I HAVE been working on things

I have been working feverishly to learn how to make every coffee drink under the sun this week, and have also been polishing my SAT-taking skills, but in my free time I HAVE done some great editing work on some of the songs on the album. I spent a big block of time working on the drums and bass for Sing So Loud, the song that is in 5-4. The drums came out so so well, but I needed to edit a couple of takes together (the engineer laid out the session so that each take was NEXT to the one before instead of creating new playlists. I know this is faster for him, but it made it really hard for me to cut and paste between drum tracks!).
I'm happy with the drums now, but am having trouble getting the bass to be an appropriate mix of pop, funk, and background. As a bass player, sometimes I want it to be fancier than it should...

ALSO, I got in touch with my friend Sarah who is a fabulous designer, and is going to help me with the icon/t-shirt/web design for the project. The goal for the T-shirts, since they are going to BE the album art, is for them to be informative, but also something people really want to wear. Any suggestions? Ideas? Know of a great deal on awesome bulk t-shirts?

In other news, there really IS a blizzard in New York tonight. It has been threatening to blizzard for days and days, but the snow gods have finally delivered, and there is about a foot of snow piled on top of everything outside. I was walking to work at 6 this morning, and found the city quite peaceful (if a little chilly).

Sooner,
Mara

How it's sounding WITH bass

SO!
I have actually figured out both the technology to record the bass AND the technology to upload songs successfully. For the sake of comparison I'm uploading the same section of Gotta Get Out, but with bass today. See what you think - this is without any effects or compression or fanciness. Still, I think it sounds lots cooler.
I'm about to add bass to a couple of other songs as well - it took 2 hours to do Gotta Get Out, but I recorded AND edited the bass part, so now it's all fixed and perfect and ready to go. So if you don't like it, keep it to yourself!

NEW SAMPLE of GOTTA GET OUT HERE.

note: if you are listening on the crappy speakers that come on your laptop, you may not be able to hear the bass. Try headphones, earphones, fancy speakers, or blasting it in your car.

See ya soon!

How it's sounding!

I'm hoping this works.
I'm feeling particularly technologically inadequate today, yet I KNOW that somewhere on the Internet, there is a sample of one of my songs for you to hear.

You should be able to hear it if you click here.
Here's the info on it:
This is a sample of Gotta Get Out, one of the new songs I recorded last week. What you hear:
Drums (final version)
3 guitars (probably not final versions)
vocals (DEFINITELY not final version)
Piano (final version).
If it's not the final version of something, that means I'm planning to edit, redo, or replace that sound with something else. Just thought you'd all like to know that while I'm not blogging every day, I'm WORKING on things!

My plan tomorrow is to add bass to lots of tracks. I'll start with this one and upload it so you can hear the difference!

Enjoy,
Mara

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!

Happy Wednesday!

So. Life got a little crazy on Monday, and my scheduled got twisted around. I went to Whole Foods for my first day of work to find out that I couldn't start until after my orientation, which was scheduled for Wednesday (that's today). Realizing that it would mean I would not be able to make the trip to DC over the weekend to rehearse, I quickly called Liz and Nancy who were super sweet and flexible, and I drove to DC to meet them Monday night instead!
Good news on the CD front: That meant I had 8 hours of car time to listen to my demos and start making notes about tempos and possible backing vocals. I also started listening to my favorite CDs to pick out sounds I want to include on my album.

Conclusion: My favorite CD of all time (right now) is Whitechocolatespaceegg by Liz Phair.

NOW I'm going to Whole Foods.
Wish me luck!

Sundays are hard

Today slipped away. I slept in (had a great show last night and then dinner with my DAD, who was in town, but didn't get home until 1:30) and then got swallowed by errands. And I got convinced to go to yoga and grocery shopping. So, with a house full of delicious food, a lengthened spine, and a heavy heart, I report that I did NOT do any of my music homework today. Tomorrow I start working at Whole Foods, which I'm REALLY excited about, both because I'll get to learn a ton about beer, coffee, and cheese, and because it has been more than 6 months since I have made money doing anything but playing music. It will be nice to be able to go out to dinner once in a while.
TOMORROW, I will get lots done. Don't worry.
And today I DID confirm that I WILL be recording all day on Friday. With Ashley.
Here's to getting more done tomorrow...

Two days worth of posts. Oops.

After making a big promise to my mailing list about how I'm going to blog every day, I missed a day yesterday. I blame PMS. It's a very difficult 2 weeks of every month for me. But yesterday I did lots of work practicing my new material since I have a show tonight. Still haven't learned all the words to my new songs, but hopefully I can muddle through.

TODAY the big news is that I finally know my schedule for next week, and it WILL include studio time at Gardentone on Friday! I'm super excited. I have lots of work to do now to prepare - have to get all of the tempos for the songs set, and make sure I know all of the forms. Once the drums are laid down, it will be much more difficult to change my mind.

OK, time to memorize words!