Week 37, Salty Stages

This week’s song is another in a line of pretty rocked-out tracks. I have to admit that I wasn’t feeling great about it at first. I wrote it half expecting to ditch it, but there were aspects of this simplistic song that I kinda was digging so I stuck with it. I know that I’ve probably written this for a number of songs by now, but once everything came together I really found myself liking this song, though I’m having a hard time characterizing it. I can’t seem to put my finger on what or who it sounds like. There’s definitely some Guided by Voices influence in there somewhere… if you’ve been following along you know that there’s a little of that in just about every song, but there’s also maybe a little Nirvana in the chorus, what with the harmonies and all. Yeah, I don’t really know.

As for the recording, it sits on the precipice of a new turn in my recording process, as it’s the first using a new tool that I’ve added to my arsenal. I’d been flirting with the idea of buying an Alesis ProTrack for about as long as I’ve been doing this project, but having read mixed reviews about its performance with the iPhone and generally being pretty happy with my process and wanting to avoid introducing any more distractions, I put off the inevitable purchase. The ProTrack, like the Blue Mikey, is a product that was developed for recording to an iPod, but works in some capacity with the iPhone. It’s basically a dock for the iPod/iPhone that has decent field-recording microphones built in as well as two XLR microphone inputs, with gain control for each (it even can provide phantom power to condenser mics). There are two features that I’ve been dying to have for a while – being able to record drums ad having better iPhone input options – and until my ProTrack arrived from Amazon, I wasn’t very sure that either would work well.

My first test was at a Karl Hendricks Trio practice. As anyone who’s seen the Trio live can attest to, we’re a pretty loud band, and I wanted to see if the ProTrack could handle being dropped into the middle of practice and pick up a stereo image of our space without clipping and distorting due to the high volume. On the first go, with little thought given to location, the ProTrack performed beautifully. It was no more than six feet away from any of the amps or drums, and it didn’t clip and actually sounded very accurate to what our practice sounds like. In my opinion, the ability to handle this kind of volume is what sets the ProTrack well above the Blue Mikey. I can’t say whether they improved the ability to record in high-volume situations for Mikey 2.0, but I can tell you for certain that version 1 is unusable for recording any sort of amplified live rock music onto an iPhone, with perhaps the exception of a relatively quiet band at an outdoor venue where the sound disperses more. As it relates to Project 52, I’ve always wanted a way to record drums quickly right onto the phone in similar fashion to how I’ve been recording guitars and vocals. Don’t get me wrong, I love the challenge of miking, recording, and mixing drums with a multi-mic setup, but that’s really been counter to one of my goals for this project – to let go and not fuss too much over performance, setup, mixing, etc. It’s really the only way that I’ve been able to make the deadline every week, and it’s been really freeing to have that regimen and not obsess too much about every last detail. The ProTrack may end up being the missing link for me to record drums right onto the phone. We’ll see. I haven’t had a chance to test out levels and placement to see if I can get anything that sounds good enough to use, but I’m optimistic.

The drums on this song and next week’s song were recorded before I got the ProTrack, so they’re still with the same five-mic setup of the last several weeks (reference week 29 for more info.) One fun little trick that I played with the drums is with the end part of the song – I kept a few different takes and decided to do something a little more interesting. As the song breaks down into the last section, I faded out of the main drum take while fading in two takes panned hard left and right. I staggered the fades so they come in and out at different times. I wanted to go back and mess with it a little, but it mostly came out how I wanted it to.

The guitars and vocals for this track were recorded using the ProTrack. I want to experiment more with using the ProTrack for vocals, though I’ve been pretty happy with using just the built in iPhone mic most of the time, and you can’t get much simpler than that. At first glance the mics sound pretty good and having the ability to run a condenser mic and/or a preamp into it gives me so much more flexibility. For the guitars, it was pretty much the same mic (Audio Technica ATM29HE), guitar (Fender Telecaster Thinline), and amp (Orange Crush 30r), but using the ProTrack instead of the mic adapter that I’d had made in week 2. The adapter has served me well for 35 weeks, but it came with some limitations (the metronome would bleed into the recording track from the headphone signal for instance.) I’ll be retiring the adapter for the time being. Thanks little buddy.

Meet the Widget

There’s one more item for this week: Fresh off of releasing Project 52, Volume 2 on my Bandcamp site (which you should definitely go listen to and download if you feel so inclined), I decided to finally go ahead and put out another digital release. Meet the Widget is an album that was recorded in 2005 and features the original band lineup of Developer. That’s me on guitars and vocals, Karl Hendricks on bass, and Jake Leger on the drums. It’s the same lineup as the Karl Hendricks Trio, just with Karl and me switching roles. I feel pretty good about this recording and the sound of the band at the time. We played a good number of shows at the time and recorded this with the same setup and pretty much at the same time as we recorded the Karl Hendricks Rock Band’s The World Says. After sitting on this for so many years, I decided to finally just go ahead and put it out now that there’s such a great site like Band Camp to facilitate the release. It took a little digging and file searching to conjure up the masters, song order, and the original cover art, but I managed to put it all together and get it out there. I hope you like it.

Have a great week everyone. I’ll see you soon.

Tags: Alesis, bandcamp, blue, Cockos, Corey Layman, developer, Harmonicdog, hovland, indie, indie rock, iPhone, Jake Leger, Karl Hendricks, Karl Hendricks Trio, lo-fi, manos, Meet the Widget, mikey, MultiTrack, phone-fi, Pittsburgh, podcast, Project 52, ProTrack, Woolslayer and Main

Week 36, The Witching Years

Project 52, Volume 2

Hello again friends. I’m happy to announce the release of Project 52, Volume 2 after many weeks of trying to carve out the necessary bits of extra time to re-master the tracks. It’s been a nice little trip back through the second quarter of the project. My personal favorites include “Dig In,” “The Creature” (think toy orchestra), and “On Ice.” You can preview all 13 songs and download the album on my Bandcamp site. The download comes with the cover art and is available in mp3, FLAC, AAC, and other standard high-quality formats. As a special promotion to celebrate this release , I’ll include a free download of Project 52, Volume 1 with the purchase of the second volume.

In keeping with the last couple of weeks, I’m going to keep the details of how I recorded “The Witching Years” to a minimum. The guitar is in the same fashion as week 31, and I’m still using the five-mic drum setup from week 29. As has become standard practice, the majority of the tracks were recorded on my iPhone using the MultiTrack app.

I’ve mentioned some bands and influences occasionally throughout the project, and to my mind the connection is usually pretty obvious. To me, this song is a great example of the influence that one of my favorite 90s bands, The Spinanes, had on my development as a guitar-player and songwriter. The Spinanes’ front-woman Rebecca Gates had a brilliant knack for writing great pop-rock songs with a simple but unconventional and interesting guitar style that really struck me. Her guitar parts were often driven by the would-be bass-note, but then she’d swing in nice melodic and sometimes unexpected accents within the chords.

This style is most exemplified on the album Manos, where it’s really perfect for their two-piece lineup. I picked up Manos at a time when I was re-evaluating my guitar playing and songwriting. I was bored with bar and standard-style chords, but I really loved the simplicity and clarity of the three-piece with a single guitar part. When I heard the Spinanes, I found just what I was looking for. This was also at a time that if you didn’t live in an area with a good college radio station (and even that was a crap-shoot), or unless you knew someone to introduce you to lesser-known bands and music, you were really on your own. I was lucky to have happened upon the Spinanes – I’m pretty sure that it was while watching MTV’s “120 Minutes.” After watching the video for “Noel, Jonah, and Me,” it was enough for me to run to the local record store and pick up Manos. I distinctly remember going through the album and figuring out the guitar parts. That style stuck with me, though it only comes through really clearly on occasion.

Rebecca Gates is still out there making music. Stop on by and give her a listen. She’s still one of my favorites.

Tags: 120 Minutes, bandcamp, Cockos, Corey Layman, developer, Harmonicdog, hovland, indie, indie rock, iPhone, Karl Hendricks Trio, lo-fi, manos, MultiTrack, phone-fi, Pittsburgh, podcast, Project 52, rebecca gates, the spinanes, Woolslayer and Main