Ok, long story, but here goes...
My dad and uncle were the two musicians of their family growing up, and arguably are the two biggest reasons I got as into music as I did as a teenager. When they were teenagers, though, they had some sort of a tape recorder, and for Christmas one year recorded their siblings an album under the name "Endoplasmic Reticulum." Now, I've never heard it, but a couple years ago a copy of the tape re-surfaced (it's reel to reel or something, so I have no way to play it), and since by then my dad had gotten back into songwriting and my uncle was just starting to catch the bug himself, they started talking about maybe trying to get together and do a followup album. Since I play a bit of everything and am a hack drummer and bassist, two instruments they lack, and additionally since I've gotten heavily into digital audio recording, and since it sounded like a lot of fun, I've gotten involved, too.
So, they've been emailing and mailing demos back and forth for a few months now, and we decided that what we really needed to do was get together and play some of this stuff as a group. We decided Saturday the 31st was a good day that worked for everyone, so Friday night I tossed my acoustic, my Strat, my Trademark 30, and a duffle bag of mic's into my car and booked it out to ther Northern Berkshires. Saturday morning, we had breakfast and then set up and got to work about 10AM, working out some arrangements.
And you know, I had a blast. After an hour or so, we decided we'd try to record some of the stuff we were working on, just to hear how it sounded with some other instruments tossed into the mix afterwards. Since my dad and uncle weren't really the "studio" types and the idea of sitting down and recording a guitar track, then a vocal track, then a piano track, et al was pretty alien to them, I had a new challenge, namely recording a bunch of musicians playing live together. It'd have been easier had I packed my computer and Firepod, but I didn't think we were going to be doing much recording so I didn't bother (next time). As it was, we ran everything through a 16-channel Carvin mixer and recorded a stereo submix into my parents' computer via Sonar, and then added tracks afterwards to that (typically, two acoustics, a vocal, and a electronic keyboard, or acoustic, electric, keyboard, and voice). Having to get everything right in a single pass and get all the levels right ahead of time was a new (and kind of fun, if frustrating) challenge for a guy who'd never really done anything BUT multitracking a single track at a time.
Anyway, we ended up recording and playing for almost 8 hours, and since I was playing an acoustic with 12's and my Strat with 11's for most of it, my fingers were shot by the end. But I had an awesome time, I was playing music with the two guys who are really responsible for the reason I now play guitar today, and it's always fun to sit down and try to work out arrangements and really bring a song to life.
We have three songs in semi-finished status. One is probably going to remain unchanged, though I need to give it a fresh mix, while the other two I need to try to record some drums at some point this week.
If you guys are interested, I can check with my dad and uncle and see if it's cool if I share some of it, but it's nothing that'd go over well here - sort of Dylan-y, Stones-y folk blues stuff, about as far from what we usually talk about here as one can get.
I just basically wanted to share, though, how much fun it is to get together with a group of people and record yourselves. I need a band, lol.
My dad and uncle were the two musicians of their family growing up, and arguably are the two biggest reasons I got as into music as I did as a teenager. When they were teenagers, though, they had some sort of a tape recorder, and for Christmas one year recorded their siblings an album under the name "Endoplasmic Reticulum." Now, I've never heard it, but a couple years ago a copy of the tape re-surfaced (it's reel to reel or something, so I have no way to play it), and since by then my dad had gotten back into songwriting and my uncle was just starting to catch the bug himself, they started talking about maybe trying to get together and do a followup album. Since I play a bit of everything and am a hack drummer and bassist, two instruments they lack, and additionally since I've gotten heavily into digital audio recording, and since it sounded like a lot of fun, I've gotten involved, too.
So, they've been emailing and mailing demos back and forth for a few months now, and we decided that what we really needed to do was get together and play some of this stuff as a group. We decided Saturday the 31st was a good day that worked for everyone, so Friday night I tossed my acoustic, my Strat, my Trademark 30, and a duffle bag of mic's into my car and booked it out to ther Northern Berkshires. Saturday morning, we had breakfast and then set up and got to work about 10AM, working out some arrangements.
And you know, I had a blast. After an hour or so, we decided we'd try to record some of the stuff we were working on, just to hear how it sounded with some other instruments tossed into the mix afterwards. Since my dad and uncle weren't really the "studio" types and the idea of sitting down and recording a guitar track, then a vocal track, then a piano track, et al was pretty alien to them, I had a new challenge, namely recording a bunch of musicians playing live together. It'd have been easier had I packed my computer and Firepod, but I didn't think we were going to be doing much recording so I didn't bother (next time). As it was, we ran everything through a 16-channel Carvin mixer and recorded a stereo submix into my parents' computer via Sonar, and then added tracks afterwards to that (typically, two acoustics, a vocal, and a electronic keyboard, or acoustic, electric, keyboard, and voice). Having to get everything right in a single pass and get all the levels right ahead of time was a new (and kind of fun, if frustrating) challenge for a guy who'd never really done anything BUT multitracking a single track at a time.
Anyway, we ended up recording and playing for almost 8 hours, and since I was playing an acoustic with 12's and my Strat with 11's for most of it, my fingers were shot by the end. But I had an awesome time, I was playing music with the two guys who are really responsible for the reason I now play guitar today, and it's always fun to sit down and try to work out arrangements and really bring a song to life.
We have three songs in semi-finished status. One is probably going to remain unchanged, though I need to give it a fresh mix, while the other two I need to try to record some drums at some point this week.
If you guys are interested, I can check with my dad and uncle and see if it's cool if I share some of it, but it's nothing that'd go over well here - sort of Dylan-y, Stones-y folk blues stuff, about as far from what we usually talk about here as one can get.
I just basically wanted to share, though, how much fun it is to get together with a group of people and record yourselves. I need a band, lol.