8/05/05 Recording Sessions

Over recent days I finally got some recording done. I completed the vocal harmonies for Mickey Mouse World and began work on Lewistown Calling.

I also had a session at Tin Man Studios that went well. The process for this recording has been very convoluted. We did the basic instrumental tracks at Headgear Studios in Brooklyn. We recorded to 2” analog tape. Then we bounced those to digital files and took the files to Tin Man Studios (owned by Tony our guitar player) where I recorded the lead vocal tracks digitally. Then I took a rough mix back to my home studio to record overdubs.

The next major step is to record the background singers at Tin Man Studios. Before I do that I have to get the overdubs I recorded at my home studio back into the computer at Tin Man Studio and make sure they are in sync. I was concerned that this might be a problem but Tony knew a technique that made it easy.

Because it went so easily we had time to record some guitar tracks on “In Praise Of Shadows.” I had recorded some guitar tracks at home, but I was unhappy with the sound quality of the guitar distortion so we rerecorded them using an old fuzzbox that Tony had, I recorded my guitar line twice and panned one to each side of the stereo. Then I played it again at an octave and put it in the middle of the stereo.

During the recording we noticed Tony had a bum note in his guitar track so we rerecorded it with the fuzzbox and added an octave for good measure. When it was all done we had a wall of fuzz guitars that I found quite funny in an ‘I love old rock and roll’ kind-of-way.