Xfusion update #5
OK...I've changed the update reference numbers to something that make sense...sequential...moving on:
Today was a very interesting day. Having gotten 'This Place, This Time' and 'Waking Up' in the can, we went into today knowing we had to complete 'Disease', 'Sand' and 'Shell Shock'. Shawn and I arrived at 11 to set up some surprises and double check levels. Chris arrived shortly thereafter and we dived into 'Disease' without waiting for Jerry. Jerry showed up 2 minutes into the tune and joined right in.
Our approach today was a little different. Yesterday we'd play then listen...but when you've got songs this long it can take a lot of time and burn the energy, so we decided to do two takes, move on to the next tune, rinse and repeat. Only when we had a couple of takes of each song down would we go back and see what we needed to do. So we did two takes of 'Disease', moved on to two takes of 'Sand', then dove into 'Shell Shock' when our approach changed again.
Since 'Shock' is such a massive piece we were able to analyse each section and fix as we went, so when we got to the end, we were officially done (minus some marching snare stuff). Then we went back to 'Disease'. Now the second take of 'Disease' was great except for one fill in the solo and the very ending drum fill. So we fixed the solo bit by overdubbing and to fix the ending we literally cut it off of the first take and replaced the bad ending with the good one. Presto!
We listened back to 'Sand' and deemed that the second take was a keeper. And in doing so realized that the bulk of the drum recording was finished. So we set up for an experiment. 'Shock' begins and ends with a marching snare, but Jeff couldn't decide which of his 4 snares to use. So we decided that we would build them up from one snare to all four, giving the impression of a group getting larger (and then smaller on the fade out). So we laid each snare drum down and when he finished the final snare on the outro to the piece, Jeff's work on this album was finally complete. He had worked extremely hard over these two days and his work paid off by giving us a solid foundation to build this album from.
For the techie in me, I intend to document who used what kind of instruments on what songs, so here's Jeff's list of hardware:
Jeff uses an all maple professional grade studio set of drums by Tama called Art Starswith the following pieces:
22" kick
14" maple snare
8" tom
10" tom
12" tom
13" tom
16" tom
15" Zildjian New Beat high hat
10" (custom) Zildjian 'ding'
22" Zildjian flat top ride
22" Zildjian heavy ride
17" Paste crash
18" Zildjian crash
14" Han Chi china crash
10" Zildjian splash
12" Paste splash
During the intro of 'Sand' he used a Rhythm Tech Studio shaker
During the intros and outros of 'Shell Shock' he used the following snares in the following order (reverse order at the end):
14" Concert marching snare
15" Tama snare
14" Tama maple snare (used as the main snare on the rest of the album)
13" Tama chrome piccolo snare.
Oh, the 'surprise' that Shawn and I devised was that Shawn set up his webcam and recorded the entire session today in time lapse. Condensing 7 hours into just over 2 minutes. I'll have it up on YouTube on Tuesday, and link it back here in the next update.
Next up: Jerry lays the bass...Tuesday night
Today was a very interesting day. Having gotten 'This Place, This Time' and 'Waking Up' in the can, we went into today knowing we had to complete 'Disease', 'Sand' and 'Shell Shock'. Shawn and I arrived at 11 to set up some surprises and double check levels. Chris arrived shortly thereafter and we dived into 'Disease' without waiting for Jerry. Jerry showed up 2 minutes into the tune and joined right in.
Our approach today was a little different. Yesterday we'd play then listen...but when you've got songs this long it can take a lot of time and burn the energy, so we decided to do two takes, move on to the next tune, rinse and repeat. Only when we had a couple of takes of each song down would we go back and see what we needed to do. So we did two takes of 'Disease', moved on to two takes of 'Sand', then dove into 'Shell Shock' when our approach changed again.
Since 'Shock' is such a massive piece we were able to analyse each section and fix as we went, so when we got to the end, we were officially done (minus some marching snare stuff). Then we went back to 'Disease'. Now the second take of 'Disease' was great except for one fill in the solo and the very ending drum fill. So we fixed the solo bit by overdubbing and to fix the ending we literally cut it off of the first take and replaced the bad ending with the good one. Presto!
We listened back to 'Sand' and deemed that the second take was a keeper. And in doing so realized that the bulk of the drum recording was finished. So we set up for an experiment. 'Shock' begins and ends with a marching snare, but Jeff couldn't decide which of his 4 snares to use. So we decided that we would build them up from one snare to all four, giving the impression of a group getting larger (and then smaller on the fade out). So we laid each snare drum down and when he finished the final snare on the outro to the piece, Jeff's work on this album was finally complete. He had worked extremely hard over these two days and his work paid off by giving us a solid foundation to build this album from.
For the techie in me, I intend to document who used what kind of instruments on what songs, so here's Jeff's list of hardware:
Jeff uses an all maple professional grade studio set of drums by Tama called Art Starswith the following pieces:
22" kick
14" maple snare
8" tom
10" tom
12" tom
13" tom
16" tom
15" Zildjian New Beat high hat
10" (custom) Zildjian 'ding'
22" Zildjian flat top ride
22" Zildjian heavy ride
17" Paste crash
18" Zildjian crash
14" Han Chi china crash
10" Zildjian splash
12" Paste splash
During the intro of 'Sand' he used a Rhythm Tech Studio shaker
During the intros and outros of 'Shell Shock' he used the following snares in the following order (reverse order at the end):
14" Concert marching snare
15" Tama snare
14" Tama maple snare (used as the main snare on the rest of the album)
13" Tama chrome piccolo snare.
Oh, the 'surprise' that Shawn and I devised was that Shawn set up his webcam and recorded the entire session today in time lapse. Condensing 7 hours into just over 2 minutes. I'll have it up on YouTube on Tuesday, and link it back here in the next update.
Next up: Jerry lays the bass...Tuesday night