Recording in the studio. Mmmm....

FINALLY, after years of writing, months of planning, and weeks of arranging, Ashley Baier and I headed to the studio today to record drums and extra whatnots.
We headed to Gardentone at 11:30 with a full bag of bagels and snacks and OJ, and a car full of drums and guitars. I picked Ashely up at her place, we loaded her gear into the car, and navigated our way to Williamsburg to the studio.



Steve Wall met us at the studio and immediately we started setting up drums and mics. Believe it or not, this part of the day took about 2 hours, and that was an extremely fast setup. Ashley used a good deal of Steve's drum set which was already in the studio with mics already mostly arranged. Still, we had to get everything set perfectly, put up sound barriers in the right places, and also make sure that Ashley could see me through the window into the control room.



While Ashley and I both made sure we looked superfly for our day at the studio, it only took about 10 minutes of working to give us both earphone hair, one of the many dangers of recording. Of course, at some point early on, I had to change out of my stylish shoes and into my comfy comfy sandals...


Once we had everything set up, we started going down our list of songs with drums. We had rehearsed each song approximately 2 times together, and Ashley nailed them ALL. I wish you could have heard how great she was. The songs have such energy and drive now - I'm super excited. While we recorded the drums, we also recorded guitar and vocals. Since we were doing both at the same time, we couldn't use acoustic guitar, so we focused on electric guitar tracks. Here I am enjoying Steve's fancy new Fender.



We had a break for dinner at 6:30, then back to work. Around 10pm our friend, Melissa Li came by (WITH homemade sushi!), providing a much-needed morale boost as we started getting a little goofy. Once we finished drum tracks, we started in on some other extras. We took advantage of Steve's beautiful piano and I started tracking a brand new song. Ashley did some extra percussion parts, and I had some fun with amps and feedback. About 11:30pm, we were exhausted and even more goofy, and decided to pack up for the day.



I drove Ashley and Melissa home, came home myself, walked the dog, and went to SLEEP. As soon as I have a chance to go through the tracks, I'll post a sample of one or two of the songs as they currently sound (probably on my website). For NOW, enjoy the pictures!