Recording diary, day four: It's All Causes and Horrible Deaths.
This entry represents a bit of catch-up on my part; thanks to things getting hectic as all, well, heck, I've managed to let the last two recording dates pass without my usual efforts at faithful chronicling. Please forgive anything I may happen to mistakenly miss. I'm only human, after all, and that puts certain limits on my recall of events. And by 'certain limits' I mean 'sometimes I forget where I left my pants', which wouldn't be so problematic if it didn't happen, say, at the amusement park.
In preparation for the recording session, I had imported the fabulous Amy 'The Fiddler' McNally, my go-to girl of choice when it comes to funky far-out filky fiddling. Plus it meant that we got to spend a lot of time together without being at a convention, which was just fantastic. Of course, things aren't actually believable for me unless they're complicated to some insane degree by outside forces, so of course, this particular recording session took place in the middle of my doing some pretty heavy-duty revisions on my first novel prepatory to submitting it for sale. (In case you somehow missed the memo, the book got done, I got signed by a real literary agent, and the book got sold. It's been a hectic year around these parts.)
With Amy in town and our next few tracks ready for attack, we couldn't cancel the recording session. That would have just been silly. So instead, we arranged for a dinner party (because that's always more mellow than recording on its own), packing the Kwinns and Chris into the house with us while we got down to business. (Also in case: if you've forgotten what recording is like for this particular crowd of lunatics, you may want to rewind to day three and give yourself a quick refresher course. And then you may want to run. Very far, very fast.) Amy and I would come out first, and all the rest would descend from there. Like locusts.
I like locusts.
The participants:
* Me, on lead vocals and musical direction.
* Jeff 'Heavy-Metal Squid' Bohnhoff, on sound engineering and eventual world domination.
* Amy 'Kitten-Eating Cricket' McNally, on fiddle and perkiness.
Also participating, if in a somewhat more behind-the-scenes way:
* Paul Kwinn, on being, well, Paul Kwinn.
* Beckett Gladney, on parenting twins and still speaking English.
* Casey and Riley Kwinn, on being small boys.
* Maya Bohnhoff, on other recording projects and being cool.
* Kristine Bohnhoff, on avoiding us all as much as possible.
* Amanda Bohnhoff, on being possessed by demonic Care Bears.
* Chris Mangum, on serenity.
The itinerary for the day:
* Record lead vocals for 'Oh, Michelle' (me).
* Record fiddle line for 'Oh, Michelle' (Amy).
* Record lead vocals for 'Causes and Effects' (me).
* Record fiddle line for 'Bimbo On the Cover of My Book' (Amy, not my project).
Unlike the 'all about me' theme of our last recording date, this seemed like a nice, balanced docket, and one that allowed time for me to stop, breathe, and stop wanting to kill everyone in the house to bury my shame. I like the Bohnhoffs. Also, they have me pretty reliably out-numbered. So there was really no good reason to go around slaughtering them all -- and besides, killing them would have canceled the party.
For once, you're going to be spared the exciting story of exactly how I got to Jeff and Maya's place, largely because I've completely forgotten how I -- we, rather -- got to Jeff and Maya's place. I mean, there are really only two viable routes -- either we took the BART to Fremont and Jeff picked us up, or Chris gave us a ride -- and I'm inclined to think that it was the second, because I think I'd remember navigating Amy and all her Amy-stuff on the BART train, but who knows? Chris or Amy may know. I, however, do not know, and so instead of giving you a long, rambling description of our trip, I'm giving you a long, rambling description of our total lack of a trip. Feel special.
Amy had never been to Mystic Fig/chez Bohnhoff before, and had to be greeted with the full studio tour. This didn't take particularly long, largely because Amy is one of the most mellow people on God's green Earth, and will thus cheerfully allow herself to be given a guided tour of damn near anything. I mean, she might look marginally suspicious if I said I wanted to give her a guided tour of a haunted cornfield, but she'd calm right down once I assured her that I was carrying a machete. She's just that sort of awesome. Jeff got the equipment ready for us, ran the scratch tracks for 'Oh, Michelle' a few times to let us both get a feel for how things were going to go, and tossed me into the booth to have a nice party with the nice microphone. Hello, the booth. Didja miss me?
Blah blah blah, little soundproofed black box in the garage. Blah blah blah, checking my levels. Blah blah blah, waiting several weeks and going through life-changing stresses after a recording session really does a lot to blur the little details, like 'funny things Jeff may have said during the process of getting the microphone set up properly.' Just insert your own catchy one-liners and endearing, Seanan-esque witticisms here, okay? Because really, right now, I got nothin'.
'Oh, Michelle' is, at its heart, a song about being my friend. Really, it's a song about the fact that being my friend means that one day, I am going to hand you a stick, point you at the recently-fallen meteorite that just buried itself in Farmer McGregor's field, and say 'hey, go see what that thing over there is.' It's a song about a chest cold that Michelle Dockrey had once. And it's a song about the fact that, at the end of the day, she's probably one of my best friends in this world, which means that no horrible demise is too good for her. (It's one of two songs I've written about loving Vixy dearly. The other, 'Washington Rose', is prettier and a lot more sweet, but I really feel that 'Oh, Michelle' is the more representative of our relationship. Which probably says something scary, but I try not to think about it too hard.)
Jeff likes to do multiple end-to-end takes of any given song. I appreciate this tendency, because it means that once I have my 'safe' tracks, I can get really over-the-top without worrying that I'm somehow going to blow the entire session. This is particularly useful on songs like 'Oh, Michelle', where a straight lyrical approach would be just plain wrong. I mean, you can't be sweet and lilting when you're delivering lines like 'it was the protoplasmic prison of that foul invading race' and 'just stay out of the cornfield, there's a killer on the loose.' Well. I suppose you could, but it probably shouldn't be happening on this particular album.
My vocal line for 'Oh, Michelle' went down like butter, or cake, or something else that people imply is easy without any real consideration for actual innate difficulty levels. (Why do people say something that was easy was 'a piece of cake', anyway? Baking a good cake is hard, especially if you're not using boxed cake mix. This is one of those statements that fails to make any sort of coherent sense. Much like this recording diary.)
Jeff and I reviewed my vocals, comping together a quick functional track for Amy to work against, and then it was time for Amy to get started. Now, one of the things Amy was going to be working on was actually a fiddle track for Jeff and Maya's own use; consequentially, she was half on-the-clock (I pay for recording time) and half off-the-clock (Jeff wasn't going to pay himself for recording time). We decided that it was better to slightly complicate our math and not need to reset the booth three times; Amy would go straight from 'Oh, Michelle' to 'Bimbo', and we'd just work it all out afterwards. Jeff went to reset the booth for fiddle playing goodness, while Amy whipped up her fiddle and started to get warmed up.
Part of our goal with bringing Amy to the studio involved re-creating the fiddle line she put on 'Oh, Michelle' at Conterpoint. Bearing this in mind, we'd sent Jeff a copy of the live recording to work against for his arrangement. Because Amy is very varied in her approach to songs, she needed to listen to that recording to remind herself what she was supposed to be doing. Because Amy is also very methodical in her approach to recording, she then started playing against the MP3 to remind herself of where the notes went. This was somewhat distressing to me, as I hadn't been in the room when they decided to do this; from my perspective in the kitchen, my vocal line suddenly went TOTALLY INSANE, going from chipper, sufficiently-oxygenated studio tones to the breathless hysteria of 'end of a live show.' I ran back into the studio. Jeff reassured me that he hadn't turned the 'suck' knob up to eleven, and I relaxed, leaving them to their work.
Maya was in the living room, and I joined her to talk about the business side of the writing world for a bit while Jeff put Amy through her paces. The sound proofing on the garage is really good. Despite the volume I know her fiddle can achieve, we only heard her when Jeff turned the speakers on. All too soon, it was time to summon me back to the booth for my second vocal line of the day. Cocky, I answered the call, certain that I could handle it.
Sometimes I'm a moron.
'Causes and Effects' is a sad, sweet, semi-autobiographical song about growing up geeky, and what it means to be an outcast. It's also breathy, slow, and generally the sort of thing that isn't easy for me to sing. Just because I can write 'em, that doesn't mean I can automatically perform 'em to the best of their potential. Jeff's never heard me get frustrated in the recording booth before. That's okay, because I've never heard him get frustrated at the mixing board before. After about fifteen takes, we agreed to stop and cobble together a guide vocal for me to practice against, and then have me record my real lead vocal when Vixy came to visit and record. It was honestly the best we were going to do, because we were all too frazzled to continue.
An invasion had occurred while I was in the booth, and I emerged into a world filled with people I adore. Many hugs were exchanged before Paul was dispatched to the grocery store for the last of our dinner supplies, including ice cream to go with our strawberry shortcake. (Chris did drive us to the house! I made him buy the biscuits for the shortcake because he's a food geek who doesn't like settling for Sara Lee! I love it when little things trigger my memory.)
We had barbecue for dinner and strawberry shortcake for dessert, and Paul, Amy, Maya and I did a few runs at 'Fox Hunt' as preparation for my BayCon concert set. Then we all sat around and watched Buckaroo Banzai, which I had never seen -- thrill as Jeff continues my cinematic education! And then it was time to go.
The Kwinns left for home. Chris poured Amy and I into the car, leaving the Bohnhoffs to have a few hours of peace. We didn't accomplish as much as we'd hoped, but we still got solidly started on two more songs, bringing us that much closer to 'done'.
Not bad, for a day's work.
In preparation for the recording session, I had imported the fabulous Amy 'The Fiddler' McNally, my go-to girl of choice when it comes to funky far-out filky fiddling. Plus it meant that we got to spend a lot of time together without being at a convention, which was just fantastic. Of course, things aren't actually believable for me unless they're complicated to some insane degree by outside forces, so of course, this particular recording session took place in the middle of my doing some pretty heavy-duty revisions on my first novel prepatory to submitting it for sale. (In case you somehow missed the memo, the book got done, I got signed by a real literary agent, and the book got sold. It's been a hectic year around these parts.)
With Amy in town and our next few tracks ready for attack, we couldn't cancel the recording session. That would have just been silly. So instead, we arranged for a dinner party (because that's always more mellow than recording on its own), packing the Kwinns and Chris into the house with us while we got down to business. (Also in case: if you've forgotten what recording is like for this particular crowd of lunatics, you may want to rewind to day three and give yourself a quick refresher course. And then you may want to run. Very far, very fast.) Amy and I would come out first, and all the rest would descend from there. Like locusts.
I like locusts.
The participants:
* Me, on lead vocals and musical direction.
* Jeff 'Heavy-Metal Squid' Bohnhoff, on sound engineering and eventual world domination.
* Amy 'Kitten-Eating Cricket' McNally, on fiddle and perkiness.
Also participating, if in a somewhat more behind-the-scenes way:
* Paul Kwinn, on being, well, Paul Kwinn.
* Beckett Gladney, on parenting twins and still speaking English.
* Casey and Riley Kwinn, on being small boys.
* Maya Bohnhoff, on other recording projects and being cool.
* Kristine Bohnhoff, on avoiding us all as much as possible.
* Amanda Bohnhoff, on being possessed by demonic Care Bears.
* Chris Mangum, on serenity.
The itinerary for the day:
* Record lead vocals for 'Oh, Michelle' (me).
* Record fiddle line for 'Oh, Michelle' (Amy).
* Record lead vocals for 'Causes and Effects' (me).
* Record fiddle line for 'Bimbo On the Cover of My Book' (Amy, not my project).
Unlike the 'all about me' theme of our last recording date, this seemed like a nice, balanced docket, and one that allowed time for me to stop, breathe, and stop wanting to kill everyone in the house to bury my shame. I like the Bohnhoffs. Also, they have me pretty reliably out-numbered. So there was really no good reason to go around slaughtering them all -- and besides, killing them would have canceled the party.
For once, you're going to be spared the exciting story of exactly how I got to Jeff and Maya's place, largely because I've completely forgotten how I -- we, rather -- got to Jeff and Maya's place. I mean, there are really only two viable routes -- either we took the BART to Fremont and Jeff picked us up, or Chris gave us a ride -- and I'm inclined to think that it was the second, because I think I'd remember navigating Amy and all her Amy-stuff on the BART train, but who knows? Chris or Amy may know. I, however, do not know, and so instead of giving you a long, rambling description of our trip, I'm giving you a long, rambling description of our total lack of a trip. Feel special.
Amy had never been to Mystic Fig/chez Bohnhoff before, and had to be greeted with the full studio tour. This didn't take particularly long, largely because Amy is one of the most mellow people on God's green Earth, and will thus cheerfully allow herself to be given a guided tour of damn near anything. I mean, she might look marginally suspicious if I said I wanted to give her a guided tour of a haunted cornfield, but she'd calm right down once I assured her that I was carrying a machete. She's just that sort of awesome. Jeff got the equipment ready for us, ran the scratch tracks for 'Oh, Michelle' a few times to let us both get a feel for how things were going to go, and tossed me into the booth to have a nice party with the nice microphone. Hello, the booth. Didja miss me?
Blah blah blah, little soundproofed black box in the garage. Blah blah blah, checking my levels. Blah blah blah, waiting several weeks and going through life-changing stresses after a recording session really does a lot to blur the little details, like 'funny things Jeff may have said during the process of getting the microphone set up properly.' Just insert your own catchy one-liners and endearing, Seanan-esque witticisms here, okay? Because really, right now, I got nothin'.
'Oh, Michelle' is, at its heart, a song about being my friend. Really, it's a song about the fact that being my friend means that one day, I am going to hand you a stick, point you at the recently-fallen meteorite that just buried itself in Farmer McGregor's field, and say 'hey, go see what that thing over there is.' It's a song about a chest cold that Michelle Dockrey had once. And it's a song about the fact that, at the end of the day, she's probably one of my best friends in this world, which means that no horrible demise is too good for her. (It's one of two songs I've written about loving Vixy dearly. The other, 'Washington Rose', is prettier and a lot more sweet, but I really feel that 'Oh, Michelle' is the more representative of our relationship. Which probably says something scary, but I try not to think about it too hard.)
Jeff likes to do multiple end-to-end takes of any given song. I appreciate this tendency, because it means that once I have my 'safe' tracks, I can get really over-the-top without worrying that I'm somehow going to blow the entire session. This is particularly useful on songs like 'Oh, Michelle', where a straight lyrical approach would be just plain wrong. I mean, you can't be sweet and lilting when you're delivering lines like 'it was the protoplasmic prison of that foul invading race' and 'just stay out of the cornfield, there's a killer on the loose.' Well. I suppose you could, but it probably shouldn't be happening on this particular album.
My vocal line for 'Oh, Michelle' went down like butter, or cake, or something else that people imply is easy without any real consideration for actual innate difficulty levels. (Why do people say something that was easy was 'a piece of cake', anyway? Baking a good cake is hard, especially if you're not using boxed cake mix. This is one of those statements that fails to make any sort of coherent sense. Much like this recording diary.)
Jeff and I reviewed my vocals, comping together a quick functional track for Amy to work against, and then it was time for Amy to get started. Now, one of the things Amy was going to be working on was actually a fiddle track for Jeff and Maya's own use; consequentially, she was half on-the-clock (I pay for recording time) and half off-the-clock (Jeff wasn't going to pay himself for recording time). We decided that it was better to slightly complicate our math and not need to reset the booth three times; Amy would go straight from 'Oh, Michelle' to 'Bimbo', and we'd just work it all out afterwards. Jeff went to reset the booth for fiddle playing goodness, while Amy whipped up her fiddle and started to get warmed up.
Part of our goal with bringing Amy to the studio involved re-creating the fiddle line she put on 'Oh, Michelle' at Conterpoint. Bearing this in mind, we'd sent Jeff a copy of the live recording to work against for his arrangement. Because Amy is very varied in her approach to songs, she needed to listen to that recording to remind herself what she was supposed to be doing. Because Amy is also very methodical in her approach to recording, she then started playing against the MP3 to remind herself of where the notes went. This was somewhat distressing to me, as I hadn't been in the room when they decided to do this; from my perspective in the kitchen, my vocal line suddenly went TOTALLY INSANE, going from chipper, sufficiently-oxygenated studio tones to the breathless hysteria of 'end of a live show.' I ran back into the studio. Jeff reassured me that he hadn't turned the 'suck' knob up to eleven, and I relaxed, leaving them to their work.
Maya was in the living room, and I joined her to talk about the business side of the writing world for a bit while Jeff put Amy through her paces. The sound proofing on the garage is really good. Despite the volume I know her fiddle can achieve, we only heard her when Jeff turned the speakers on. All too soon, it was time to summon me back to the booth for my second vocal line of the day. Cocky, I answered the call, certain that I could handle it.
Sometimes I'm a moron.
'Causes and Effects' is a sad, sweet, semi-autobiographical song about growing up geeky, and what it means to be an outcast. It's also breathy, slow, and generally the sort of thing that isn't easy for me to sing. Just because I can write 'em, that doesn't mean I can automatically perform 'em to the best of their potential. Jeff's never heard me get frustrated in the recording booth before. That's okay, because I've never heard him get frustrated at the mixing board before. After about fifteen takes, we agreed to stop and cobble together a guide vocal for me to practice against, and then have me record my real lead vocal when Vixy came to visit and record. It was honestly the best we were going to do, because we were all too frazzled to continue.
An invasion had occurred while I was in the booth, and I emerged into a world filled with people I adore. Many hugs were exchanged before Paul was dispatched to the grocery store for the last of our dinner supplies, including ice cream to go with our strawberry shortcake. (Chris did drive us to the house! I made him buy the biscuits for the shortcake because he's a food geek who doesn't like settling for Sara Lee! I love it when little things trigger my memory.)
We had barbecue for dinner and strawberry shortcake for dessert, and Paul, Amy, Maya and I did a few runs at 'Fox Hunt' as preparation for my BayCon concert set. Then we all sat around and watched Buckaroo Banzai, which I had never seen -- thrill as Jeff continues my cinematic education! And then it was time to go.
The Kwinns left for home. Chris poured Amy and I into the car, leaving the Bohnhoffs to have a few hours of peace. We didn't accomplish as much as we'd hoped, but we still got solidly started on two more songs, bringing us that much closer to 'done'.
Not bad, for a day's work.