News and Stuff

"New and improved..."

Well we've pretty much settled into the new space. Some of the first sessions have been done and we're getting the kinks worked out and have made some huge improvements to the way we record. One of the biggest is using two mics on the Motion Sound one on the horn and the other on the low rotor simulator. The Motion Sound has a 800 hrz crossover (just like a Leslie) so after some experimentation with various mics we now have way more flexibility. The Kurzweil PC2 piano is now brought into the MOTU 828 via SPDIF stereo input. So now we have total control of the key board tracks...now four. (R&L stereo on the SPDIF and two mono on the motion sound.)

So the last four mp3s posted on this blog and on our website have this configuration for keyboard tracks. The result is a much more defined and complex sound. We have way more control over where things go in the mix now... We can pan the low end from the motion sound to one side and bring the spinning horn up front.

If we lay in a vocal on these experimental writing/recording session we pull one of the drum overheads. We did this on Perception track. Probably not a long term solution but these tracks we release are early version of more developed tunes...

So anyway the freebies we pony up are really working mixes from our studio. Not final versions of anything and sometimes we are simply on fishing expeditions looking for interesting sounds and combinations of sounds.

These tracks were recorded live and mixed that night so the guys could have burns of them to listen to. I post the mp3s on the blog so I can get at them at werk and from home and share them with anyone interested in following the progress of band as they write new material. When we post a Mp3 link to this blog it is automatically podcast. Those familiar with feedburner know what I am talking about.

I went back into the archives of this blog and already I can see there has been a lot of changes in the two years we've been together.

"We don't need no stinkin' direction...."

Where are we going? I don't know...if you've listened to any of our stuff you can pretty much tell that. We have a multitude of ways we are working....maybe that is bad...maybe it is good...I guess the next disk will tell if we are on the right track. My gut tells me we are and yet it also tells me we need to focus and take more chances musically...one thing that is appearing we are adding more textures, definitely doing more jamming...and letting things organically develop. We're not playing any gigs in March to get caught in the studio....we'll gig some in April and submit for Summerfest and Harborfest...

"What's the tempo Kenneth..."

Right now we are dealing with tempo issues. We're trying some stuff. All of us are making the point to spend some time with metronomes at home when practicing. We all have little quirks that when we combine them together causes some issues. Nothing major....as long as it is musical. You can hear this work happening in the that long jam Fuzzy Rainbow Monkeys...with the pulsating Wurli loop Fisk devised. I dig play these jams they loosen up everything and as a result we wrote recorded a rather cool take of Perception right after Fuzzy Monkeys...

Well that's it 4 now. I'll post some snaps of Farkusville studio soon. Thanks for reading.

Brad