So, I’ve come to accept that I’m not a very good blogger. That’s not to say that I’ll never become a good one but at my current condition, I kind of suck. My friend Andy, he’s a good blogger. My posts ramble, drift in and out of focus, and I’ll go through periods where I write everyday, then I won’t write for a week, and then I’ll post two in one day, and it’s a mess. Sometimes I go into a post and start off making a point then the post ends and it’s about something else. I’m not saying this to apologize. I thought it would be cool to be a blogger and I was like, “Hell, I’ll pick up what I need to know over time” but I salute anyone who is a real, legitimate blogger because this stuff is hard. Thanks to the people who consistently read my blog because you are my friends and not necessarily people who think I’m particularly good at this blogging business!
**COMPLETE SUBJECT CHANGE**
I’m in a good mood today for a few reasons:
1. I’m listening to Spoon and they’re a great band.
2. The move is almost complete. I mean, everything’s THERE but we almost have things settled a point where we can walk around our apartment unrestricted by crap all over the floor.
3. I haven’t recorded for about a week so I’m once again excited at the prospect of the album (rather than burnt out from being in the studio for a week).
4. Gary and I finally booked a show yesterday in Nashua, NH for next Wednesday and along with a show in Vermont on the 18th and a show at Northeastern on the 20th, it fills my show quota for the month (which means I can continue to live my luxurious lifestyle and pay off the album).
5. It is the farthest point away from teaching my SAT-prep classes (which are on Wednesday and Thursday).
Let’s talk about 5 for a bit. I know it’s not necessarily about music but I think it relates. Teaching these classes are one of the more difficult things I’ve ever had to do. I feel like I was a little under-trained for the position and there is a ton of prep-time involved. I’ve never TAUGHT before, other than a few guitar lessons here and there but in something like this, I definitely lack the self-confidence to be an authority. When I get nervous, I mumble and talk fast and I have to slow down my whole body to deal with the class. That being said, I think it will spread into my music and my being in general. I’m learning to respect what I do a little more, stand up a little taller, and I think by being able to present in front of these students will give me the confidence to be able to win over a crowd that I wouldn’t normally be able to win over or to network or talk to people that I normally shy away from. So, rad. It’s been tough but I think once I know the subject matter cold, I will be able to focus on teaching skills and my confidence will improve and the job will be (practically) easy.
So, I’m glad that I don’t have to teach until Wednesday so I can not worry about it until Monday when I start to prep my classes.
I’ve been enjoying music a lot more lately. One of my goals is to not snap judge so much on first listen, to be more open, and less cynical. Being pretentious is real tiring let me tell you, and and it’s not too good for your spirit. I’m sitting in Darwin’s LTD. coffeehouse in Somerville chilling out because my apartment is a MESS. I moved on Monday and it’s crazy. I really want to live in a neat apartment (unlike the last four months which has been like living back in a dorm room) but my girlfriend has so much stuff, that’s going to be really difficult…Anyhow, this entry is not about my living entry.
We’re done bass and drums in the studio. It was eye-opening for me and I hope was equally as mind-blowing for Max and Steve. it was a struggle for them I’m sure because they’ve done studio work before but not under the type of scrutiny that they were under…They were struggling and I’ve never seem them struggle with music before. I do believe it was worth it, however, because what we got was AWESOME. I got to go out that last night with Will too and grab a couple of drinks and listen to him rant about music and everything else and I am once again blessed that he has chosen me to help out and has let me latch onto him the last few years. Things are ramping up for him…He’s playing Farm Aid in a couple weeks with Dave Matthews, John Mellencamp, and his hero Neil Young, so bravo.
We’ll be back in the studio probably a week from Sunday. We hope to wrap up tracking by October 1st, which is right around when I thought we’d be done but if it extends beyond that, no worries. I need to get my head back in the album sponsorship game. We’re doing great at $500+ but I’d like to try and double that by the time this is all said and done. Thanks everyone!
I also had a singing lesson with Mark Baxter earlier in the week who is a renowned vocal coach. He basically kicked my ass for an hour but I got a lot of great information from it. He focuses a lot on the psychology and what a listener looks for from a singer. It’s not so much technical proficiency that they’re looking for but genuineness and it’s quite the process learning how to override your muscle memory and tendencies to make your singing for lack of a better term ‘more human’ and ‘more natural’ and something that people can relate to and that they can connect with. At the end of my lesson he gave me a CD of the lesson on it so I’m going to listen to it every day leading up to the vocal session. I’m going to keep working on everything and lay myself bare in the studio.
Another interesting point he made was that the best singers weren’t afraid to ‘walk the tightrope’ and fail as long as their singing was ‘risky’ and challenging. Most singers sing safe or well within their bounds and to a listener that’s OK but not something they want to connect with. I’m still digesting the information so everything above was probably a jumbled mess but come on, that’s what you’ve come to expect from me!
More on that later. For now, let’s once again marvel at how awesome Josh Ritter is:
Make sure to check out the previous blog for pictures from the studio!
9am (or earlier)—Matt arrives at studio to comp drums.
10:30am—I arrive at studio
11:30am—I start re-tracking scratch guitar and vox for most of the songs (not “Hanging Around” and “Sisters)
2:15pm—Max arrives. Takes sounds for “Hanging Around
4:30pm—Finish “Hanging Around”
5pm—Steve starts recording bass for “Have Heart” (I have to leave and go teach a class)
9:30pm—Return to studio and Steve has recorded bass for “Have Heart”, “Anna” and “Let Me In”
12am—Leave studio having finished most of “Sisters” and chatting with Brian Packer and Will about the future of the recordings.
NOTES: Today I had to come to grips with the fact that we aren’t going to get nearly as much done in the studio this week as I had initially hoped (and expected). We wrapped up drums, though we still have to break them down because we didn’t want to make that assumption until Friday morning. Anyhow, we’re a little over a third through the bass and we were hoping to get the bass done by today…c’est la vie. I’m a regimented, scheduled person and I’ve had to learn to let things go. The most important thing is that the record gets done, it’s awesome, and that I am not broke after finishing the record. So, this will all get done in due course. What this means is that we’ll either finish bass today (Friday) and we’ll do guitars for all of Saturday (we had to cancel the keyboardist for the day) or bass will extend into Saturday and we’ll get whatever guitars we can get down on Saturday.
I also don’t think that this record will be done as early as I originally had thought. It might be done for a Christmas-time release date like I had hoped but I don’t know if we’ll be able to do the CD release date in 2008. It’s not a big deal. When it gets done it will be worth it.
That pretty much gets everyone up to speed. My friend Jeff came in yesterday and took some additional pictures during his time off touring with Syd. I invite you all to check out the pictures here. We might clean some up and see what we can do with them.
9am–Matt arrives at studio to finish comping drums
11am–I arrive at studio to finish scratch guitar/vox for the rest of the songs
12pm–Max arrives at studio to start getting drum sounds
1pm–Max start recording “Anna”
2pm–I leave the studio to get to my new part-time job as an SAT Prep instructor. In my absence, Max tracks drums for three more songs: “Anna”, “I Promise You Relief”, and “Sisters
6:30pm–I arrive back at the studio to catch Will’s drummer (Dave Brophy) finish setting up to track “Gracie” and “Tell My Story”. Dave is super polished and he knocked them out wonderfully and quickly and I’m glad he could come in on short notice. He came in because Max had to leave for a gig at 5:30
9:30pm–Finish drum tracking for the day. Matt is going to spend a couple of hours comping the drums (cleaning them up to make the best full take) and I bust out of there.
Notes: All in all, for me, this was a pretty short day. I was in for a few hours then I had to head over to Quincy to teach SAT Prep and I was back for a few more hours. It broke up the day and made it seem pretty short. On Thursday, I will be in from about 11-5 and then I have to head to Winchester to teach another class. I’ll be back in the studio by 9:30 for a few more hours. We have one more drum track to complete. It’s been interesting seeing Max struggle in the studio. He’s a fantastic drummer and he does great live but everything has to be so precise and consistent in the studio (without using the computer too much because it sucks the life out of the songs if you rely too much on cutting and pasting to get too much of the take)
and he’s struggled a bit finding consistency in the studio. Dave was more of a drumming machine with his metronomic ability and we breezed through the two songs. I don’t regret using Max for one second, he’s MY drummer, but we’re definitely behind schedule a bit. We’ll finish all of our drums and hopefully all (or most) of the bass on Thursday.
Friday, we’ll put down acoustic guitars and toss out the scratch tracks for a lot of the songs. I think as of Friday I’ll have a better sense of where we are with things. The drum tracks sound killer but I need to hear more than that to get the best scope of where I stand.
We will also have a keyboardist/organist come in on Saturday who will take the songs and dress them up. That should take most of the day on Saturday and then my time at Q Division is done. The album won’t be done but I think we’ll be done tracking at Q. Hopefully by then we’ll know when we’re going to be in the studio next and with what. At that point, we’ll still have some rhythm tracking to do, all the lead guitar work, all the vocals, and percussion. We’ll have the bulk of the work done but some really important stuff ahead of us
All in all, I think we’re in good shape but we still have a ways to go.
Another update coming tomorrow with PICTURES (hopefully).
8am—wake up, shower, have breakfast
8:40—wake up Max
9—leave for studio
9:15—arrive at studio/unload
10—set-up and start taking drum sounds
1:15pm—lay down scratch guitar/vocals of first song (“Let Me In”)
1:30-4:30—lay down and comp drums for “Let Me In”
4:30—lunch (or dinner?)
5:00—lay down scratch guitar/vocals or second song (“Have Heart”)
5:15—tweak sounds for “Have Heart”
5:30-7:30—lay down and comp drums for “Have Heart”
7:30—get sounds for third track (“Missing”) and get scratch guitar/vocals
8—lay down and comp drums for “Missing”
10:30—lay down scratch guitar/vocals for third song (“I Promise You Relief”)
11pm—Call it a night.
Notes: The studio is so tedious it makes me want to gouge my eyes out. Steve is sitting next to me and he has been in the same chair happy as a clam since 9:30 with only a brief interlude for lunch. Matt Tahaney is our engineer and he’s a cool, knowledgeable guy and a workhorse. He didn’t take a single break all day. Will’s been 100% too. I think this is going to have to be my arrangement for the foreseeable future for recording. I’m going to have to have a really active producer and engineer who can worry about how everything sounds and I can provide the songs and the final say on things but I couldn’t care less about all the little things—the mic tweaks, the editing, and the like—but I respect the hell out of it…It just bores the hell out of me and I can’t hear the changes half of the time.
At this point, however, things are sounding awesome. After the first day, we’re definitely behind schedule but I don’t care how long it takes as long as it ultimately sounds awesome. Plus, I let Will worry about the schedule because he has the best perspective of that kind of thing.
My brother Tim, Marie, Jim all visited today as well.
So, tomorrow’s the big day. I’ll be bringing my camera and my camcorder and giving everyone the play-by-play. I’m optimistic when I head into the studio but we’ll see how it goes once we’re under the gun. Until then!
The last thing we need is another blog about the album preparation, but here it is! I had the last pre-production meeting with the rhythm section and Will at Jamspot on Thursday and it went well. Max and I will probably have one more firm rehearsal (I’d like to have 5 more but his schedule just doesn’t allow it…he’s one busy dude) and hopefully Steve can get in on it too. There’s nothing more to do now but record the damn album.
I still have prep to do on my part. I sing and it still hurts. I need to make sure I’m warmed up but I don’t want to wreck my vocals. With that being said, I’ve been at Faneuil Hall the last three days and it’s gone from good to bad to awesome and most recently, my voice held up pretty well. I’m not worried, I just have to monitor things.
I’ve been updating the budget and it’s sitting in at around $9000 right now. We were able to do away with a couple expenses as well as adding a couple more. The album sponsorship is at $500 now (thanks everyone!) and though I won’t be able to do much pushing of it while I’m in the studio, I hope to push it hard when we get out right up until the release of the album. I’ve been consolidating all of my savings to be able to pay off as much of the album as once but I think I’m going to be in hefty amount of debt. Not that I won’t be able to pay it off, it just might take a few months. My friends from Cahill accrued a bunch of debt with their most recent album and they’ve been balancing and dealing with it but I’d rather not have it hanging over my head. It may not be the smartest way to deal with things because we’re in an age of debt, but all the same, I just don’t want to have to worry about it because I’m a one-man machine.
I’ve been telling friends that they’re invited into the studio. It sounds like we’re going to have a rotating group of people in to hang out and we want to make it as fun and as creatively nurturing as possible so if you want to come in and hang out and I know you enough where I don’t find you creepy (ha), drop me a line.
I just remembered, I still have a ton of stuff to sort out with the potential photographer (yikes), and there is work to be done before I head over to Faneuil Hall today.
OK, now I can write a little more. It’s good to be back. I won’t write much about it but vacation was nice. I went to Atlantis with my family and the weather was awesome, it was EXTREMELY relaxing. It was discouraging because I wasn’t able to bring my guitar with me because of new airport regulations (would have been too expensive to take it with me…) so I listened to demos from the new CD a ton and visualized the album a ton. I then sent a long email to the band and to Will telling them what I was thinking about and Will was nice enough to send me back a one line answer:
“Aren’t you on vacation?”
It WAS vacation but I’m glad to be back. Like I said, we’re in the studio in one week and it’s consuming my mind for the most part. We’ve picked the songs, and we’re rehearsing a few times this week. We’ve selected tempos, hashed out arrangements and have done all of the preparation that we can do to make sure we’re in good shape. There are a couple of snags for next week that will iron themselves out (Steve and Max have a gig on Wednesday and I have a couple of classes to teach for my SAT prep job) but we’re almost there. There has been a tremendous amount of preparation and I couldn’t be happier.
Everything I’ve done before this album has led up to this. I’m almost asking people to forget about the recordings that we’ve done in the past because they won’t be for anything more than marveling at how much we’ve changed. The songs are tight (you’ll recognized half of them because we’re re-tracking a handful of songs), and the musicians are top-notch (It’s taken some posturing but Brian, Max, and Steve are the best collective of musicians that I’ve played with), and Will has really been a great supporter and in our corner.
This is making me sound cocky (maybe for the first time in my life for anyone who knows me…) but I have no doubt in my mind that this debut CD is going to be fantastic.
I can’t wait for things to come together. The CD won’t be released for 3 or 4 months but when it’s ready, I’ll be putting everything that I have behind it. This is it.
