Week 46, The Weekend

project52 — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 02:10:11 +0000

To listen on an iPhone, visit my Bandcamp site, or download the SoundCloud iPhone app.

For the first time in several weeks I’m getting a song up without franticly writing something at the last minute, and that’s a welcome change. We’ll see how long I can keep it up. With only six weeks left, I should be able to find the motivation.

I don’t have a whole lot to say about this song. It came together pretty well – even with the slightly ridiculous dual guitar solo at the end. This is another track where the recordings were all made on the iPhone using the Alesis ProTrack’s mic preamps to mic the guitar amp and the drums. The guitar on this one was my Dean Evo FT. It’s a great guitar that you should still be able to get as a steal if you can find one – it has a coil-tap switch! The guitar sound is just the Evo through my Orange Crush 30r using the amp’s distortion and miked with a CAD E200.

The drums were recorded with just two mics, both small diaphragm condensers in an xy pattern about four feet out in front of the kit. The vocals were recorded as usual with just the iPhone’s built-in microphone, and I added a tinge of distortion and delay on the back end. The melodica was also recorded with the iPhone mic. Everything was recorded into the MultiTrack DAW app and then mixed and tweaked in Reaper.

Things are coming together pretty well for the Project 52 grand finale. I should be able to announce a show lineup pretty soon. The venue is set. It’s going to be at the Brillobox here in Pittsburgh on September 5th. I’ll be playing with a band version of Developer that features Chris James on bass (currently in Assembly & formerly of Life in Bed), and Geof Comings on drums (currently in Becoming Projections & formerly of Songs: Ohia). We’ll be playing a full set of Project 52 songs and then cap the show off with a live recording of the final song, which will be posted here the next day.

Week 43, Firefly

project52 — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 03:48:44 +0000

To listen on an iPhone, visit my Bandcamp site, or download the SoundCloud iPhone app.

This week I broke full-on into the computer. I’ve been avoiding doing too much with computer-generated sounds for some reason or another. I think mostly because it hadn’t really been called for by the songs I’ve been writing, but also I’ve liked the idea that most of the songs have been live performances. In the case of this week’s song though, it just called for a simple beat and a little bit of horns. I can play a number of instruments, few of them really well, and I’ve made the most of the melodica over the year, but I don’t have any horns, and I can’t play them… at least not since I played the sax in 6th grade band.

Thanks to the great software Reason, I was able to drop in a nice tuba, a trombone, and a mellotron flute sound along with a touch of live melodica for good measure on top of a very simple beat, and I’m pretty happy with how it came out.

The acoustic guitar was recorded with the Alesis ProTrack using the built-in condenser mics, and the electric was recorded the same way as the last couple of weeks with the CAD E200 into the iPhone using the MultiTrack DAW app. The vocals were recorded with just the iPhone’s internal mic.

I only have nine songs left after this. I’m pretty excited about that, but I’m even more excited about the grand finale for the project. I’ll have more information about that in the coming weeks, but if you’re going to be in Pittsburgh over Labor Day weekend, leave your Sunday evening free and come out to help me celebrate.

Project 52, the podcast

Week 46, The Weekend

Week 43, Firefly