Reaper
Week 23, The Creature
The 23rd track out of the gate is called The CreatureYouTube link for iPhone
This is easily the biggest arrangement of the bunch so far. There are 22 total tracks, though 10 of them are devoted to the “toy orchestra”. The orchestra and vocals mark the return of the Blue Mikey, which shines when recording acoustic instruments. The orchestra consisted of a number of takes using the melodica, a recorder, a tamborine, a xylophone, and some sort of synthetic wooden xylophone thing. Everything except the melodica (and perhaps the recorder) is a kids toy.
I’m not going to spend too much time on the recording of this one. The song was written on the baritone guitar in a standard baritone tuning (A-D-G-C-E-A), which is a perfect fifth lower than a standard guitar tuning. I added two guitar tracks with a bit of delay and a bass track. This song sounds really full to me, almost to the point of over-saturation. I think it works really well in some parts (the break), but it may be too much over the verses. As usual, everything except drums was recorded using the MultiTrack app on my iPhone. The drums were recorded into Reaper with the same five-mic setup that I’ve used the last few weeks.
I really wanted the second half of the break to sound huge. But after ripping the house apart looking, it appears that I don’t have a symphony orchestra hiding in any of the bedroom closets. I could easily have created the orchestral sound using Reason, and it would’ve sounded great, but I feel like sample-based instrumentation is really counter to the spirit of this project, so instead I grabbed my phone and whatever toy note makers I could find and got busy. I really like how it came out.
This is definitely one of those songs that I would love to have another month or two to work on, but you know the drill by now, and so do I. I hope the song itself comes through loud and clear, and that it’s to your liking.
I want to give a big thanks to all of the regulars who’ve been stopping in weekly to see what I’ll come up with next.
I’m still looking for better ways to get the word out about Project 52. If you feel inclined to write about the site on you blog, or post about it somewhere new, hell even tell your Facebook friends about it, let me know. I’ll send you some download codes from my Bandcamp site so that you can grab some tracks as high-quality mp3’s or even FLAC or some other pristine quality.
Week 22, The Road
This week’s song is called The RoadYouTube link for iPhone
My two-year-old son is partially responsible for this song. It started with this Christmas, or actually, it goes all the way back to the holidays of my childhood. As a kid I spent hours pouring over J.C. Penny and BEST catalogs, dreaming of the ultimate gift, a drum set. I must have asked for one every year, probably starting with with the Mickey Mouse variety and moving on to more serious kits as I got older. But it was never to be. I’m sure that the drums were always a relatively high priced item for our family and knowing me, it would’ve made life seriously louder within our household. To this day I’ve never properly owned my own drum set. The one I’ve used for all of these recordings belongs to my friend Dale. It’s a Premier kit (80s-90s vintage is my best guess), and Dale insists that he’s just glad that it’s being used. For what it’s worth, I’m grateful. Anyway, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that at the first opportunity, I bought my son the drum set that I’d always wanted. It’s pretty nice too. He doesn’t play it all that often yet, but the other day he and I were jamming in the living room and for the first time he was more or less playing a steady beat. Sort of. I started playing a super simple riff that fit with his beat. My son grew tired of playing with me pretty quickly and moved on to something else, but the riff stuck, and I worked it into this little ditty.
It wasn’t until after I’d recorded the drums and everything else started coming together that I realized that this song was starting to have the feel of a Cars song. Either you fight something like that or you go with it. So I went with it, and threw in the synth parts. I love The Cars. I think they were masters of writing tight, interesting pop rock songs. I think their songs sound so great, and it’s not just their hits. All of the albums are great front to back. Take their first record, The Cars, which opens up with “Good Times Roll”, “Best Friends Girl”, and “Just What I Needed”. The album closes with one of my favorites, “All Mixed Up”, which by happens to be covered brilliantly by another of my favorite bands, The Red House Painters on their album Songs for a Blue Guitar. Production-wise, I tried to capture a bit of The Cars’ spirit. I confidently added synth, and I cloned the main vocal track on the verse with boosted low frequencies while cutting the low-end completely out of the original track. It creates the huge sound of the vocals on the verse, and you can hear the difference in the chorus. I didn’t come close to matching the production on the drums, and really most of the production on my track is pretty wide open comparatively, and of course I used an iPhone and a laptop where they were using AIR studios in London. I guess that the song doesn’t sound all that similar to a real Cars song, but hopefully I captured enough of the spirit of it all to make Ric Ocasek proud. So what do you think Ric?
The drums were recorded using the same five-mic setup as last week into Reaper, and the synths were added using Reason. Everything else was recorded into MultiTrack on my iPhone. The guitars and bass were tracked in my dining room with a dynamic mic using the custom break-out cable, and the vocals were recorded right into the iPhone’s mic. I’ve been experimenting with purposefully clipping the iPhone mic just enough to get some distortion and limiting. I think I’m getting the hang of it.
As I mentioned last week, I’ve been experimenting with listening and adding my music to new types of music Web sites. I like the idea that anyone from anywhere can subject their art to a neutral marketplace, and it’s up to the masses to find what they like for better or worse. It doesn’t appear to always work and can be frustrating to sift through music that you have no interest in, but I have been able to find some great bands and songwriters that I would’ve never come across otherwise. Still I feel like it’s nowhere close to an ideal system. I’d love to take the best from the heyday of indie labels – they went out and found the best music in a scene (and were a big part of making the scenes), you knew you could go to them for new bands that you would love eight or nine times out of ten, and that they would put together a great product – and combine all of that with this new technology, ease of distribution, music is free stuff. It’s something I know that most indie labels from Merge and Sub Pop to new labels just starting up are struggling with these questions. There doesn’t seem to be an easy answer yet. Oh well, food for thought I guess.
The two sites that I’m currently messing around with are www.thesixtyone.com and www.uvumi.com. Uvumi is pretty new, and The 61 just changed their interface around and some people haven’t been thrilled with it. Please stop by these sites and check them out. Look me up and say hi. If you’re already on them, hit me up.
Week 21, Say
The song for week 21 is called Say.YouTube link for iPhone
I actually wrote this song a few weeks ago and have been working on it piece by piece when I could. I recorded the drums last week, but only finished the electric guitars, bass, and vocals over these last two days. This is another song that is very much in the vein of my old band, Hovland. There’s the pretty, sad, quiet stuff, followed by the heavier, mathier stuff. I always thought it was a nice little songwriting recipe. Someday soon, I’ll upload the various completed Hovland recordings that I have on my Bandcamp page. I may even take a swipe a remastering everything while I’m at it. The song was written in a variation of the Hovland tuning (F-A-D-G-A-E). It’s in E-A-D-G-A-E, so from standard tuning, only the B string has been tuned down to an A.
This song was recorded in what has become my standard recording process. The guitars and bass were recorded using the custom break-out adapter (from Week 2). The vocals were recorded using the iPhone’s built-in mic, and all of the iPhone tracks (five guitar, one bass, and five vocal) were recorded using the MultiTrack app. The drums were recorded using my new 5-mic setup into Reaper. The new setup consists of two overhead mics in an X-Y pattern, the same AKG D112 on the kick drum, I switched to a large diaphragm condenser on the snare which is covering a bit of the rack tom, and I switched to my CAD E-200 which I have placed above the kick, over the rack and floor tom but just under the ride cymbal. I think it sounds better, but I’m still fooling with it. I’ll probably end up reading an article in Tape Op tomorrow and get a different idea for drum miking and switch it up again. (In my opinion, Tape Op is the best…recording…magazine…ever…seriously go subscribe, it’s free!) I feel like I’m always trying to get the perfect drum sound. I feel like it’s the Holy Grail of recording. Plus, I’m working in a less-than-ideal-room for drum acoustics, so it pushes me to tweak it even more. As usual, everything was mixed in Reaper.
I’ve been checking out some new (to me) websites where musicians and listeners can coexist and I think they make for a nice way to find out about new bands and musicians that you like, and for the bands to get exposure in new ways. I think it’s a really interesting time for bands and music in general, and I’m interested in finding out about the new systems for finding good indie music. For me, that role was once served by trusting the bands that came out of good city/scene-based labels and then college radio and catching live bands to a lesser extent. I’m still feeling the sites out. I’ll probably write more about them in the coming weeks. Let me know if you have any thoughts or suggestions for websites or anything else to check out. Also, I’m still working on the podcasting thing. I should have a little bit more of it figured out by the next post. Have a great week everyone.
Week 20, Dig In
Song 20 is called Dig In.
I might finally be able to get myself out from under the end-of-the-week problem. I’m going to try to work on two songs next week so that I can get back to posting songs early in the week.
In my head this song is pretty heavily influenced by Guided by Voices, but I’ll leave it to you guys to decide if it sounds obvious or if it’s just in my head. I consider myself a pretty big GBV fan, though I’m not quite up to the level of some folks I know. But I’d say that Robert Pollard and GBV have been a pretty strong influence on my songwriting for a while now. I get that their music isn’t for everyone, but in my humble opinion it’s some of the best songwriting out there. I think that if you haven’t given them a good hard listen, you owe yourself that opportunity.
The song was written in standard tuning and was entirely recorded on the iPhone. There are two mostly mirrored and hard-panned guitar tracks (they’re the same except for a couple notes and a little inflection during the verse that you can hear clearly in headphones) and a third guitar part over the chorus. The guitar was recorded using an Audio Technica ATM29HE to mic my Orange Crush 3oR and into the iPhone using the custom break-0ut cable. I just recently had my pair of ATM29HE’s returned and am thrilled to be using them again. I’d take them over an SM57 mic any day. The vocals, melodica, and percussive elements were all recorded using just the iPhone’s mic. All the tracks were recorded as usual using Harmonicdog’s MultiTrack app into the iPhone and were mixed and tweaked in Reaper.
There are a few touches of percussion throughout the track. I continue to find myself using my son’s instruments in the recordings. I can’t help it – they’re everywhere. A couple of weeks ago he was given a Melissa and Doug Band-in-a-Box. If you’re wondering who Melissa and Doug are and why they’re putting bands in boxes, then you most likely don’t have a kid right now. I’ll catch you up: They make wooden toys, puzzles, and in this case, kids’ instruments. For this song, I used everyone’s favorite three sided instrument, the triangle, and something that M&D call the “clacker.” It’s a little wooden handle with a wooden flap on either side. It does make a clack sound,;I think it’s pretty well named.
I’ve been thinking about adding a new feature to this project… like I need to create more work for myself, I know. I’ve been trying to set up podcasting for the songs. I’m a bit new to podcasting, so bear with me. Hopefully I should be live in iTunes soon. Here’s my feed, let me know if you find that it’s working or not.
Thanks,
Corey
Week 19, Island
Song number 19 is called Island.
It was a staggeringly rough week for so many. My heart goes out to everyone who’s had any loss related to the earthquake in Haiti, or for any other reason. Please consider donating to any of the organizations that are fighting for hope and life in Haiti. Here’s a link to Doctors Without Borders for a start. For my part, any proceeds this month from my Bandcamp site will be doubled and donated to Haiti relief. If you’ve considered downloading any of my songs or albums, please take this opportunity. Also, check out the newly updated Free Downloads page where I’ve added some new freebies. I’ll keep it coming.
This song was recorded in similar fashion to previous weeks’ songs, with only a change to my drum mic setup from four to five mics. I’m still working on the five mic setup, and I’ll tell you more about it once I make a couple more tweaks. All tracks were recorded into MultiTrack on my iPhone, except for drums which were recorded in Reaper. The vocals, with a nice little clipped distortion, were recorded right into the iPhone mic.
In memory of Tony Dietrich, 1948-2010.
Week 14, Call it a Day
The fourteenth song is Call it a Day. YouTube link for iPhone
I wrote the song and recorded the guitar part on Friday night and then went to the Pitt football game the next day. After several hours of yelling at in vain (they lost), I had very little of my voice left over for the next several days. On Monday night, tired of waiting for my voice to recover, I brewed a cup of tea and started recording. I wasn’t thinking about being voiceless when I wrote it, but of all of the songs I’ve written thus far, this one would be the best suited to the scratchy “She’s Got Betty Davis Eyes” version of my singing voice. Judge for yourself, but I’m thinking that it was a happy coincidence.
The song is written in standard tuning and is about as simple as any I’ve done to date. The recording is my acoustic guitar recorded in the kitchen with the Blue Mikey into my iPhone. Just one track. The scratchy vocals were recorded with the iPhone’s mic. While I was working on the vocal tracks, and the mic was on, for some reason I slammed my hand on top of my notebook which was sitting on top of the kitchen table and it sounded surprisingly good, so I went with it. I added two tracks of hand slamming and three tracks of clapping for good measure. All of the tracks were recorded on the iPhone into Harmonicdog’s MultiTrack app. I imported everything into Reaper, added a little reverb, and called it a day. I’m really happy about how it came out.
I’m heading out to Denver on Friday to visit family and attend my sister Brooke’s college graduation, which will make for another interesting adventure in “holy cow I have to record something, I only have a week, and I’m not home.” It may be later in the week, but I’m sure I’ll figure something out.
Week 11, Minimum Style
The eleventh song is called Minimum Style. YouTube link for iPhone
This song was written while fooling around with my two-year-old’s toy guitar, pictured below. Also in the picture is my Orange Crush 30R, which I’ve used for just about all of the guitar and bass tracks so far.
my kid's toy guitar
I recorded the toy guitar part while sitting in on my bathroom floor and using the Blue Mikey. The tile in the bathroom made for a nice punchy reverb to couple with the guitar. It’s my first time recording in the bathroom and that was done because my kid was playing downstairs and if he had heard me playing the guitar he probably would’ve wanted to go upstairs and play the drums.
Sometimes I get a pretty small window of opportunity to get a take down and I can’t be picky. I think that was particularly true with this song knowing that I was working with a short week. Looking ahead at the calendar I have the holidays, traveling to Colorado, coming up on a deadline for a video game soundtrack (more on this another week), and a very important University of Pittsburgh football game in a couple of weeks. So I expect that I’ll need to keep things simple for the next couple of songs. Of course when I set out to keep things simple I end up using seven guitar tracks. Go figure.
Anyway, back to the song. So there’s toy guitar throughout, then the rest of the guitar tracks were recorded on my baritone guitar. One take is clean, more bass-like, and plays through most of the song after the intro. The other two are dirty, more guitar-like tracks, and just play through the last bit of the song where it opens up. I love the baritone and wish I could use it more often. Well, good thing I have 31 songs left to write. The baritone was recorded using the custom break-out cable through the Orange as usual. I added vocals using the Blue Mikey (I think – it’s been a while now and everything is running together). Oh yeah, and I felt compelled to add whistling in the beginning for some reason, which seemed like a good idea at the time, and I think that it came out fine, but every time I hear the beginning of the song now I can’t help but think that I’m listening to Guns and Roses’ “Patience”…not that there’s anything wrong with that. And I suppose hearkening back to G n’ R isn’t an unprecedented move for me – there are probably a few people out there who can recall that my old band Hovland would evey once in a while drop a cover of “Mr. Brownstone”.
Tim Midgett of Bottomless Pit
Andy Cohen of Bottomless Pit
I added drums with the usual four mic setup the day before the tour while I had my studio setup to work on the video game. The drums were recorded in Reaper and everything else was recorded using the iPhone into MultiTrack.
Everything ended up working out pretty well. My friend Chris said that this song could have been a bit longer, and since he mentioned it I think he’s probably right. But I managed to pull the song together before heading out on tour with The Karl Hendricks Trio, and that has to count for something. We had a great time, played some good shows in Columbus and Bloomington with The Kyle Sowashes, and then capped off the tour with a killer show in Chicago opening for Bottomless Pit. It was a great crowd, all the bands really nailed their sets, and I got to see a bunch of old Pittsburgh friends who have moved out to Chicago over the years.
Here are a couple of dark photos (thanks flashless iPhone) of Bottomless Pit from the show at the Hideout in Chicago. These guys are seriously one of the best-sounding bands that I’ve ever heard live, and on a recording for that matter. I’m truly honored to share a stage with them. You should all be making plans to pick up their two records on your next vinyl shopping trip.
Thanks again to Kyle and the rest of the Sowashes for setting up the tour and for good company along the way. Thanks to everyone for coming out, and thanks to everyone here for continuing to listen.
Week 10, The Early Years
The tenth song is called The Early Years.YouTube link for iPhone
This song marks an interesting chapter in my adventure into high-tech lo-fi recording. This project has required me to establish some rules of operation to survive the weekly deadline. One of them is that when I sit down to record something, I better get a recording and be ready to live with it. I discovered the downside to that rule for this week’s song. When I tracked the guitars and bass in Sonoma Wire Works’ FourTrack app, I ended up setting the metronome to a tempo that I later couldn’t live with – it was a little too slow to bring out the intensity that I was going for. Feeling confident that there was an easy high-tech fix rather than just re-recording everything, I imported the tracks into Reaper, sped up the playback a nudge, and then rendered the mixdown to a stereo track that I then uploaded into the MultiTrack app.
Easy fix, right? Not so fast (pun only slightly intended). The problem that occurred to me, only after getting this far and leaving myself a day or so left to work on the song, was that when I imported the vocal and drum tracks back into Reaper, having been recorded at the adjusted pitch and speed, they wouldn’t match up with the original tracks and would be subject to the same playback speed adjustment and be sped up twice. Since I’m not out to make chipmunk-core (not that there’s anything wrong with that), I had to figure out a way to get out of this jam without starting over. Thank goodness for Reaper. I’ve focused mostly on the iPhone apps so far, but I have to put a solid plug in here for Reaper. The software comes with the ability to adjust just about anything that you could possibly think of. To the benefit of my song, that includes the ability to change the rate of speed for any track in your project with or without adjusting the pitch. That was all that I needed. I just brought the playback speed setting back to zero and adjusted the original bass and guitar tracks up to the faster rate of speed (1.086 to be exact). That left me with a little more work to do to get the tracks aligned properly and I was set.
With all of that said, I think the song ended up sounding pretty good. Sure, I would probably go back and re-record a lot of it, but that’s the fun of this project. There’s no time to go back and mess with things because I have another song to do.
The song is just a quick little rock number. There are two identical guitar tracks, a third guitar track for the solo, a bass track, a drum track, and one vocal track. The guitar and bass tracks were recorded as usual with the custom break-out cable. For the drums, I wanted to keep it really simple and give the Blue Mikey another test on live drums. This time I located the Mikey above the kit and out in front only about two or three feet. This resulted in some clipping, but I worked with it for this song and beefed up the drums using a simulated tube compressor plug-in on the back end. You can hear what I’m talking about around the 1:10 minute mark where the music fades out and the drums are left with a weird little fill before the guitar solo comes in. I was having a lot of fun with the fill and the solo for this song, I hope that comes through, but I don’t imagine that Yngwie Malmsteen and Neil Peart will be very impressed. I recorded the vocals using the iPhone mic, and I purposely clipped the mic and got a nice little bit of distortion on the vocals.
This is the week that I’m going on a quick tour with The Karl Hendricks Trio. We’ll be playing Thursday the 12th in Columbus, OH at the Treehouse; Friday the 13th at the Bishop Bar in Bloomington, IN; and on Saturday the 14th at the Hideout in Chicago, IL with Bottomless Pit (ex Silkworm and Seam). We have the distinct pleasure playing all of these shows with the great Columbus band, The Kyle Sowashes. It remains to be seen if I’ll find a way to get next week’s song ready before the trip or how it will come together, but somehow I’ll get a song up at some point next week.
Week 9, Solace
The ninth song is called Solace. YouTube link for iPhone
Officially the longest song so far – it also has the fewest lyrics coming in at three lines.
I’ve been listening to a lot of Seam lately, and though this song probably sounds a little bit more like a Bedhead or The New Year song, I would attribute it to my recent Seam obsession. If you’re not already a fan of Seam, Bedhead, or The New Year, then I would recommend checking them out. Seam and Bedhead have been defunct for a good while, but The New Year is still alive, well, and cutting records.
Speaking of Seam, I have a couple degrees of separation from Seam’s last drummer, Chris Manfrin. Chris is my wife’s second cousin, and happens to be the current drummer in Bottomless Pit. Bottomless Pit is the completely amazing band of former Silkworm frontmen Andy Cohen and Tim Midgett. Chris and I have crossed paths as Bottomless Pit and the Karl Hedricks Trio have played several shows together here in Pittsburgh and on the road. The reason I bring it up is because the Trio will be playing a show with Bottomless Pit in Chicago in a couple of weeks at the Hideout on November 14. We’ll also be playing in Bloomington, IN on the 13th, Columbus, OH on the 12th, and right here in Pittsburgh this Thursday. The Kyle Sowashes, another fantastic band, are kind enough to play all of these shows with us (and book them, thanks Kyle). I hope to catch up with some of my Pittsburgh friends at Howler’s for this week’s show, and would love to see anyone else who is in reasonable proximity to the other shows.
Enough about that stuff, here’s the deal with the song:
It gets pretty huge-sounding thanks to seven guitar tracks. The vocal tracks and the three main guitar tracks were recorded into the iPhone using the Blue Mikey. I really wanted to capture the clean tone of my Fender Twin – you can hear that the Mikey captured the Twin + Telecaster sound pretty well as illustrated in the first section of the song. I added a couple more guitar tracks using my Rode NTK tube condenser straight into the laptop since I already had everything set up to record the drums. The next day I added a couple more guitar tracks and the bass track using the custom break-out cable (from Week 2) to mic my Orange practice amp. I wanted a nice full drum sound for this song, so I went back to the four mic arrangement from weeks 4 through 7 but with the Rode NTK out in front of the drum set. I like how they ended up sounding, and for once I’m not miserable about my performance (I don’t fancy myself a drummer). I also managed to work in another DopplerPad track. I created a 16-beat loop which I wanted to sit lightly in the mix and then imported it into Reaper. The loop plays throughout the song, but you can only really hear it during the first and last sections. DopplerPad is really a great iPhone app. I’m looking forward to what they have planned for the next update. I used the fantastic MultiTrack iPhone app again to record everything with the exception of the drums and a couple guitar tracks.
Anyway, that’s about it for this week. Don’t forget to come out and see Bottomless Pit, The Kyle Sowashes, and The Karl Hendricks Trio on our tiny whirlwind tour (which is about the right size for us dudes with kids).
Week 8, Glitter and Stone
The eighth song out is called Glitter and Stone. YouTube link for iPhone
This was a fun one.
It’s another song written in the good old standard tuning. It’s a simple song and I kept it pretty simple. There is one guitar track throughout, and then a second guitar track comes in at the first break. The two guitar tracks and the bass track were recorded onto the iPhone using the custom break-out cable and an Audix dynamic mic. I wanted a bigger drum sound for this song so I went back to recording the drums straight into Reaper on the laptop. I found myself backed against the wall again this week, having not been able to get the drum takes in by Sunday evening, so I had to throw together a three-mic setup using one Audio Technica overhead mic, the AKG D112 on the kick drum, and I moved the Rode NTK tube condenser out about four feet in front of the kit just a little higher than the top of the kick. I think the drums ended up sounding all right considering the time crunch. There are two vocal tracks, recorded using just the iPhone’s internal mic.
Last week, Fred asked if I used a pop filter when I use the iPhone mic to record vocals. I don’t, even though I have a perfectly expensive Stedman pop filter collecting dust upstairs. It took some trial and error though to avoid the air-related issues that are pretty exaggerated when you sing straight into the iPhone like you would a normal dynamic mic. The trick is to treat the mic the way it was made to work: I usually hold the phone in my hand to one side of my face with the mic pointing toward my voice about six inches away. I try to play around with it and it’s tricky to make sure that you keep a consistent location throughout. The mic is a really sensitive condenser that seems to maintain a good amount of gain at around a foot or so. I’ve also had good results holding the phone around my chin pointing up toward my mouth. It’s the same concept, but a little harder to train yourself to not point your mouth down toward the mic.
All of the tracks minus the drums were again recorded on the iPhone using the MultiTrack iPhone app. It’s a very stable 16-track recorder developed by Harmonicdog. As always, everything was mixed and tweaked using Reaper.
I hope everyone has a fantastic Halloween. No fancy parties for me this year. I’ll be happily hanging with the wife and the two-year-old who has a perfectly good elephant costume…we’ll see if he agrees to wear it, it’s day-to-day. I may be required to be an elephant too.
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- daveb: sorry for missing this. fell asleep at 5:30 and slept through my alarm. but I watched some of the video this...
- Paul: Really cool stuff! I wish I would have followed you from the beginning, but I am really enjoying going back in...
- Kord Taylor: Have you done any stuff with Looptastic yet? Cool site.
- project52: Thanks Dale. Yeah, the drums were a little tough on this one. I ran out of time, otherwise I...
- Dale Markham: Really good one here, Cory. Gotta be kinda tough get the odd time signature parts to sync for the...
