Looking Back

I'm a pretty reflective person, but I often don't take time to really give myself credit for accomplishments. I'm a "what have you done for me lately" kind of person when it comes to dealing with myself. I struggle and beat myself up during the struggle, then after the struggle is off I rarely give myself credit. I'm on to the next thing to beat myself up for.

Sometime in the next six weeks I am going to wrap up the Breeders tribute recording project. I have 6 songs left to go of the 80 total in the project.  I'm trying to take a moment to really let myself reflect on the accomplishment. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in the world who knows all the work that went into it...or cares. An outsider listening to the recordings probably would think "meh, those aren't so good." It's true. They aren't. I'm not a great singer or player or recording engineer or producer. And that's not the point. I still sat down, listened to each song a billion times, figured out all of the parts (with or without the help of internet resources, more often than not without), learned to play them all (often on instruments that I don't really play), recorded them all, and mixed it down. All in a about 20 months. The history of recording is littered with people who couldn't manage to learn and record 10 songs on one instrument in 20 months. The scope of what I did... in my free moments outside my day job, playing in 6 bands, and maintaining a long-distance relationship...is sort of astounding. I'm gonna own that god dammit.

I learned a bunch about playing my instruments, but this post is going to focus on what did I learn about recording...

1. Acoustic guitars sound different recorded live from a room versus plugged in direct. They don't really sound like acoustic guitars plugged in directly. I'm sure you can buy pre-amps and various conditions that can MAKE them sound like acoustic guitars when plugged in, but if you can manage it...just play them live in a room with good mics. It will be better.

2. Sets of microphones marketed as "drum mics" aren't worth buying. I mean, maybe if you bought really expensive ones. But I tried using a middle-of-the-road set and decided that my basic SM58s sounded way better. You don't need special drum mics. To some extent a good specialized mic for the kick isn't a terrible idea, but I did ok just with a 58.

3. Time delay on vocals = the cheap man's reverb. Don't abuse it.

4. Record the loudest signal you can get before clipping/distortion sets in...then dial down the sound in the mix. It is really hard to make things louder and still sound good.

5. My rig didn't take to #4 very well. It distorted easily, especially with bass frequencies. I had a pretty narrow dynamic range to work in.

6. If possible, get the meta-data correct on your first export. You probably won't go back and fix it later and it doesn't always take anyway. Having your recording with the same meta-data as the backing track (in my case the original song) is bad for lots of reasons, not the least of which is that it is hard to find your recording on your computer.

7. I didn't use post-effects in my recording setup at all and very little editing other than cut/paste and the occasional fade-out or dynamic adjustment. I never figured out how to punch in correctly, so everything was its own new track even when I recorded over parts I'd messed up the performance for. This actually worked out ok. It probably made my files larger than they had to be. But there's a ton that I don't know. As with most things in my life, I did the best I could with the tools and skills that I had. It helped that The Breeders don't tweak their recordings much with digital bullshit after the fact.

8. For a long time I really wanted a rig that would let me record multiple tracks at a time. The one I have let's me only do one track at a time. I ended up recording drums, for instance, by running them through a mixer and sending the whole thing to one track. This meant I couldn't edit individual drums and had to get the balance right on the mixer. This was ok for me. I think where I am coming down on the multiple track at a time thing is that I really don't need that for recordings I do of myself. It would be nice when recording a full live band together. I did a recording of a full band using the mixer method, and it wasn't the best. We managed but it would be better to be able to tweak the individual parts in that situation. That said, the cost of a true 8 to 8 setup or 16 to 16, for instance is probably prohibitive. So you still end up mixing somethings down...like a 8 to 4 or 16 to 4. I guess it would be cool to at least split vox, guitar, bass, drum...but I just don't think I'm going to be doing that enough to warrant the investment. I don't like working with other people on recordings enough.

Breeders Tribute Progress

I've now completed and posted 66 songs.

Last weekend I put down drums parts for "Overglazed,"  "900," "Lord of the Thighs," "German Studies," "Regalame Esta Noche,"  and "Happiness Is a Warm Gun."  I admit that, as I get into the weeds I am more prone to cut and paste parts than to try for perfect performances.

After those are done, that leaves just "Mountain Battles,"  "The Last Time,"  "Chances Are,"  "Climbing The Sun," "Collage," "Wicked Little Town: Hedwig Version," "I can't help it if I'm still in love with you," and "Buffy Theme." These are pretty deep cuts.

I'm either out of town or busy most weekends this summer, so things are probably going to slow down a bit until October. I took a moment this weekend, while working on the drums for the last of the main tunes, to reflect on the accomplishment to date. I know that no one else notices or cares (or maybe people noticed and just thought the whole thing was utter shit) but it is quite a body of work. Certainly it will be finished before I hit the two year mark...perhaps in a year and a half time...which is pretty quick.

Breeders Tribute Progress Report

53

I'm just gonna take a moment to ponder that number.

[pause]

I have kind of a list-making/task-checking-off personality. It gives me pleasure to finish things.  When the project is a very large one, the final "finished" payoff can take a long-ass time. And the truth is, by the time that I get there I've often discounted the goal and moved on to something else entirely.

But let's just point out here that, over about the last 10 months and one week (4/29/2014 to 3/8/2015) I have learned all the parts and recorded them for 53 Breeders songs. That's about 45 weeks...or 1.2 songs per week on average (though they really were done more in clumped batches than steadily). Along the way I've learned how to play power chords. And about guitar effects. And about slide guitar. And picked up a violin that I barely knew how to play and made sounds with it. And mostly nailed down many drum parts that I never thought I'd get. And almost, ALMOST, figured out barre chords and have begun to be able to play them mostly right. And I've noticed a TON of things about the songs that I never noticed before. And grew to like many of them way more than I used to.

I've accomplished all of this in my "spare" time.

It is kind of mind blowing.

Done:
All of Pod (except the Beatles tune, fuck that Beatles tune)
Half of Safari
All of Last Splash
All of Title TK
About one quarter of Mountain Battles
One quarter of Fate to Fatal
Almost half of Pacer

I'm considerably into the weeds now. Most of the remaining tunes have no tab or chords anywhere to be found. Many of them I don't care that much for, making my motivation mostly about complete-ism...but that's what I thought a dozen songs ago and I've really enjoyed doing those. So we'll see where it goes.

Started learning "Dedicated" last night. It was a hoot.

Getting Back to It

Laid down drum tracks for Safari, Oh!, Glorious, Night of Joy, Mom's Drunk, and Dedicated last night (Safari the day before).

TD Recording at DNA 1/16-1/18/2015

TD went in and laid down drum, bass, and much of the guitars for an upcoming 8 song cd. We spent 16 hours in studio plus 3 hours of load in. I was SUPER nervous and probably played at about 75% of my ability, but it was good enough. The producer/engineer was awesome. After my parts were done it ended up being a great experience, but I'll be ok if I don't have to lay down drum tracks for a pro recording that impacts other people again for a long, long time.

Breeders Tribute Progress

Gonna try to bang out the last 4 tunes from part 3 this weekend, bringing the total done to 47 songs. I think I've determined that there are 66 unique Breeders tunes in the catalog, 12 Amps, and 10 solo (88 total). 53% or better done (it feels further along than that though as the list of songs that I actually am willing to learn dwindles ever more).

Breeders Tribute Gear

I've been going along doing this Breeders tribute without much concern for gear. I've used what I had access to...which is mostly a small battery operated VOX digital modelling amp, a knock-off telecaster, and a knock-off stratecaster.

Finally looked up today what exactly they play:

To my complete shock, the strats are 1991 Strat Ultras, which have a HSS pickup configuration...which just happens to be what the strat knockoff that I'm using has.

I've been considering picking up a les paul someday but the choices are so many that I didn't know what to get. Based on what they play and what I've heard and my price range...I think the choice to make is a Epiphone Les Paul Traditional Pro in gold top. ($499) I've heard before that "studio" models are for shit, and what the gals play have the humbuckers (P90s in their case, though that won't probably be in my price range) that have both parts showing (instead of it being one single plate cover). Either that or go with a standard plain in gold top ($399). I'm not running out to buy anything cause I have access to plenty of guitars, but someday maybe.

I have a list of pedals on the wishlist for the future (probably far ahead future) too:

Ibanez tube screamer (prolly TS9 with 3 knobs and the big foot switch, $99)

Boss super chorus CH1 ($99)

Boss digital delay DD3 ($129) or DD7 ($149)

EH nano Holy Grail reverb ($120)

Noting that today I saw reference that the gals use Boss DS-2 Turbo Distortion ($75) ...but of course they are playing through Marshall half stacks too. Probably not needed with the tube screamer.

Boss RC-3 Loop Station ($199) sounds like fun, but doubt I'd ever learn to use it.

All of this ignores that I already have all the effects I need in the little battery amp (though they aren't easily switchable)...that I have no need to perform on guitar...and that I don't own a real guitar amp.  That's why none of this is a near term need or even want. It's all dreams in the useless ether.

PS: The below (from LSXX tour) is ridic.

UPDATE: I totally forgot to list the black and white telecaster with "Echo" written on it. They don't use this very often but it has started to show up in some of the new tunes. 

And, of course, Jo has played a Rickenbacker bass (Pod) and a Music Man Stingray (first Kim's red one and later a tan one that I presume to belong to Jo). Sometimes the red P bass from Pixies makes an appearance too and even the Thunderbird got played by Mando.

FW Recording Project

I totally forgot to mention that two weekends ago one of my bands recorded an album at my house with me at the controls. It was a jerry-rigged kind of affair and I'm sure I did it all wrong...but here's what we did (making use of what was on hand and the little knowledge that I have):

Drums: I mic'ed the drum kit with 4 mics. Snare top, shared crash/hi hat, and shared ride/rack tom were all Shure SM48s. I had special drum mics available to me with tom mounts, but after testing that on some BreedArs recordings I decided that, since I didn't have enough inputs available to mic everything and I didn't want to use true condenser overheads (due to bleed) that the drum specific mics were just too focused. I needed to be able to share mics in a psuedo-overhead kind of way. The kick drum was mic'ed with a kick specific Sensenheiser dynamic mic. I ran all four mics into a little digital mixer that I have and then ran the stereo mix out of the mixer and into a second analog mixer that I have. Essentially this created a drum "bus" or "subgroup"

Bass: Ran through a DI box and into the analog mixer.

Guitar: Used a Sensenheiser guitar amp specific mic. Stashed the guitar amp in a nearby room with the door closed and volume relatively low (like 3 out of 10). Ran the mic directly into the analog mixer.

Vox: We had two vocals, one at the drum kit and one at the guitar station. Ran each as their own line into the analog mixer. There were no effects on the vocals. In an early planning stage I had planned to run the drums through the analog mixer and then everything else through the digital mixer (instead of vice-versa) and that would have allowed me to add effects to the vocals, but I ended up reversing it in an attempt to use the Aux sends (more on this below) on the analog mixer and then never switched it back. The natural sound of the room actually seemed fine and their voices sounded pretty good really. Not dry at all.

So all told, we had 8 inputs...which is all I had available to me. I had been worried about bleed between mics (especially into the vocal mic at the drum kit) but it didn't end up being a problem (maybe because I never needed to listen to each line as a separate track).

Note that I could have just mic'ed the room and called it a day, but I wanted the vocals to be clear and mic'ing things directly seemed like it would give me more control. And I think it did.

The output from the analog mixer went into my usb computer interface and then into Audacity. Originally I had hoped to run the vocals through aux sends to give each vocalist their own monitor mix and for me to monitor the mix from the recording interface...so they'd get what they needed and I'd get the final mix levels. But I couldn't get the aux sends to work with headphones. So I ran a headphone line out of the interface and split it 3 ways using a very ghetto assembly of extension lines and Y splitters. So we all had the final mix in our cans. This ended up working really well because then they could give me feedback on the final mix which probably saved disappointment after the fact.

It was hard to get the mix levels right. Even at low levels, the Audacity mix tended to clip easily...and even slight changes either made, say, the guitar too quiet or clipping. So we goofed with it and ended up getting an okay balance.  The bass guitar seems really quiet in the mix, but when you listened to the playback, it was in there plenty. So I'm not sure why that's the case. I've noticed that with the BreedArs project too, the bass line comes in quiet and distorted, but then sound fine on playback. Probably just a cheap interface that doesn't like low frequencies.

And then we played the songs live. No editing. We did a dry run on Tuesday night (about 2 hours) to get the levels and to get used to playing with the headphones. I spent an hour before rehearsal on Tuesday setting up from zero (I hadn't realized we were going to rehearse until last minute). Saturday and Sunday (about 4 hours Sat, about 2 hours Sun) we did the real recordings. We did 2-3 takes per song and that was plenty.

Now we are selecting the best takes. I plan to goof a bit with compression and noise reduction on the final selections and see if it makes them sound better, but I may also just leave them alone. I think the source file is good, the level is strong but without clipping for the most part. I think we did pretty well considering.

I'm gonna export everything as WAV and mp3 and upload the WAV to a bandcamp site and the mp3 to a reverbnation site. Then I'm gonna burn the WAV files to cd. We are gonna DIY a jewel case cover and use printable cds. We're only gonna make about 20 copies for close friends and family. Everyone else will either get a "bootleg" cd or download it off web.

Still have final edits to do, but so far I've been pleased with the results and I learned a bunch.

Breeders Tribute Update

I picked the next group of songs for the tribute recording project maybe a month ago.
"Only in 3's"
"The She"
"Little Fury"
"London Song"
"Doe"
"Opened"
"Too Alive"
"Put on a Side"
"Sinister Foxx"
"Tipp City"
"I Am Decided"
"Forced to Drive"
"Bragging Party"
"Empty Glasses"
"Istanbul"

Two weeks ago I spent a weekend working out the drum parts (hurt my back sitting on the drum throne stooped over writing notes using my snare as a desk too long...and it still hurts...old!), and last weekend and the week prior recorded the drum parts. They aren't perfect, but most are "good enough."

Last night I was in good "Kim" voice coming off of a long CJ rehearsal that ended with me singing "Into the White," "Manta Ray," and "Bam Thwok" right in a row...so I rushed home and started recording. Got down lead vox for all but Only in 3s, Too Alive, Bragging Party (discovered 3/4 of way through song that I'm missing the lyrics for the last verse), and Istanbul. It was a late night (relatively) and I found myself a bit exhausted with sore legs and back after standing playing bass for 3 hours and then standing a 4th and into a 5th hour to sing...but well worth the effort.  Again...old.

I realized on the ride into work that I've established a very strong pattern for this project which makes surprising sense. Typically when you are recording from scratch you start with drums to set the foundation. I've done this in this project too even though it isn't necessary at all because I use the original recordings as scratch tracks and don't even listen to the tracks I've recorded until the whole song is done. Why, I wondered? It is as simple as the fact that drums are the easiest thing to pick up first. They are intuitive. Even a non-musician can clap along to a recording. I spend a few weeks listening and learning and writing out notation for the drums...and then I record them when they are pretty good. I can't wait to record, I have to work out the drums, practice them a few times, and then record soon. If I go a week or two without working them, I lose them. By that time I've heard the tunes enough times that the vocals are second nature. So I do those next. Once I have to figure out actual notes...my go to is bass. It always has been even back in the days before I PLAYED bass. When I wanted to learn a song in my 20s, I played along to it by picking out the root notes first, and then translating those into chords. And so it is now. Once bass is done all that's left is lead and rhythm guitar. I've been doing lead first, because, I think, they are single notes and easier to pick out. Then I wrap up with guitar because I'm terrible at playing the barre and power chord structures. It is an entirely logical, and accidental, system.

Breeders Tribute Progress

I went ahead and finished the last 8 songs of "Pointless Recording Project Part Two" (having Monday off was admittedly key to getting this done). This brings the current total on "theBreedArs" project page to 32 songs. Depending on how one counts these things (what counts as a Breeders song and what doesn't is a more philosophical question than you might expect)...that leaves somewhere between 26 and 45 tunes remaining in the full catalog (plus, perhaps, a few rarities that I don't want to even think about). As the great Barney Stinson was want to say when no one at all in the world wanted him to do something: "Challenge accepted.

Breeders Tribute update

I'm up to 24 Breeders Tribute tunes posted now. I feel myself leaning in to the concept of just fucking recording them all.

My standards are going down too. Get it done is the new policy. Really what the fuck difference does it make? No one is paying attention anyway.

There is something profoundly satisfying about finishing a song...warts and all. It may be the last safe high in my life.

So the Pointless Recording Project Wasn't So Pointless Afterall (plus running live sound!)

Been recording Breeders covers since April and calling it pointless, but really it was learning for recording what I will consider a demo but the rest of the group will consider a major studio release for one my bands. I'm not sure we're ready to record, but people get excited about these things and I've at least talked them down to not spending money on the thing and instead just spending my time. We've narrowed the recording session to a targeted 8 hours over one weekend in September. Which weekend tbd. I started working on the details in earnest last night. I think I will use the analog mixer to create a "drum bus" of 4 mics on the drum kit. Run that into the digital mixer along with 2 vox, a guitar mic, and a bass DI xlr line. Then into the interface and on to ye olde shitty laptop. A bit of on-board reverb on both vox. Stick the guitar in a separate closed room. Hope for the best on bleed into and from the vocals. We'll see how it goes. If all else fails I'll throw a stereo pair on the bitch instead and call it done.

In other news, hanging out pretending like I'm gonna become sound person for a band with a Sunday night residency gig. Reading the Yamaha bible on "Sound Reinforcement." Watching videos online about running a digital board. Fairly certain that I could run the sound at this gig with absolutely no knowledge what-so-ever, but I'd like to learn proper-like all the same. Debating offering myself up to run sound at Showase 1&2 in 2015 as a "work toward goal" but haven't pulled the trigger yet. Probably I could have my shit reasonably together by then. Also thinking about pestering my buddy that I shadowed that one time to let me do it again. I kinda got overwhelmed on that deal and dropped the ball. But I think I've taken enough steps forward now to get back to it again.

Breeders Part 2 Status

Finished "Head to Toe" last night and posted it this morning. I'm really pleased with it. Threw a kazoo on there cause I couldn't figure out the effect in one place.



The way these things always seem to go I was feeling stuck...then suddenly recorded all the vox. Then one day...all the drums. Then...a round of bass and they were done. So all that's left is guitar parts now and some minor backing vox. Decided it would be nice to have one finished song, so wrapped up "Head to Toe" last night.

Once I get on a roll, they seem to come really quickly...which begs the question...why stop? If all goes well I will have 31 songs completed at the end of this stretch.  They only have about 64 songs total(at least that I'm aware of). So I'm halfway through doing all of their songs. A tipping point if you will. Sure, what's left is what doesn't interest me...but that's the way it was when we learned the Pixies tunes too. Eventually I'll love them all through repetition. Anyway, it seems like a real possibility. And wouldn't that be a hoot...to have learned the entire catalog...and every part on every song...for a single band? At the rate I'm going, the whole thing would likely only take 4-6 months.

And then they will release new music...and of course, the current total is 76 if you include The Amps and 84 (soon to be 86) if you include the solo series. Both of which I am likely to include. Still...it is a Pixies-size catalog, and I know that is a chunk I can handle.

Breeders Tribute Part 2

Put down drum tracks for a few songs (can't remember which ones now) a week or so ago. Last Friday I recorded 11 vocal tracks because I was in good voice that day. Essentially I got down everything except "Fate to Fatal" (no idea what the lyrics are) and "Don't Call Home" (this is really low, I'm gonna have to work on it awhile).

The plan is to do these 13 songs, though I'm still waivering about "Freed Pig" and "It's the Love" since they are covers ("Shocker" is too, but it is a must). Technically "Pacer" is a tune by The Amps, but that's probably close enough.

Shocker in Gloomtown
Head to Toe
Bang On
Don't Call Home
Fate to Fatal
Fortunately Gone
Hellbound
Walk It Off
When I Was a Painter
Lime House
Freed Pig
It's the Love
Pacer

Breeders Tribute Part One Update

19 songs

6 weeks

boom...done

Cannonball

Flipside

Hag

Full on Idle

Roi

Huffer

Divine Hammer

Saints

Invisible Man

I Just Wanna Get Along

Do You Love Me Now

No Aloha

Son of Three

New Year

Drivin' on 9

Roi Reprise

Mad Lucas

Off You

SOS

I'm calling this first 19 songs "Part One" now. I fully intend to do more, but I need to work on other things for awhile. This project was becoming a reason to avoid other obligations, so I gotta stop for awhile.  

"Part One" was done over a period of 6 weeks, but I was trying to figure out how much time EXACTLY was spent. I didn't work on it at all for 10 days of that time because I was out of town. And somewhere about two weeks into the project I nearly gave up on it entirely because "the guitar parts were too hard." So I'm sure there were some fallow days around that time. I figure about 4 hours a day for 5 weekends and an average of an hour a day on weekdays. So that's about 60 total hours of work or so. That's to arrange all the parts from scratch or internet tab (such as it was), learn the parts, record the parts, mix the songs.  The only cheat on that is that I'd been working on learning some of the drum parts for about a year and I knew parts here or there for a few of the other songs. But 90%+ of the parts I learned in those 6 wks, sometimes moments before recording. The songs include rhythm guitar, lead guitar, bass, keyboard, violin, cello, drums and vocals. There are only two sampled parts...on "Mad Lucas" and on "Off You"...the weird Moog noises. All the rest is me playing.

Update on Breeders recordings

Steady progress. Was thinking Friday morning that it would be cool to have all of Last Splash done and be able to create an album order playlist. Was shocked this had not occurred to me before. So I started and finished Mad Lucas, Roi Reprise, and Driving on 9 all over the weekend. Also re-recorded drums for New Year (better but still not great) and posted all four. This leaves only "Off You" of the original 15 tunes I started undone...and only SOS undone off Last Splash. I recorded most of SOS this weekend too, including the bass line that's been giving me fits for months (it is pretty close, but still not convinced it is "right"). Mostly I just have to get down the vocals and the KeD morse code thing, which is less straight forward rhythmically than I'd thought (sometimes it follows the morse code pattern and sometimes not-so-much).

Highlights of the weekend were whipping out ye olde violin, nary touched for almost ten years and barely touched even back in the day, and producing not entirely offensive sounds with it. Also set the Vox amp to tremelo reverb and got a decent approximation of the Mad Lucas vocal effect.

The songs are coming more easily now, which I supposed shouldn't surprise me as all things come more easily the more that you do them. It DOES feel a bit like I've unlocked some mystery key that was blocking me even just a few weeks ago. I'm beginning to understand their language.

Breeders Project Update

Up to 8 tunes posted now. Seven more are in process and close to done. Picked out 10 more to work on next cause I decided that I totally love doing this even if it IS kind of embarrassing.

It's the little things...

Case in point. When I recorded "Huffer" I played the guitar "solo" straight through. In real life Kim and Kelley exchange parts on this as call and response. It bothered me that it didn't sound like two people playing on my recording. But I didn't want to re-record it as two separate lines cause...well that would be hard. So instead I took the line of myself playing it all and copied it and pasted it into two new tracks. One track I panned right and deleted every other part. The other I panned left and deleted the opposite parts. The result sounds like two people playing like on the original. I'm very please with myself about this.

I know that this is just the kind of digital tom-foolery that Kim hates...but it is fun to learn how to use the software and to make it sound kinda like the original. I'm "fixing" very little. It's all me on there...even the mistakes for the most part.

See 1:14 through 1:24 on the recording below.

Soundcloud

After toying with posting these on Youtube and deciding it was too much of a pain in the ass, I created a Soundcloud account, which I'm still learning to use. Seems like it might be an okay home for this project.

My second logo bastardization masterpiece

Ok I'm pretty proud of this:

I'm not sure if it is better than this one or not, but it still feels pretty spiffy:

For someone who sucks at design, I seem to have an eye for a certain brand of altering logos.

Oh right!

I just realized why Flipside still sounds empty. I totally forgot about the horrible distorted keyboard.  Well that will be easy to add.



And I forgot KeD plays through the stop.