Today I finished up preliminary mixes of every song on the album. A couple are just about done, other still have a long way to go. But still, it's a pretty big day.
The total running time, assuming we include all 13 songs, is 45:10. Not bad. Might even be a little high. I'm under the impression that most albums average 40 minutes. So we're doing good. Means there's room to cut if there turns out to be a stinker. But so far, I'm liking every song on the album.
Here's the final rundown of songs that we're mixing:
April
Girl #134
Above You
Big Tin Truck
Rockville
On The Road
Second Time Around
Armageddon Is Here
Bordered In Black
The Friend That I Once Knew
Bitter Break Up Song
Come My Way
Let Me Be Your Guitar Player
And let's take another look at this list, this time with notes about who sings lead.
BF - April
MM - Girl #134
BOTH - Above You
MM - Big Tin Truck
MM - Rockville
MM - On The Road
BOTH - Second Time Around
MM - Armageddon Is Here
BF - Bordered In Black
MM - The Friend That I Once Knew
?? Bitter Break Up Song
BF - Come My Way
BF - Let Me Be Your Guitar Player
That's 2 songs where we both sing lead, 4 songs where BF sings lead, 6 songs where MM sings lead, and one unknown. Bill has made subtle complaints about his being mixed out of the lead on Rockville, which could always change. I'm not married to a mix of ANY song, though I gotta say, I would consider some serious horse trading to be allowed the lead on Guitar Player. Not only do I love the song, but I am a fan of my performance. Yeah, I know, that sounds pretty lame, but the thing about the song is that the melody gives me a chance to sing in a wider range than I usually write for myself. so fun! I suppose I should count my blessings that Bill let me hijack 'Truck, as it's one of my favorite songs he's ever written.
Bill was originally talking about dropping "Above You" from the lineup. As of right now, I'm on the fence about it. I think it's a good song, but the recording leaves something to be desired. I dunno, it just sort of seems... wonky. I don't know how to describe it. First, my bongo playing totally sucks. It's all over the place, and is not very consistent. Second, my tambourine playing totally sucks. It's all over the place, and is not very consistent. See a pattern?? Vocally and guitar-ally, it's good, but that is sort of lost in the out of sync bongos/tambourine. I think it's a fun song, and it was cool to do the historical re-creation of the original recording, but it kind of smacks of amature hour when placed in the context of the other songs we've recorded. No disrespect intended to the author or performers on the song. This was simply a very early outing in our recording experience, and our lack of it sort of shows.
Anyhow, that's where we stand as of today.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Review
I was digging through some old emails today, and found this. I should have posted it a while ago, but here it is:
Matt Munson and Bill Fischer were rock-and-roll stablemates from Southern California quartet My New Invention, a band whose existence roughly coincided with the Clinton Administration and caused slightly less controversy and heartache – a shortcoming mostly due to the band's confined geographical range.
But during their spare time offstage, Matt and Bill enjoyed switching to acoustic guitars and hamming it up with wide-ranging songs, duets, and gimcrack instrumental blasts performed for friends, lovers, and folks just passing through. Over time these just-for-fun sessions evolved into a jokey "splinter band" that came to be called Black & Blue.
Now by some folks reckoning, that moniker is a bit mysterious, and Bill says he can't really remember how or when they chose it, but it might have been inspired by the execrable 1975 Rolling Stones album Black and Blue. Or, it could have been that shiner Matt received in a 1993 wherehouse brawl during his days as a shipping foreman. And then again, maybe it referred to the colors of those matching Fender Squier electric guitars the two axe-men played during the band's earliest days.
Whatever the original meaning, Black & Blue has come to represent an attitude, a devil-may-care indifference to the glancing blows and haymakers thrown around by fate, and a determination to suck in your gut and keep on singing those magical old songs – and some just written – anything so long as it's a fair piece of alright, that's got a good riff with a spring in its step, and a bittersweet harmony – like their new single, "Second Time Around." Yep, those are songs that sneak up on your troubles and club them like baby seals – with occasionally disarming honesty and and a good beat. That's Black & Blue, to a "T."
- Chuck Bacon, New Beat Monthly, January 2009
Matt Munson and Bill Fischer were rock-and-roll stablemates from Southern California quartet My New Invention, a band whose existence roughly coincided with the Clinton Administration and caused slightly less controversy and heartache – a shortcoming mostly due to the band's confined geographical range.
But during their spare time offstage, Matt and Bill enjoyed switching to acoustic guitars and hamming it up with wide-ranging songs, duets, and gimcrack instrumental blasts performed for friends, lovers, and folks just passing through. Over time these just-for-fun sessions evolved into a jokey "splinter band" that came to be called Black & Blue.
Now by some folks reckoning, that moniker is a bit mysterious, and Bill says he can't really remember how or when they chose it, but it might have been inspired by the execrable 1975 Rolling Stones album Black and Blue. Or, it could have been that shiner Matt received in a 1993 wherehouse brawl during his days as a shipping foreman. And then again, maybe it referred to the colors of those matching Fender Squier electric guitars the two axe-men played during the band's earliest days.
Whatever the original meaning, Black & Blue has come to represent an attitude, a devil-may-care indifference to the glancing blows and haymakers thrown around by fate, and a determination to suck in your gut and keep on singing those magical old songs – and some just written – anything so long as it's a fair piece of alright, that's got a good riff with a spring in its step, and a bittersweet harmony – like their new single, "Second Time Around." Yep, those are songs that sneak up on your troubles and club them like baby seals – with occasionally disarming honesty and and a good beat. That's Black & Blue, to a "T."
- Chuck Bacon, New Beat Monthly, January 2009
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Friday, February 20, 2009
Drinks Are On My Lyrics
On the off chance we end up recording this song sometime in the near future, I thought it a prudent move to decipher the lyrics from the video I recently posted on youtube, and on this blog. There were a couple lines I couldn't figure out, but I got most of it. Here she be:
smoke filled room, 'dust on the floor.
In come the boys looking to score.
Thirsty as ever knowing what to drink.
The bar may be empty but they don't even think.
(something something something), drunk and creally shot.
(something something something), puts the evening to it's start.
First round goes out to them, put it away quick.
Evening's getting started, the temperature is getting thick.
now. pick it up.
Shine your shoes? A dollar. "Whiskey Neat for six".
second round comes and goes, the smoke is getting thick.
Third and fourth round come and go, The band begins to play.
All your worries and your troubles, they all... go away.
Now the evening is rolling, the fun has just begun.
the bartender is getting rich, pouring another one.
finally the call the goes out, Varner screams aloud...
"Drinks are on me!!" is the call that goes across the crowd.
Smoke filled room, dust on the floor.
Out go the boys, headin' for the door.
Thirsty as ever, knowing what to drink.
The bar may be closing, but they don't even think.
If you can figure out the parts that say "something something something", please post them here and let me know. I have NO idea what I'm saying.
To my knowledge, the lyrics used in this performance were not saved anywhere, though it would not surprise me to learn that Bill has them somewhere.
Writing out the lyrics was actually kind of fun, as it reminded me of a lot of the quirky little bits and pieces to the song. For example, I don't know if anyone realizes that when I say "Dust on the floor", I'm of course referring to saw dust. Not the type of dust that collects in a dark and dingy dwelling. When I wrote the lyrics, I was imagining a western bar, with an electronic bull, and folks standing around wearing those bright red plaid cowboy shirts with the mother-of-pearl snap buttons and big ten gallon hats.
I still can't remember where the "Shine your shoes" line came from, though I find that one interesting. I think my favorite line of the whole song is the part where Varner screams out "Drinks are on me". Something he has never done in my presence, but I think it's a good image, and smacks of something that he would actually do. At least, the Don Varner that inhabits my memories would do. I have no idea if he's actually like that, but then, I really have no idea what Don Varner is actually like. So there you go.
Speaking of Varner, I'm told there is momentum afoot to record this song with him on Drums. I think that would really rock. Bill and I have REALLY REALLY REALLY learned a lot from recording the Black and Blue album, and I'm sure we could parlay some of that knowledge into a really good recording featuring the three of us. Best of all, I wouldn't have to learn the drum line, which actually sounds kind of complicated. There's something Don is doing with the snare that I'm not sure how to do. I think it's some kind of rim-work (yeah, you heard me). Combine that with the very irregular bass drum, and you've got a drum line that would be quite challenging for me.
Still, we'll see what happens. Personally, I'd love to see it come together. I think it would be really awesome to have a studio quality recording of this song in the can. Yeah, I said "in the can". So sue me.
smoke filled room, 'dust on the floor.
In come the boys looking to score.
Thirsty as ever knowing what to drink.
The bar may be empty but they don't even think.
(something something something), drunk and creally shot.
(something something something), puts the evening to it's start.
First round goes out to them, put it away quick.
Evening's getting started, the temperature is getting thick.
now. pick it up.
Shine your shoes? A dollar. "Whiskey Neat for six".
second round comes and goes, the smoke is getting thick.
Third and fourth round come and go, The band begins to play.
All your worries and your troubles, they all... go away.
Now the evening is rolling, the fun has just begun.
the bartender is getting rich, pouring another one.
finally the call the goes out, Varner screams aloud...
"Drinks are on me!!" is the call that goes across the crowd.
Smoke filled room, dust on the floor.
Out go the boys, headin' for the door.
Thirsty as ever, knowing what to drink.
The bar may be closing, but they don't even think.
If you can figure out the parts that say "something something something", please post them here and let me know. I have NO idea what I'm saying.
To my knowledge, the lyrics used in this performance were not saved anywhere, though it would not surprise me to learn that Bill has them somewhere.
Writing out the lyrics was actually kind of fun, as it reminded me of a lot of the quirky little bits and pieces to the song. For example, I don't know if anyone realizes that when I say "Dust on the floor", I'm of course referring to saw dust. Not the type of dust that collects in a dark and dingy dwelling. When I wrote the lyrics, I was imagining a western bar, with an electronic bull, and folks standing around wearing those bright red plaid cowboy shirts with the mother-of-pearl snap buttons and big ten gallon hats.
I still can't remember where the "Shine your shoes" line came from, though I find that one interesting. I think my favorite line of the whole song is the part where Varner screams out "Drinks are on me". Something he has never done in my presence, but I think it's a good image, and smacks of something that he would actually do. At least, the Don Varner that inhabits my memories would do. I have no idea if he's actually like that, but then, I really have no idea what Don Varner is actually like. So there you go.
Speaking of Varner, I'm told there is momentum afoot to record this song with him on Drums. I think that would really rock. Bill and I have REALLY REALLY REALLY learned a lot from recording the Black and Blue album, and I'm sure we could parlay some of that knowledge into a really good recording featuring the three of us. Best of all, I wouldn't have to learn the drum line, which actually sounds kind of complicated. There's something Don is doing with the snare that I'm not sure how to do. I think it's some kind of rim-work (yeah, you heard me). Combine that with the very irregular bass drum, and you've got a drum line that would be quite challenging for me.
Still, we'll see what happens. Personally, I'd love to see it come together. I think it would be really awesome to have a studio quality recording of this song in the can. Yeah, I said "in the can". So sue me.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Black & Blue Make Their UK Debut.
Yes it's true! I was recently in England, and had a chance to spend an evening in London with some new acquantances and old friends. Of course, this gave me an even better chance to trot out my latest monkey tricks, which naturally included a copy of the recently unveiled B&B single, "Second Time Around".
I'll try to set the scene a bit. Better yet, I can post a picture. I was hanging out in London's trendy East side when I whipped it out. The CD, that is. Duh. It was promptly placed into a mac laptop and hooked up to the speaker system.
The crowd/fan reaction was overwhelmingly positive, but then again, I WAS in the same room, so maybe that reaction should be taken with a grain of salt. The entire CD was played, and though nobody was listening closely enough to enjoy the lyrics of any one song, the "sound" of the music was much appreciated. Or so it seemed.
Either way, it was cool to have our music heard on the other side of the pond, and even cooler to have it seeminly appreciated.
I'll try to set the scene a bit. Better yet, I can post a picture. I was hanging out in London's trendy East side when I whipped it out. The CD, that is. Duh. It was promptly placed into a mac laptop and hooked up to the speaker system.
The crowd/fan reaction was overwhelmingly positive, but then again, I WAS in the same room, so maybe that reaction should be taken with a grain of salt. The entire CD was played, and though nobody was listening closely enough to enjoy the lyrics of any one song, the "sound" of the music was much appreciated. Or so it seemed.
Either way, it was cool to have our music heard on the other side of the pond, and even cooler to have it seeminly appreciated.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Time To Declare This Year's Theme
After a phone call to Bill this evening, I think it's safe to say that 2009 will be the Year of Stickmen: The Movie.
The technology is all in place, the 2008 album project was recorded on schedule, so it's time to bite off more than we can chew. What better way to do that than to finally put together a movie idea that has been kicking around in the back of Bill's head for twenty years now.
Though the format of the movie has yet to be ironed out, one this is for sure: it will include interviews and concert footage.
And speaking of concert footage, it's only fair that I drop this one on you:
I actually did not know this existed until tonight. I've been editing together this performance from two different cameras, and it wasn't until I was watching the final product that I noticed this song was included. How did I miss it??? Well, the last 10 minutes of the concert are missing the center camera footage. My guess is the battery konked out or something. This means that I had no need to plow through that footage during the editing phase, as there was nothing I could do with it. So I missed this very rare recording of "Drinks Are On Me". I think this was the only time we ever performed it, and after this, Von Darner put the kaibosh on ever playing it again.
Good news is that we've got it recorded here, and I think Bill and I could reproduce it in the studio.
The technology is all in place, the 2008 album project was recorded on schedule, so it's time to bite off more than we can chew. What better way to do that than to finally put together a movie idea that has been kicking around in the back of Bill's head for twenty years now.
Though the format of the movie has yet to be ironed out, one this is for sure: it will include interviews and concert footage.
And speaking of concert footage, it's only fair that I drop this one on you:
I actually did not know this existed until tonight. I've been editing together this performance from two different cameras, and it wasn't until I was watching the final product that I noticed this song was included. How did I miss it??? Well, the last 10 minutes of the concert are missing the center camera footage. My guess is the battery konked out or something. This means that I had no need to plow through that footage during the editing phase, as there was nothing I could do with it. So I missed this very rare recording of "Drinks Are On Me". I think this was the only time we ever performed it, and after this, Von Darner put the kaibosh on ever playing it again.
Good news is that we've got it recorded here, and I think Bill and I could reproduce it in the studio.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Stickmen: The Movie - Proof of Concept
Adobe Premier has this neat little feature called Multi-Camera Edit, which basically lets you switch camera angle by just doing one mouse click. I have some footage of a UCI concert that was filmed by two cameras, so I lined them up in Premier, and played around with this feature. Here is the result:
I think it turned out pretty good, though frankly, the switching back and forth is not that visually interesting. Though it is about FIFTY times more interesting than a single, static camera shot, it's not quite what I hoped it would be. To muddy the thinking further, it just so happened that one of the cameras was being moved around during this particular song, which makes "Camera A" a more interesting than it is for the rest of the show. This song is not really representative of the rest of the concert for this reason.
Still, it was a fun little experiment, and really didn't take much time at all to put together. There really aren't that many concerts where we shot with multiple cameras, but there are a couple. Should make for some interesting editing opportunities.
Oh, and we finished recording the new album too.
I think it turned out pretty good, though frankly, the switching back and forth is not that visually interesting. Though it is about FIFTY times more interesting than a single, static camera shot, it's not quite what I hoped it would be. To muddy the thinking further, it just so happened that one of the cameras was being moved around during this particular song, which makes "Camera A" a more interesting than it is for the rest of the show. This song is not really representative of the rest of the concert for this reason.
Still, it was a fun little experiment, and really didn't take much time at all to put together. There really aren't that many concerts where we shot with multiple cameras, but there are a couple. Should make for some interesting editing opportunities.
Oh, and we finished recording the new album too.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
You Don't Want Nuthin' To Do With This.
Only because I said I would, I've put together a brief video showcasing some of my favorite scenes from "Walk Hard". Great stuff.
NOT WORK SAFE, mind you. Rated R for Drug Use, Adult Language, Adult Sitations, Bad Attitudes, and Misguided Humor.
Enjoy!
NOT WORK SAFE, mind you. Rated R for Drug Use, Adult Language, Adult Sitations, Bad Attitudes, and Misguided Humor.
Enjoy!
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Dude, our new website is live!
In an odd bit of recursive advertising, I thought it only fair that I mention the launch of the new Black and Blue website, which can be found here...
www.blackandbluemusic.com
Regular readers will know how loathe bill and I are to toot our own horns, but I gotta say, I'm a fan of the new site :) I'm actually looking at it in a separate browser instance as I write this blog. Where else can I listen to "The Friend That I Once Knew"??? It sounds good!!
Anyhow, please check it out, and email us if you have any suggestions. We'll probably ignore them, but it's always nice to know that people are thinking about us!!
www.blackandbluemusic.com
Regular readers will know how loathe bill and I are to toot our own horns, but I gotta say, I'm a fan of the new site :) I'm actually looking at it in a separate browser instance as I write this blog. Where else can I listen to "The Friend That I Once Knew"??? It sounds good!!
Anyhow, please check it out, and email us if you have any suggestions. We'll probably ignore them, but it's always nice to know that people are thinking about us!!
Friday, December 5, 2008
A Rock and Roll Miracle
Blog entries have slowed to a crawl lately, but the efforts and results of scene stalwarts “Black and Blue” have continued to progress at a lightning fast pace. Witness the activities of this past weekend, where Bill and I cranked out an unprecedented four recordings. And I’m talking about serviceable, album quality recordings.
I arrived at Bills place, er, I mean the Torrance Recording Studio promptly at noon. Bill and I tooled around for a bit, and ultimately decided to head out to Carl’s Jr. for our traditional pre-recording chow-down. With Bill having recently kicked the signature band addition to diet coke, he was sporting a bottle of “fizzy”, to accompany Munson’s perpetually brandished super slurpee cup filled with “still”. I’m talkin’ ‘bout water, mind you. We strategized the course for the day, and even wrote out a project plan.
The purpose of this studio session was really to prepare and lock down tracks and mixes for the upcoming holiday single. About a month ago, Bill and I hatched the plan to put out a single for Christmas. Cuz you know, the fans are clamoring for music and all. Well, not really. Our original fantasy was to have the album out by Christmas, as Bill was highly enamored by the idea of handing out CD’s as presents. But as the year wore on, and Christmas drew closer, we realized that we still had a significant time investment to make in the album in order to get it mixed properly. So while we had stayed on track by recording one song per month, we haven’t really done any mixing yet. But I thought the notion of handing out CDs for Christmas was a good one, so we decided to do a single.
The original concept for the single was this: feature one album song, and back it up with 2 b-sides. The alt.tunes would be recorded live in the studio, one take, no overdubs. Kind of like Trujillo’s “Live Bands In The House” project. Well, just like it, in fact. I thought it would be cool to do the one voice, one guitar format for the two b-sides. Bill does one, I do one. I sort of thought of this as a multiple birds, one stone approach. Not only would we get studio quality recordings of some songs which we may have otherwise not recorded, but we would also be putting tracks on the CD that were otherwise not album bound. My feeling was that it would be a shame to dump three album worthy songs on the CD single. Felt like we would be giving away too much.
Bill initially singed off on this concept, though when the day came, he faltered. But more on that later,
So at Carl’s we planned out the day. First order of business was to do a solid mix of “Second Time Around”, the song we had both agreed would be our first single. STA is that song that just came together more beautifully than either of us expected. We did a lot of experimenting on that song, tried a lot of new stuff, and it just all worked. One of the things I recall Bill commenting on after the completion of the MNI album was how surprised he was at how some songs turned out good, whereas others did not. What was surprising is that it had nothing to do with the song itself. That is to say, some great songs turned out just OK, whereas a weaker song may have turned out great. I think this is that mythical “synergy” thing that you hear about in business presentations. Some times, things/forces just come together at unexpected times to deliver a result that is far greater than the sum of its parts. Well, in my opinion, STA is one such song. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a really good song. But the recording made it a great song. Go figure.
We needed to mix that down, and lock it down. We had some technical problems to overcome, namely that we need to consolidate our individual efforts onto one project. I had spent lots of time performing surgery on the various tracks. This amounted to removing background chatter, snapping up some timing on a few pieces of vocal dissonance, and also patching up a few drum flubs. Bill had invested time tweaking volume levels, adding effects, and doing some equalization. So we needed to bring those things together into one.
Next on the list was recording our b-sides. Then we had to mix them down.
In column B of the list was a few logistical issues to attend to. We needed to have a final intel-gathering session on CD single pricing, and make some decisions. We had to take some photos for the back cover, and also to discuss some concepts for artwork for the cover.
With our best plans laid, we headed back to the garage.
The consolidation of data for STA went off without a hitch. In fact, it was really quite easy. The mix down was fairly unproblematic, with a few good laughs coming from an overly loud ethereal track from Bill. I suppose one of the best things to come out of the mix down was the sharing of CuBase knowledge. I’ve blogged before about the awesomeness of this tool, and about how we are only scratching the surface of its functionality. Between Bill and I, we only know a very small percentage of its feature set, though our knowledge is not 100% overlap. This means that Bill knows a few tricks I don’t know, and I know a few tricks that Bill doesn’t. Through the mix down process, Bill and I managed to exchange a lot of knowledge on the application, and I thought that was really cool.
Satisfied with our mix down, it was time to start recording our B-Sides. This is kind of where it all went to hell. And I say that humorously. Bill (naturally) had an alternate agenda for his B-side, and used his typical tricks of misdirection and ham-handed diplomacy to try to get his way. His vision was to record his song acoustically, but with drums. Though sort of defeating the entire purpose, I naturally caved to the age old Fischer born mantra of “Let’s try it”. Cuz worst case, it’s rock and roll. I recorded “I’m Not The Type” very quickly. It was just a vocal mic, a guitar mic, and the guitar line. I did four takes. Take 2 was good, but I thought I could do better. Take three was aborted about 2/3 through due to a wrong chord, and take four was the keeper.
Now it was Bill’s turn to record his song, called “Come My Way”.
Yeah, I know. Believe me, I had fun with that song title too, so do your best.
Speaking of synergy, brace yourselves. So Bill sets himself up at the mic, and gets ready. I’m at the drums with one overhead mic hooked up. No kick mic, no snare. We run through the song once, just for practice, and I swear to you, it sounds like it’s ready for the album. It’s a nice little song with a couple of really strong refrains. Very strong lyrical imagery too. I was not only impressed by the song, but was doubly impressed by the way we performed it. And I’m not trying to suggest that it was my drumming that “made” the song. I was just doing my typical bag of drum tricks, with a couple little flourishes thrown in. It wasn’t the drums. It was everything working together. Really just stunning, and I must confess, was one of the brightest spots in an excellent year of recording.
So now the gears are really starting to spin in my head, and I start to get committed (internally, that is) to the idea of getting this song on the album. A little arm twisting and a couple of takes later, and I think I sold Bill on the idea. Before we could lose momentum, I grabbed the bass and threw together a Bass line. Got it in one take. Bill later commented that he thought it was the best bass line yet to come out of this whole album. Or maybe he said it was the bass line that fit best with a song. Or something like that. Either way, it was very kind words for what was a minimal effort. Synergy.
Bad news for Bill is that he now had to find another song to record. He ended up on a nice little 12 bar blues number. I forget the name, but it’s something about being a guitar player. VERY traditional blues, in every sense of the word. I thought it was really fantastic, as that is something no incarnation of the band has ever really done. Well, not as an original. Though we played “Spider and the Fly” a few times, I hardly think that counts.
Bill did a couple of takes and nailed it. Feeling so inspired by the success of “Come My Way”, I requested a recording with drums. We tried it twice, but the ending never seemed to time out quite right. I have to say the song sounded great though!
With recording duties finished, we went in for mix downs. We pulled apart the recording project file and broke it down into separate files, one for each song. The acoustic songs mixed together very quickly, without any hassle. We also put together a quick mix of “Come My Way”, even though it is not destined to appear on the single.
We re-visited the mix of STA, only to learn that it sounded very “tinny” in comparison to the acoustic tracks. So we tweaked it a bit, and decided we were happy.
Photos were taken, album covers were discussed, and our intel gathering visit to the CD duplication website produced great results. We settled on getting a run of 100 disks for about 400 bucks shipped. The 1000 disk run would have cost us about 1000 bucks, and would not have been here in time for Christmas. So while we lose a lot on the per-disk basis, we make up for it in speed to customers. Combined with the fact that we’re STILL sitting on hundreds of copies of the first MNI album, I’m thinking the small run approach might be best anyway.
I left the studio just after 8:00, after a full day of fun and synergy. Over the next couple of days, it’s imperative that I wrap up the artwork for the single, output the final mix downs, and author a CD for production. The short run CD duplication service offers a 5 day turn around, so there’s a little more breathing room. But there’s still a lot of work to be done in a short amount of time. Better get to it!
Update: I put in a request to register www.blackandbluemusic.com this morning. This will hopefully be the new online home for Black and Blue. Not that we had an old home. But you know what I mean.
I arrived at Bills place, er, I mean the Torrance Recording Studio promptly at noon. Bill and I tooled around for a bit, and ultimately decided to head out to Carl’s Jr. for our traditional pre-recording chow-down. With Bill having recently kicked the signature band addition to diet coke, he was sporting a bottle of “fizzy”, to accompany Munson’s perpetually brandished super slurpee cup filled with “still”. I’m talkin’ ‘bout water, mind you. We strategized the course for the day, and even wrote out a project plan.
The purpose of this studio session was really to prepare and lock down tracks and mixes for the upcoming holiday single. About a month ago, Bill and I hatched the plan to put out a single for Christmas. Cuz you know, the fans are clamoring for music and all. Well, not really. Our original fantasy was to have the album out by Christmas, as Bill was highly enamored by the idea of handing out CD’s as presents. But as the year wore on, and Christmas drew closer, we realized that we still had a significant time investment to make in the album in order to get it mixed properly. So while we had stayed on track by recording one song per month, we haven’t really done any mixing yet. But I thought the notion of handing out CDs for Christmas was a good one, so we decided to do a single.
The original concept for the single was this: feature one album song, and back it up with 2 b-sides. The alt.tunes would be recorded live in the studio, one take, no overdubs. Kind of like Trujillo’s “Live Bands In The House” project. Well, just like it, in fact. I thought it would be cool to do the one voice, one guitar format for the two b-sides. Bill does one, I do one. I sort of thought of this as a multiple birds, one stone approach. Not only would we get studio quality recordings of some songs which we may have otherwise not recorded, but we would also be putting tracks on the CD that were otherwise not album bound. My feeling was that it would be a shame to dump three album worthy songs on the CD single. Felt like we would be giving away too much.
Bill initially singed off on this concept, though when the day came, he faltered. But more on that later,
So at Carl’s we planned out the day. First order of business was to do a solid mix of “Second Time Around”, the song we had both agreed would be our first single. STA is that song that just came together more beautifully than either of us expected. We did a lot of experimenting on that song, tried a lot of new stuff, and it just all worked. One of the things I recall Bill commenting on after the completion of the MNI album was how surprised he was at how some songs turned out good, whereas others did not. What was surprising is that it had nothing to do with the song itself. That is to say, some great songs turned out just OK, whereas a weaker song may have turned out great. I think this is that mythical “synergy” thing that you hear about in business presentations. Some times, things/forces just come together at unexpected times to deliver a result that is far greater than the sum of its parts. Well, in my opinion, STA is one such song. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a really good song. But the recording made it a great song. Go figure.
We needed to mix that down, and lock it down. We had some technical problems to overcome, namely that we need to consolidate our individual efforts onto one project. I had spent lots of time performing surgery on the various tracks. This amounted to removing background chatter, snapping up some timing on a few pieces of vocal dissonance, and also patching up a few drum flubs. Bill had invested time tweaking volume levels, adding effects, and doing some equalization. So we needed to bring those things together into one.
Next on the list was recording our b-sides. Then we had to mix them down.
In column B of the list was a few logistical issues to attend to. We needed to have a final intel-gathering session on CD single pricing, and make some decisions. We had to take some photos for the back cover, and also to discuss some concepts for artwork for the cover.
With our best plans laid, we headed back to the garage.
The consolidation of data for STA went off without a hitch. In fact, it was really quite easy. The mix down was fairly unproblematic, with a few good laughs coming from an overly loud ethereal track from Bill. I suppose one of the best things to come out of the mix down was the sharing of CuBase knowledge. I’ve blogged before about the awesomeness of this tool, and about how we are only scratching the surface of its functionality. Between Bill and I, we only know a very small percentage of its feature set, though our knowledge is not 100% overlap. This means that Bill knows a few tricks I don’t know, and I know a few tricks that Bill doesn’t. Through the mix down process, Bill and I managed to exchange a lot of knowledge on the application, and I thought that was really cool.
Satisfied with our mix down, it was time to start recording our B-Sides. This is kind of where it all went to hell. And I say that humorously. Bill (naturally) had an alternate agenda for his B-side, and used his typical tricks of misdirection and ham-handed diplomacy to try to get his way. His vision was to record his song acoustically, but with drums. Though sort of defeating the entire purpose, I naturally caved to the age old Fischer born mantra of “Let’s try it”. Cuz worst case, it’s rock and roll. I recorded “I’m Not The Type” very quickly. It was just a vocal mic, a guitar mic, and the guitar line. I did four takes. Take 2 was good, but I thought I could do better. Take three was aborted about 2/3 through due to a wrong chord, and take four was the keeper.
Now it was Bill’s turn to record his song, called “Come My Way”.
Yeah, I know. Believe me, I had fun with that song title too, so do your best.
Speaking of synergy, brace yourselves. So Bill sets himself up at the mic, and gets ready. I’m at the drums with one overhead mic hooked up. No kick mic, no snare. We run through the song once, just for practice, and I swear to you, it sounds like it’s ready for the album. It’s a nice little song with a couple of really strong refrains. Very strong lyrical imagery too. I was not only impressed by the song, but was doubly impressed by the way we performed it. And I’m not trying to suggest that it was my drumming that “made” the song. I was just doing my typical bag of drum tricks, with a couple little flourishes thrown in. It wasn’t the drums. It was everything working together. Really just stunning, and I must confess, was one of the brightest spots in an excellent year of recording.
So now the gears are really starting to spin in my head, and I start to get committed (internally, that is) to the idea of getting this song on the album. A little arm twisting and a couple of takes later, and I think I sold Bill on the idea. Before we could lose momentum, I grabbed the bass and threw together a Bass line. Got it in one take. Bill later commented that he thought it was the best bass line yet to come out of this whole album. Or maybe he said it was the bass line that fit best with a song. Or something like that. Either way, it was very kind words for what was a minimal effort. Synergy.
Bad news for Bill is that he now had to find another song to record. He ended up on a nice little 12 bar blues number. I forget the name, but it’s something about being a guitar player. VERY traditional blues, in every sense of the word. I thought it was really fantastic, as that is something no incarnation of the band has ever really done. Well, not as an original. Though we played “Spider and the Fly” a few times, I hardly think that counts.
Bill did a couple of takes and nailed it. Feeling so inspired by the success of “Come My Way”, I requested a recording with drums. We tried it twice, but the ending never seemed to time out quite right. I have to say the song sounded great though!
With recording duties finished, we went in for mix downs. We pulled apart the recording project file and broke it down into separate files, one for each song. The acoustic songs mixed together very quickly, without any hassle. We also put together a quick mix of “Come My Way”, even though it is not destined to appear on the single.
We re-visited the mix of STA, only to learn that it sounded very “tinny” in comparison to the acoustic tracks. So we tweaked it a bit, and decided we were happy.
Photos were taken, album covers were discussed, and our intel gathering visit to the CD duplication website produced great results. We settled on getting a run of 100 disks for about 400 bucks shipped. The 1000 disk run would have cost us about 1000 bucks, and would not have been here in time for Christmas. So while we lose a lot on the per-disk basis, we make up for it in speed to customers. Combined with the fact that we’re STILL sitting on hundreds of copies of the first MNI album, I’m thinking the small run approach might be best anyway.
I left the studio just after 8:00, after a full day of fun and synergy. Over the next couple of days, it’s imperative that I wrap up the artwork for the single, output the final mix downs, and author a CD for production. The short run CD duplication service offers a 5 day turn around, so there’s a little more breathing room. But there’s still a lot of work to be done in a short amount of time. Better get to it!
Update: I put in a request to register www.blackandbluemusic.com this morning. This will hopefully be the new online home for Black and Blue. Not that we had an old home. But you know what I mean.
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