I spent the weekend in a recording studio with my band
now I'm knackered

we (the engineer/producer) spent 6 hours setting up the drum sound on Saturday, followed by a couple of hours of lacklustre playing.

We left dejected.

We got in yesterday and recorded 14 songs and got 4 of them mixed into an awesome demo.

:-D

Edit: new recordings can be heard here
www.myspace.com/dumberthantheaveragebear
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Mon 8 Dec 2008, 8:50, 14 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

Preparation
is everything!

Much better than trying to fix it in the mix.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Mon 8 Dec 2008, 9:00, Reply)

that certainly seems to be the case
having a vastly experienced engineer and producer seemed to help a lot too!
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Mon 8 Dec 2008, 10:36, Reply)

So...
When do we get to hear these delights?
*grins*
( Cawl, Mon 8 Dec 2008, 10:45, Reply)

they should be up on myspace today sometime
as our drummer has the day off

I'll keep you posted
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Mon 8 Dec 2008, 10:52, Reply)

Excellent :D
I'm rather looking forward to it!
( Cawl, Mon 8 Dec 2008, 10:57, Reply)

It's got a good beat
Good stuff. I followed your band via your profile page (I always feel like a pervert when I click on someone's profile page, dunno why). Lovely stuff, got it on in the office now.
(sirolimus, Mon 8 Dec 2008, 11:03, Reply)

the new recordings are reworkings of 4 that are already on the myspace
but they are much better, good sound, good feel and good harmonica!
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Mon 8 Dec 2008, 11:07, Reply)

Excellent.
They sound very good: really clean, well balanced mixes and with solid bass, which is always the most important part, personally, not that I'm biased and always sit the bass quite high in the mix or anything... ahem.

We finished recording a track at the weekend, I did most of the mix down and it was sounding nice. Then my computer died and I can't get in there to finish it off. I might have to throw it out of the window... half rock and roll, half impotent rage.
( Moey, Mon 8 Dec 2008, 15:34, Reply)

I was impressed with the bass sound
it's double bass and it was DI'd through a little headphone amplifier from the pickup and miked with a horribly expensive condenser.

Was a weird setup. Me and my guitar were in the main studio with the drummer. The bass player was in vocal booth, my amp was in an amp room beyond him, and the singer/other guitarist and harmonica player were both in the control room...

worked out fairly well though!

I would be most annoyed if my computer died halfway through mixing a track. I'd go with the impotent rage option!
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Mon 8 Dec 2008, 15:43, Reply)

I have found
that engineers love to DI basses. Guess they know what they're talking about, so I just leave them to it.

Sounds like quite an odd set up, how do you communicate changes, etc... or do your songs have really rigid structures? We tend to mess about with structure quite a lot, which means we have to be able to see one another when we're playing live, or we have no idea what the singer's going to sing next exactly when to change to a different section.

It worked, either way. You've got some great recordings there. Were they all done in one take? I fuck up too often for that.
( Moey, Mon 8 Dec 2008, 16:16, Reply)

the DI was actually from our experience, but mainly because their DI box wasn't working for some reason
the songs we recorded are all rigid structure, but there were windows from studio to control room, and vocal booth to control room, so we could see what our singer/guitarist was doing, which is the important bit.

Generally though, we have good empathy within the group and our live sets feature some extended made-up on the spot jams which usually work out nicely.

Not bad considering we haven't been playing together for a year yet!

I think we did basically two takes of each song with the second one being best for each.

We nailed one or two songs in one take though, but they were old ones
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Mon 8 Dec 2008, 16:19, Reply)

We tend to have
quite a loose structure for some of our tracks, so we just keep an eye on what the others (by which I mean the guitarist and the singer) are up to throughout and the drummer and I make sure we're playing the right bits at the right time, and everyone's happy.

Impressed that you nailed the tracks in so few takes. Maybe we just struggle with concentration, but someone will usually cock up at some point (often me, where I forget what I'm doing, or think about how I could play something differently or just get distracted by shiny things... I've smoked too much in my time, clearly).

Very good though. Will you be uploading any more tracks at any point?
( Moey, Mon 8 Dec 2008, 16:39, Reply)

Enjoyed listening to those,
Nicely done!
It's odd, not really the kinda thing I'd normally listen to, but I very much enjoyed them :D
( Cawl, Mon 8 Dec 2008, 17:06, Reply)

glad you liked them
we like to think we have a broad appeal.

we've got so many influences, and play a lot of different styles, so those recordings are just a sample!
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Mon 8 Dec 2008, 17:27, Reply)