Missed It By "That" Much

EDIT: As it turns out this blog did post as Tuesday instead of Wednesday.  Apparently blogspot does not run on central time.

I'm starting today's entry 7 minutes late of what would have been the last possible moment to have updated my blog for the day.  So now today's blog is actually yesterdays blog, but since today there won't be any recording, I suppose the phrase is moot and since the album won't be out for several months still...  Moving on.

Today started so much like a "normal" day recording with Jesse.  I woke up around 9:00am and made coffee and cleaned up around the house.  Kory and I had agreed to work on drums around 10:00am today and I said I'd make breakfast.  I elected to go with breakfast burritos since they are both delicious and portable.

Duncan Donuts Turbo Blend (left) and Breakfast Burritos prior to cooking (right)

Trip shot me a text while I was making breakfast saying he was in town dealing with a tire issue and could swing by to help with production if I wanted so I said cool and just as I was rolling up the last burrito he arrived.  He went to tinkering with the 3 songs we did yesterday.  He determined that we had a minor phase issue in the overheads and went to moving things around.

Trip tinkering with StudioONE compressors

Kory arrived as Trip was tinkering, which was just as well because there was no way I was going to sit behind his kit to get sounds for Trip.  He took a tape measure and measured out the distance from each mic to the snare, turned around the overhead, which I was apparently using to mic the ceiling, not the drums and fiddled with some compressors.  We then ran through about an hour of hit-and-honk drum tag teaming where in Kory would play 2 bars of something while Trip and I fiddled with the inputs on the firepod trying to make sure things were loud but not clipping.  Being that the songs are very dynamic, it was tedious.  But at last Trip understood why the level on the snare was very low and life continued.  That was after we realized I had the tracks mislabeled.  Silly me!

Kory and Trip making a go of getting a good room sound for the drums

After Trip left Kory and I put some good time in recording.  The drum sound from yesterday changed dramatically but the tracks we did yesterday were almost all side stick and very mellow so the current hope is to not have to re-record them.  That being said, until we do another listen to the drums and decide that they aren't good enough, Kory cranked out 7 good takes on drums today!  I could tell by the end of the day he was getting frustrated about not having written parts for the songs but I assured him it was good and what he was playing was fine.  

I snagged one video while he was recording but that was all I managed as I was guiding him through the songs with ridiculous hand gestures.  It make the process more amusing for me as I got to do more than just hit buttons, but probably doubly frustrating for him as he had to decipher on the fly not only what part of the song I was gesturing for but also what that meant he was supposed to play.

Kory laying down the chorus to Billy the Kid

All in all I'm pretty excited about how things went today.  Kory recorded an entire album (of songs he'd only heard twice) worth of drums in two days and I think the most takes it took him was 15, which includes takes where I just stopped him because I thought a fill sounded sloppy.  As an aside, Kory is super cool to work with and really takes criticism to heart.  He never appeared to have a problem with any of my commentary and gave every suggestion I had a try, even after several of my suggestions proved to be bad ideas.  I wish it was always that easy.  

Another day, another part down.  Time to get in touch with Mason Dixon and get some fiddle down.  Time for another harvest.

Photo courtesy of Michael J. Oxbigg