I just finished a long weekend of recording. Actually, the weekend went very well. It didn't feel all that long at all. It just turns out that we put in a nice chunk of hours in. Part of the reason that I don't feel mega exhausted right now is due to the fact that I'm producing this project. It's just me and my songwriting master partner, Daniel Sexton. We are currently working on a 6 song EP with the deadline of August 15^th.

A Little Background Of This Project

This project is making extensive use of the midi sequencing capabilities of Cubase SX3. For realistic drums, we are relying on a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to result in some realistic programming which will trigger samples by DHF Superior (which are amazing!!) We are still debating the bass issue, but aside from the drums, we are doing everything else with our hands and microphones. (The old fashioned way).

In the past, I had tried to cram entire albums into one weekend. Why? I have no idea! Putting in sometimes 30 hours into a Saturday and Sunday just to come out with results that were mediocre at best was just a waste of time on my part. Music can be better than that. This is not to say that a record has to take 6 months to get right. It just means, that a song should take X time to record. If you are rushing it, you are taking away from the song, the recording, opening up the door to regret down the road, and (worse of all) you are not having as much fun as you should. Finding how much time a recording take is totally up to you. I've finished entire 5 song projects in 8 hours and been very happy with the results.

This project is turning out to be the best sounding project I've ever done. Why? Well, we are taking songs that I believe in and working them hard. We are taking our time to get the performances and feel we are looking for. This is not musical rocket science. I don't know anything about music! This just means that if the guitar is dull, boomy, or boxy we probably need to either move the mic or have Daniel play the acoustic guitar softer. In almost every instance, his playing made the biggest impact on the tone. Moving mics certainly made a difference, but nothing like what getting the right playing did. When something isn't right, we fix it. Neither myself or Daniel have any interest in not doing our best, especially for the sake of time. We want to be proud of our work. So letting the hands of the clock control your project is ridiculous in my opinion.

We spent a lot of time finding the perfect strumming pattern for each part. We found that maybe the first verse needed to be a little lazy. Maybe the second verse needed to pickup the strumming a little bit. Maybe the last verse was very busy when it came to strumming. We just experimented until we got something we liked for each part.

The idea here is not to be anal, necessarily. I'm making music for humans. No digital analysis of my recording will be measured with an oscilloscope or multimeter. I'm looking for something that inspires me. If a given portion of a song doesn't make me feel good, we try to identify what it is that is keeping me from feeling the way I should when I listen to that part and we change it. Many times I make a wrong suggestion. The idea isn't to be right, the idea is to do whatever you have to get your musician to come up with new and creative ways to make you feel something.

So why am I not tired? Easy! It's been stress free! I'm just recording. If we don't like something, we fix it. If we don't get done, we don't care. We'll just work on it the next day. No big deal. If we need to trash something, we trash it. So what! By having this attitude, I've found that the tracks are better than ever. The performances are better than ever. The sound quality is better than ever!!