pre-production
Here's some stuff I wrote during the week prior to recording...
Sunday - 1/2/05
I was going to wait until next Saturday to start this diary, since that’s our first day in the studio, but it looks like it’s going to be a busy week and you never know what you’re going to want to remember later. I’ve thought a lot about the recording of our first two albums recently and I’ve found that there’s a ton of little details I can’t quite recall – where we recorded a certain track, when we came up with a particular idea, things like that.
Today we got together for the first of only a few rehearsals we’ll get to have before we start recording. We haven’t had much time to devote to writing and practicing the new stuff, what with all the shows and holiday plans in the past month. Last Wednesday we managed to get together with John and Steve at Steve’s place to listen to whatever demos and live versions of the new songs we could put together. It was a mixed bag of stuff, to say the least, but it was good introduction and I think we left there feeling like things were finally starting to get rolling. (Steve had a bit of a head start, having heard some of the songs when we recorded the War Buddies demo with him some months back.) I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a pessimist, but after having had a bit of experience with the music business, I don’t tend to get my hopes up too high until I’m actually loading equipment into the studio. Things have a nasty habit of changing dramatically at the last second. At this point, however, it looks like we’re in the clear.
Anyway, most of the songs have changed significantly since Jeff made his home demos and some of the live stuff isn’t really a good representation of how we actually want the songs to sound, so we’re taking these last few days to finalize the arrangements and show Mike all the stuff he hasn’t heard yet. When we first started thinking about the making of this album (before we had a regular drummer), we were figuring we’d have to come up with a lot of creative rhythm solutions, but now it seems like we’ll record most of the songs as a full band.
A handful of the new songs – Wine, Women & Song, Moral Centralia, Cream and Bastards Rise, and Diminishing Returns, have become regulars at our recent shows, so today we started in on the rest. We managed to get pretty far along on War Buddies, What You Live By, Happiness Writes White, and High Tension Wires. It’s going to be tight, but I think we’ll have just enough time this week to get all the songs to some stage of completion. With any luck, we’ll be able to meet with John and/or Steve again before we get in the studio so they’ll have a better idea of what everything is sounding like, but we may just have to get there on Saturday and hit the ground running.
Wednesday – 1/5/05
Tonight was our last practice before recording, and I’m kind of amazed that we actually made it through the rest of the songs and got them all to a point where we feel pretty comfortable going into the studio. Not all the bugs are worked out, of course, but I suppose it’s not bad to have some room left for fortunate accidents and – dare I say it? – inspiration.
Jeff, Sean and I got together briefly on Monday and Tuesday, but we didn't get much actual work done. We were mainly trying to make some headway on one of the more troubled songs, Deep Note, but after giving it another unsuccessful go tonight, I think we’re going to shelve it in favor of spending more time on the other songs.
After revisiting War Buddies and Happiness Writes White for a bit, we moved on to the remaining songs, Cold Snap (a great song that didn’t quite come together for KJV, was eventually recorded during the dark final days before our hiatus, and will now be re-recorded and finally see the light of day), Cool James (a pre-Merrymakers song that’s been resurrected and given a totally different treatment), I Missed It, Picture Picture, and Little Round Mirrors. The only one I still have doubts about at this point is I Missed It, but maybe we’ll find the extra something that it needs when we go to record it. Other than that, I think we have a pretty good general idea of how we’re going to approach each song. Another week of preparation wouldn’t have hurt, but we’re still in pretty good shape. We’ve learned in the past that it sometimes it takes a hard deadline to light a fire under our collective ass, so I think it’s good that we decided to make this album now, right at the beginning of the year. Maybe this way it’ll get released by the end of the year. My personal fantasy is that it makes it out sometime this summer.
Mike has been coming up with some great drum parts. I’m really happy that we found a regular drummer before recording the album. The prospect of recording with a bunch of different drummers or with someone who wasn’t necessarily going to be around to play with us after the album was done was not very attractive. Mike, however, is very attractive.
We’re planning on meeting with John and Steve tomorrow night and play them our new practice space demos from this past week. Hopefully we’ll come away from there with some more specific ideas for how each of the songs should feel and how to tackle them in the studio.
Sunday - 1/2/05
I was going to wait until next Saturday to start this diary, since that’s our first day in the studio, but it looks like it’s going to be a busy week and you never know what you’re going to want to remember later. I’ve thought a lot about the recording of our first two albums recently and I’ve found that there’s a ton of little details I can’t quite recall – where we recorded a certain track, when we came up with a particular idea, things like that.
Today we got together for the first of only a few rehearsals we’ll get to have before we start recording. We haven’t had much time to devote to writing and practicing the new stuff, what with all the shows and holiday plans in the past month. Last Wednesday we managed to get together with John and Steve at Steve’s place to listen to whatever demos and live versions of the new songs we could put together. It was a mixed bag of stuff, to say the least, but it was good introduction and I think we left there feeling like things were finally starting to get rolling. (Steve had a bit of a head start, having heard some of the songs when we recorded the War Buddies demo with him some months back.) I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a pessimist, but after having had a bit of experience with the music business, I don’t tend to get my hopes up too high until I’m actually loading equipment into the studio. Things have a nasty habit of changing dramatically at the last second. At this point, however, it looks like we’re in the clear.
Anyway, most of the songs have changed significantly since Jeff made his home demos and some of the live stuff isn’t really a good representation of how we actually want the songs to sound, so we’re taking these last few days to finalize the arrangements and show Mike all the stuff he hasn’t heard yet. When we first started thinking about the making of this album (before we had a regular drummer), we were figuring we’d have to come up with a lot of creative rhythm solutions, but now it seems like we’ll record most of the songs as a full band.
A handful of the new songs – Wine, Women & Song, Moral Centralia, Cream and Bastards Rise, and Diminishing Returns, have become regulars at our recent shows, so today we started in on the rest. We managed to get pretty far along on War Buddies, What You Live By, Happiness Writes White, and High Tension Wires. It’s going to be tight, but I think we’ll have just enough time this week to get all the songs to some stage of completion. With any luck, we’ll be able to meet with John and/or Steve again before we get in the studio so they’ll have a better idea of what everything is sounding like, but we may just have to get there on Saturday and hit the ground running.
Wednesday – 1/5/05
Tonight was our last practice before recording, and I’m kind of amazed that we actually made it through the rest of the songs and got them all to a point where we feel pretty comfortable going into the studio. Not all the bugs are worked out, of course, but I suppose it’s not bad to have some room left for fortunate accidents and – dare I say it? – inspiration.
Jeff, Sean and I got together briefly on Monday and Tuesday, but we didn't get much actual work done. We were mainly trying to make some headway on one of the more troubled songs, Deep Note, but after giving it another unsuccessful go tonight, I think we’re going to shelve it in favor of spending more time on the other songs.
After revisiting War Buddies and Happiness Writes White for a bit, we moved on to the remaining songs, Cold Snap (a great song that didn’t quite come together for KJV, was eventually recorded during the dark final days before our hiatus, and will now be re-recorded and finally see the light of day), Cool James (a pre-Merrymakers song that’s been resurrected and given a totally different treatment), I Missed It, Picture Picture, and Little Round Mirrors. The only one I still have doubts about at this point is I Missed It, but maybe we’ll find the extra something that it needs when we go to record it. Other than that, I think we have a pretty good general idea of how we’re going to approach each song. Another week of preparation wouldn’t have hurt, but we’re still in pretty good shape. We’ve learned in the past that it sometimes it takes a hard deadline to light a fire under our collective ass, so I think it’s good that we decided to make this album now, right at the beginning of the year. Maybe this way it’ll get released by the end of the year. My personal fantasy is that it makes it out sometime this summer.
Mike has been coming up with some great drum parts. I’m really happy that we found a regular drummer before recording the album. The prospect of recording with a bunch of different drummers or with someone who wasn’t necessarily going to be around to play with us after the album was done was not very attractive. Mike, however, is very attractive.
We’re planning on meeting with John and Steve tomorrow night and play them our new practice space demos from this past week. Hopefully we’ll come away from there with some more specific ideas for how each of the songs should feel and how to tackle them in the studio.
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