whirlwind ends, wait begins

well, the recording sessions with TOONICE are now officially completed.  we wrapped up recording all the necessary odds and ends just yesterday.  what a whirlwind time that had us riding the fine line between getting the best results in the cheapest (ie: fastest) way possible.

session #2 had us bring out our EB3 (since Amadeus was in need of a setup and some TLC- see this post) and our Oscar Schmidt Electric-Acoustic (for one track only).  all our tracks were recorded directly out of our Ampeg with some pretty cool results.  to sum up the sound we got … simply we’d call it “very beefy”.  again, guitar, bass and drums were recorded all at once live off the floor with much success and little time wasting. it was a great experience and exercise that had us concentrating on the finer points of bass playing that we don’t necessarily think about every day.  keeping constant in every little thing we do was indeed a challenge!   we look forward to keeping at improving this area of our playing with renewed vigour!  to see and hear how important of a component it is at this stage of the music making process was very eye opening to say the least.

now we wait for the mixes and hopefully some fresh new vibes to sell at shows and post on the net very shortly!  stay tuned!

the toasting materials 4 the end of some great sessions!

recordings partie deux

so 2 days after our first ever recording session avec les sweats, we were off to record basslines with TOONICE.  great studio up in barrie.  nice digs and top notch equipment.

"amadeus" takes a recording brk

we brought out our fave bass, the Musicman Ray34 which hasn’t been used much of late. not on purpose, just so happens its been sitting nice and cozy in its case for awhile as we rocked out on our other 2 basses.  the ray34 has a nice set of flatwounds on it for the warm reggae vibe we were looking for.  the setup was similar to the Sweats one, just on a slightly bigger budget (ie: there is a budget).  we recorded bass, drums and guitar together live off the floor and went back and punched in any mishaps.  we got 2 songs into the can quite nicely but then the bass started to go wonky.  it was then we realized it needed a setup and that slowed down the first nights recording speed.  without a backup bass to use, we just had to struggle thru it all.

lessons learnt: bring more than one bass, try out basses before entering studio so u know all is well with them (even though u remember all being well-one has to wonder what goes on in those cases once the lid shuts?), be prepared for anything.

the essentials: bass, amp, notes, headphones, timmy's!

its the dawning of a new era

over the weekend finished putting the bass down for the Sweats and some songs we wanna use on the net for promotional use.  t’was the first time we’d ever recorded ourselves in a studio setting playing the bass and overall… t’was a wonderful experience!

getting sweaty in the kitchen?

a total DIY effort for a totally DIY kind of band! even the delicious wine we had was DIY (u-brew)!

we ran our Epiphone EB-3(what u see being played on the header of the blog) thru a tubed Traynor bassmate.  at first we also tried a direct line recording but the sound wasn’t quite what we were looking for so we stuck strictly with the bassmate miked. it was making a killer au natural sound that was perfect for the punky-rawky vibe we wanted.  after about an hour of tweaking the bass sound, drum mics and guitar amp placement, we blasted thru 11 songs doin’ multiple takes sans vocals.   the goal was to lay the basics down in one afternoon and then tweak the finer points of the songs later.  goal achieved!

here’s a pic of the Sweet Sweaty setup:

will post the final results when they are done.  can’t wait!

now onto the next session avec TOONICE, more on that in our next post… so stay “tuned”!