darrell

I just read that Dimebag Darrell from Damageplan and Pantera was shot and killed on stage last night in Columbus Ohio. I have many good memories of going to Pantera shows through the years in Texas. I saw them a couple of times in Houston in the early 90s, on one of the first Ozzfest tours and the highlight was a secret show in Austin at the Backroom to celebrate the release of their Far Beyond Driven album.

Darrell Lance Abbott August 20, 1966 - December 8, 2004

Rest In Peace and prayers go out to all of the families and friends of those killed at the show last night.

Studio Day 4

This past Monday we spent another day in the studio preparing for our recordings. We completed the scratch tracks (guitar, bass, vocals) that will allow me to lay down my drum parts. It went pretty quick and we ended up using the last hour of practice for rehearsal.

We usually practice on Tuesday and Thursday but with birthdays, first mine on the 7th and now Mike G's (bass player) on the 8th we are taking the middle of the week off. And of course I'm still busy with work so if we get together again this week it will probably be Friday night.

When I get back from Korea I'll start working on getting a good drum sound, and I'm hopeful I'll get one or two songs completed by Christmas.