Apologies for the lack of updates. One of the first things you’ll learn when recording an album on a tight time schedule, is that there’s rarely much time for anything else. This is especially true when the music isn’t completely written (writing complete songs while in the studio is either a rare and expensive luxury, or a great way to make shitty tunes). Fortunately, we were 90% of the way there when we got here, and by the end of preproduction I’d say we were 95% done. The rest is being figured out along the way, and I think it’s turning out fantastically! Will is truly an inspiration to watch, especially from a beginner producer/engineer’s point of view. He edits as we’re tracking, and deletes bad takes with ruthless efficiency, which makes for some incredibly clean project files. I’ll be changing the way I work within sessions for sure. I’ve also noticed that much of the editing within Logic (the program we’re using to record) is very similar to editing within Reaper, and while I still think Pro Tools’ drum editing is superior, Logic looks to be vastly superior when it comes to project management and pretty much everything else. Because Reaper is such an inexpensive and customizable program (not to mention very DIY/Independent-minded), I think I’ll be using it as my primary rig hence-forth.
Tracking for the album is going extremely well. Pete kicked out the drums in 2 days, leaving an extra full day for overdubs and other fun craziness (I’ll try to get Pete to explain in more detail, as I wasn’t there for said overdubs. I do know a huge 26″ kick drum was used for something, and I heard tales of shakers…). After that came a full day of editing for Will (he’s a big fan of doing multiple takes, and taking the best pieces of each to make a whole), while we went out to New York for the “shopping spree” portion of the contest. I’ll get into detail about that some other time, as we did learn some interesting things about image and such. Before anyone gets their panties in a bunch, I’ll give away the ending: 95% of the stuff we got was different colors/versions of clothes we already owned and wore every day. I did get a couple of pairs of pants, which pretty much completes the trip for me.
Any way, back to the album! We’re in the middle of guitar/bass tracking right now, going song-by-song and piece-by-piece. We’ve been using different amps and distortion pedals for each section/movement, as well as layering a couple at a time for overdubs. It’s really quite cool to hear how the characteristics of each type of distortion help keep the song moving. For example, using a morbidly crushing tone for a slow heavy part, and a faster shred tone for faster shred parts, helps to accentuate the difference between parts and make for a very dynamic sound. All-in-all, we’re using around five different pedals and four different amps, sometimes chaining two different distortion pedals together. I’m not in the mood to check my math, but I think that makes for 60 different combinations. Add in the obvious tweakability of each pedal/amp, and multiple channels for each amp, and you’ll start to get an idea of the range of sounds we’re using on this album. Epic. That’s how many.
That just about concludes this update. There’s a lot more to tell, but I need to go track some more guitars in a couple of minutes and there’s one thing I’d like to address before leaving. Some of you have asserted that my posts up until now have been largely inane, speaking more of hotel/bagel problems than of any real content. I do admit that as a participant in a contest geared towards teaching independent bands the ins and outs of the industry, I do have an obligation to share my experiences and knowledge-gained with the world, and this journal would seem to be the logical place to do so. That being the case, these writings were originally posted on my personal website, with the intention of keeping family and friends updated on the contest and on myself personally. Shortly after posting the first six days, it was suggested that these journals might be some fun and potentially useful content to share on the No Label Needed website, and so they were posted (as you can see!) This was one of two reasons that the first few posts are generally lacking in any real content; the second being that not much went on in the first week. We flew in, met Shadows Fall for a day, drove to New Jersey, and didn’t really do a hell of a lot else up until pre-production started.
As one person hinted at in the comments section of one of the blog posts, part of being in a band that’s working with larger organizations is learning to “hurry up and wait”. Schedules have to be coordinated, things get pushed back, shit happens, etc., and sometimes you’re left waiting for a couple of days (or in some extreme cases, months or more). Learning how to be patient in these situations and to utilize the time given to you is a very important lesson to learn, as I’ve found out in the last couple of weeks. Had I known just how unprepared I was for some of the guitar tracking, I would’ve been practicing my ass off during those days off (as Curt was: he’s a smart guy!). That’s another good lesson to keep in mind: never leave any parts of your songs to chance. If you’re not absolutely 100% on something, you need to work on it over and over and over again. Get a laptop right now, throw Reaper or Garageband on it, and record your entire album front-to-back before even thinking of getting into an expensive studio where time is a factor. Unless you have the kind of budget that allows for weeks of just writing within the studio, you’ll just be wasting everyone’s time by not having everything 100% ready. Even worse, you’ll be taking time away from experimenting with fun overdubs and such, which can ultimately result in a relatively sparse and stale recording, depending on how things get done. In our defense, we found out we’d won only a couple of weeks before flying down, and had to ship the drums out the week before we arrived, so we were somewhat pressed for time, but I could’ve done a lot more preparation, and you can be damn sure I will next time!
Fortunately, things have been going smoothly and tracking is going extremely well. Much like everything related to this contest, we’ve been lucky 
Cheers,
-steve.h
*NOTE: I’ve changed the names from “Day X” to “Update X”, as I’ve had very little time to think about blogging, and as such a lot of the content will be out of chronological order and updated sporadically.