The Living Rockumentary

I don't know, Tiny, I don't have much faith in that test of yours. But my favorite thing about it is, how funny it is that we are a rock band and our Living Rockumentary has pages of work-type analysis. We must be the nerdiest band ever. Awesome.

Also, I think Ken might get around to taking the test now, but he has the least access to a computer during the day so we have to keep that in mind.

Max, I love the idea of School for the Dead Bonus Bucks.

So, yes. We recorded some stuff yesterday. It's very exciting. I'm going to go into detail here:

On Sunday, July 7, 2002, we recorded the first takes for the new School for the Dead album. We chose three songs which we are planning to include in our Chain CD: "Everybody Loves Martha", "Omnivore", and "Uncomfortable" and we had a little extra time before the grill was to be fired up so we also did "One Lady Dancing". Max showed up first as I was setting up the room for recording drums and bass. Brian and Ken showed up soon after. We used my kick drum and tom and Brian's snare, floor tom, and cymbals. Brian made adjustments to the drums while I tried to figure out how best to mic everything. He tuned them, tightened up the kick and fixed a rattle in the floor tom. I ended up micing the drums like this:

Sm57 on snare 2" away. Sm57 in kick, very close to head (too close maybe), sm58s on the tom and floor tom. I didn't have enough mic cables to use the high hat mic I had setup - I guess I need to buy one more, and two room/cymbal mics (Studio Projects) in front of the kit about 10 feet away and five feet high, I wish I had angled them a little further away from each other for a bigger stereo field but it still sounds good. Upon listening back, I think we will use almost the room mics entirely with just a little bit of the others for definition (especially the kick) but you never know when all the other instruments are in there what you will need.

For the bass guitar I sent the signal through my GK head (which I bought from Lo-Fine's Kevin O'Rourke) and then took the direct out from there. All of the signals, the drums and bass, and everything that will be added, go through my Allen and Heath board and my Echo Layla into the computer. They are then recorded using Sonar.

So, Brian and Max played while listening to each other in headphones. They sat in the same room. They also could hear me in the headphones while I sat in the control room and played acoustic guitar and sang the songs. It worked out really well. Tony sat in the room with me for a few takes and Ken walked in and out occasionally commenting on the tempos. We would all meet in the band room to discuss arrangement ideas.

Rub Wrongways studios felt like a real recording studio. Ken and Tony were bored sitting around reading magazines and playing guitars while we got drums sounds and recorded the basics.

I think we got some really good beginnings to the songs. Max and Brian both played wonderfully as always. The drums will have a very natural quality to them, I think. Tiny is coming by tonight to record some electric guitar parts. I think we'll start with the crazy distorted parts of "Omnivore". I can't wait to add all the rest of the instruments. Yee!

Tuesday, we have a practice. What time? 6:30? It looks like that is the best day for the most people.

I got an email from Don today asking if we wanted to play a free show (the free part is an idea of mine) this Saturday at Harry's. What do you guys think?!?! Do we want to? Can we?

Max is going to design a poster for our upcoming show there with Lo-Fine on the 25th. Is there anything that this band can't do?