studio
Takes Me Back
I’m enjoying a lazy Saturday right now. Possibly too lazy actually but that’s beside the point. We’re gigging tonight so I think I’m allowed some down time during the day. Yesterday we woke up to find the finished record in our inboxes. You don’t even receive a CD in the mail these days!! Instead, a link to the .wav files residing on a secure server somewhere in the internet universe. Even though you get it quicker, and you save on postage etc etc, waiting 10 minutes to download a zip file kind of lacks the immediacy of ripping a CD out of its parcel and playing it on a stereo. But I won’t complain. And that’s completely not the point of this post so I’ll stop and start a new paragraph.
Putting the record together over in LA was just such a cool experience and hearing the finished product for the first time was really quite a special moment. It was quite transportational actually. When I heard the second track it was as though I was back at Fairfax listening to Greg tracking vocals. That was an awesome afternoon. Without sounding weird talking about another man, watching Greg do a single take of the song was a really beautiful and moving sight. It was like the atmosphere of that moment in the studio and the essence of the song was captured perfectly in the first take. I’m not sure whether it’s even possible for the energy in a room to be recorded through a microphone, but when I heard the song it definitely felt like what we experienced that day was in there somewhere.
All in all it’s pretty damn exciting to have the finished record in our hands. I’m busting to post a sample but I’d get my face kicked in. We’ll be releasing the first single soon enough though and I eagerly await that day!!
I’m off to eat lunch. I know it’s past 3pm but lazy Saturday, remember?
In The Studio – Part 5
I’m writing this sitting at Salt Lake City Airport, gate C6 to be precise, waiting for my connecting flight to New York City. In my attempt to save money on my plane fare I took a ridiculously inconvenient choice of flight. Flights out of LAX were substantially more expensive than from other airports and so I thought, why not just go from a random airport, it can’t be that bad. So my first flight was out of Santa Ana John Wayne which happens to be in Orange County. I didn’t realise it was in Orange County and I didn’t bother to check. Which in hindsight was silly really.
LA has awful public transport. And this is coming from someone from Brisbane, Australia, a city that has pretty awful public transport itself. This was my trek out to the airport (skip over if you get bored): I caught a bus from Ventura Blvd to Universal City; a train from Universal City to Union Station; another train from Union Station to Irvine; the 86 bus from Irvine station to the corner of Macarthur and Main; and then I was supposed to catch the 76 from there to the airport but I seemed to have a bit of a brain meltdown (I had a few drinks last night and didn’t get much sleep) and for the life of me I couldn’t find the bus stop. There was no one on the street save for some guy holding a sign and he didn’t seem to know. I wandered around aimlessly for a while and finally got my bearings only to see the bus pulling away from the stop with me stuck on the wrong side of the road. I was a little devastated because I had come so close to precisely executing my save money trek. I had to call a cab which ended up being only a $6 fare and in the time I had to wait for it I literally could have walked to the airport. But I made it albeit a little bit stressed out and then had almost all of my toiletries confiscated by security at the airport, even my toothpaste. Go figure!! They seem to be a lot more security crazy over here in America compared to Oz. I had to take my shoes and my jumper off and the guy at the screen was this loud, obnoxious, overweight, condescending guy who was just a wanker really. But I’m venting and I apologise.
Earlier this week we were losing our minds a little bit waiting to get back into the studio. Kevin had been mixing away on the completed tracks and we were left at home playing iPhone games (Peggle, by the way is a great example – I think John successfully completed the game 3 times) and getting restless waiting to hear them. If you notice a video currently on our Myspace page involving Greg wearing sunglasses indoors and Andrew playing a Ukulele understand that we filmed it in this losing our minds waiting around time. It might seem stupid waiting at home instead of actually doing something cool but we didn’t have a car and, like I mentioned before, if you want to catch public transport you’d better plan for it and have heaps of time. But we finally got back into the studio and it was awesome.
We’d decided that for the fourth track on the record we wanted to bring in a string quartet and so on Wednesday night we rocked into Fairfax to find a string quartet all set up and ready to go. You’ll notice a video below this of said quartet in action. It’s awesome enough on video but being there and listening to it in person was amazing. It was Kevin’s idea actually and it was certainly a good one. I can’t wait to hear the track when it’s finished. There’s something inspiring about being around really really good musicians and all four of those string players could play!!
That left one more thing to go: tracking the final synth parts for one of the songs. Andrew had been freaking out a bit because he was leaving on Friday and still hadn’t finished tracking, and sure enough Friday was the day he had to go in and finish. I headed along to the studio with him (I just love being in there and it was going to be my last time) while the other two swanned around Hollywood I think. He tracked, Kevin produced and I watched South Park. I’m not sure if you’ve seen the “Fish Sticks” episode of South Park but if you haven’t, definitely watch it. And then we were done. It became apparent at that point as you might imagine that our involvement in the making of the record was done and dusted. It was quite a sad moment really. When you’ve enjoyed making music in such a great environment for a few weeks, to know that that experience was over was kind of like finishing high school. Well, not really but I can’t think of a better example right now. We said our goodbyes to Kevin, Andrew cried (haha not really) and then Andrew took a cab to LAX to fly home and I took a cab back to the house.
Myself and Greg (being way cooler than John who decided to be a loser and not come with us) went out that night with some American friends to celebrate stuff, we got home really late, I woke up 3 hours later, experienced the shit fight of a public transport mission I described earlier, and that brings me back to the start of this post. I’m going to New York City yeah!!!!!!! And yes, you can safely assume that the next post will be about that.
Montpelier Strings Session
This happened last night. And all I can say is I nearly cried witnessing it. The incredible musicians in this video are The Section Quartet, a group based in LA who have played on a lot of really really good records (www.thesectionquartet.com). We were pretty stoked to have them play on ours. Eric Gorfain, the first violin player, did the string arrangement. So talented. Seriously though I nearly cried. Strings can do that to a man when they’re played this well.
Montpelier Strings Session from Montpelier on Vimeo.
In The Studio – Part 4
It’s Thursday night right now and not long ago the Lakers just beat the Magic in a nail biting win in overtime. The Lakers now lead the finals series 3-1 (for those unfamiliar with the NBA the grand final is actually a 7 game series. The winner is the first to win 4 games). It’s cool being in a city when there’s a big time sporting event happening. Everyone gets pumped up about it and there’s a buzz happening. People seem to get very patriotic about their hometown when one of their sporting teams is in a final and it’s great. The only bad thing is it’s just not possible to get seats at the game when it’s the finals. It’s just too expensive. Which is a real shame because I would have loved to have seen a Lakers game live. But enough about sport.
The last few days in the studio have started to get really great. Well everyday in the studio has been great but I guess the closer you get to the end of a record, the more complete the songs sound and, well, the stuff you’ve been working really hard on starts to sound good. On Tuesday we started laying all the secondary vocal tracks. I sung the backups on the songs Greg sings lead on and vice versa. I also got to lay down my final guitar parts. And that was it really. We went home and watched the Lakers game. I know it sounds like we do pretty much nothing during the day and then just go home and watch basketball but I swear we’re working hard. It just so happens that a Lakers game is on every second night because of the finals.
That just left synth parts to track for the next few days. Andrew was getting all excited leading up to this part of the recording. He couldn’t wait to get his hands on some really old school synths. There’s been something about playing music with vintage gear that’s really hard to describe. You kind of feel like you’re part of a way bigger story and that somehow the geniuses who have used the gear before you will somehow impart some of their awesomeness into what you’re doing. Up until this point it started to become really obvious that synths were missing and you get impatient wanting to record them. Because I work so closely with Andrew, my guitar parts sometimes don’t really make all that much sense without his synth parts and so to hear synth finally being injected into the songs made me feel a lot better about life. One of the coolest synths was this really old suitcase (literally it opened like a suitcase) Moog that made crazy sounds. It had a life of its own. We couldn’t really control it so we just went with what it wanted to do and got a really cool sound out of it for one of the tracks. When unplugging it though Andrew electrocuted himself and had a numb right arm for the rest of the day. It’s 115 volts or something over here. I wonder whether you get a bigger electric shock back home with 240 volts?
The next day we did a taping for a music TV show. It was good fun. Performed a couple of acoustic songs and an interview. We didn’t make it into the studio that day so instead, while we were in Hollywood, we took a trip to The Guitar Center on Sunset. It’s a massive store and I headed straight to the vintage section and then straight to the Fender wall. I’m a die hard Fender Stratocaster loyalist and there were some amazing guitars in that store. Really old guitars with original parts. Shame they were going for between $30,000 and $100,000. One day maybe. I also saw one of the original ‘59 Fender Twins I’m using in the studio at the moment. It too was fetching a nice $30k. I guess it’s good to have something to aim towards…
Friday and it was time for more synths. We arrived at the studio to be greeted by a CS-80. Now that probably won’t mean that much to most people. But I’m not lying, this synth was the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard in my life. I know there are factions of people out there who believe that digital modelling of original analogue gear is just as good as the real thing. No offence to them but it’s just not true. The sounds that were being generated by this thing were simply mindblowing. I was literally getting goosebumps listening to the sounds. One of the cool things about analogue gear as well is that once you get a sound you like, you’d better record it because you’re unlikely to ever find that same sound again. That means no one else is likely to have ever created that exact same sound. When you’re making a record, that’s cool.
So we wrapped up Friday with most of the synths tracked. I also sung the backups for the last track. Oh yeah, and we decided to get a string quartet in for the last song as well. I can’t wait to see/hear that in action. Kevin got busy starting the mixes so the next time we’re in (hopefully tomorrow) we’ll be hearing the first mixes. A most exciting time!!
One final thing. Greg and I decided to go catch a movie that night and took a massive trek by public transport to find a cinema. I’m really liking LA, but it is the worst city for getting around by public transport. Getting anywhere is a huge mission that requires intricate planning and lots of time. We didn’t have either but I think people like coming to the aid of helplessly lost human beings like ourselves, and some locals aided us to our destination. We saw the new Terminator and my recommendation is to skip it. Boring boring boring. Even the action scenes were pretty boring. Looking forward to Transformers. Hot tip – Aussie actress Isbabel Lucas (ex-Home and Away star) is in it. How good!!
In The Studio – Part 3
I wrote briefly about how the Hollywood sign was determined to remain elusive despite each of its letters being 45 feet high. Today, before going into the studio, we went on a trek to see the Hollywood sign. Actually our real mission was to sit on the Hollywood sign.
Straight off I’ll say that the sign looks deceptively small and deceptively close. In fact it’s massive and really far away. So Kevin took us to the base of the hills in his awesome car and then the five of us began the trek. I will say at this point that there are roads that you can walk on but being adventurous we decided to take the more rustic trails that wind up the hill. I guess at some point we sort of lost perspective of where we were in relation to the sign itself but worked out the basic direction we had to head in. As we were walking (sorry, hiking) Kevin casually mentioned that we had to go off road (as in off the already kind of off road track) and that if any rangers found us we should do all the talking because we obviously sound like we’re not from around here and that we could act dumb. At that point it became clear we weren’t actually allowed to go near the sign. But there weren’t actually any signs saying we couldn’t go off the track so we figured that was their bad not ours.
I’ll reiterate that the sign looks deceptively small and deceptively close. We thought that if we traversed a gully and climbed the ridge adjacent to the one we were on we would emerge from the scrub to be greeted by the glorious view of the 9 white letters. Wrong!! Also, we figured that despite there being no track we could quite easily find our own way. That was also incorrect. When we made it out of the gully to the top of the ridge bleeding, bruised and pretty buggered, we found that there were two more gullies and ridges to traverse and climb before we’d get to the sign. When we reached the top of the second of those ridges we realised there were about three more after that. Despite this setback we persevered and finally found ourselves at the base of the iconic Hollywood sign (which by the way used to say “Hollywoodland”). Greg and Kevin were at the front of the group and managed to set off some sort of alarm and then a voice came over a loudspeaker saying, “Stop hiking now!” So we did. We stayed put and climbed the letters. The voice didn’t say anything more specific than that so we technically didn’t do anything wrong. Then a ranger came out of nowhere and shouted at us that we were trespassing so we bolted down the hill only to find at ground level fences and many signs saying that it was illegal to climb up to the sign.
Get this. By getting lost and taking the most roundabout, off the beaten path route to the sign we avoided all the “Do Not Enter” signs and fences and slipped under the radar of the rangers long enough to get to the sign and climb it. How good! So worth the bleeding arms and legs and quite an eventful start to the morning. Then, driving on our way to the studio, to add to the excitement, a car in front of us (a Prius, quite small) ran a red light (as you do) and got collected by a massive truck (I use the American term “truck” here to describe what Aussies would call a “ute” so don’t go picturing semi-trailers or anything like that). But it was a pretty full on crash – three cars. Everyone seemed alright though.
And then we were back in the studio. Unlike the other three tracks, we came to LA with the fourth song being left completely bare. We wanted to shape it in the studio and capture that spontaneity on record. We hadn’t actually played the song as a band so this was real experimentation territory for us. We chatted a bit about what we were going for, set up the mics and then John started playing drums to a scratch track. Kevin actually set up the drums in the entrance way to the studio for a really different sound. It was cool. Anyway John played one take, the first he’d ever played of the song, and that was him done. We loved it. Andrew jumped on the piano and played a take and then overdubbed a Rhodes solo and that was him finished as well. Then it came to Greg’s vocal take. He nailed it in one in a really emotional, bare everything take. It was actually really beautiful to watch. So that was the song, pretty much finished. And it was a really great feeling to have captured the energy we were looking for straightaway, just as we’d hoped for.
