recording diary - one

this recording diary thing is surely only of interest to a few people that like to be bored reading the ins and outs of the creative process. i don't expect many to read all of this so i'll get right to the details:

threatening clouds by traveling light

4min24sec; 192kbps mp3; 6.1mb

recorded 02 november 2002

mixed 23 february 2010

as i detailed in a earlier post, i've had a long history of home recordings. as i've renewed my interest and execution of laying down my musical thoughts i found some older recordings that i made when i switched from the four-track to DAW recordings (digital audio workstation, that's the fancy term for recording on the computer). the recordings i found are from 2002 and 2003 and the first one i looked at is presented to you here today. let's discuss...

this is an original composition recorded on a saturday in november of 2002. i called the song "built to rip-off" presumably because i felt influenced by a wonderful band called built to spill but listening to the tracks don't at all give me a bts vibe so the song no longer goes by that name. i decided to called it "threatening clouds" as a tip of the hat to my friends from the past. back in the early 90's we had a newsletter that we published on a VERY small scale called notes from the deep end... in it were short stories and poetry and drawings and music reviews...everything that captivated our young creative minds. before we settled on deep end... as the newsletter's title we hit around some other names. one that we really liked even after we decided on deep end... was threatening clouds. we decided to use the name as a title for our writing collective, it was just too good of a name to throw out. someday i will dig up those old newsletters and post them here. it's not that they were at all good, it's just another marker in my history...proof that i was here and identifying with my Creator by being creative.

so when i loaded the session into my recording software of choice (cool edit pro 2) i listened to the mix i had been working on in 2002. i thought, "okay, nothing special here" and then noticed that i had recorded twelve tracks of music for this one song. i started playing with the mix and found a depth that i had surely intended but, for whatever reason, had not achieved. the tracks and remix are as follows:

two tracks dedicated to percussion...the first a simple beat on a djembe drum, the second a shaker and snap beat meant to accent the djembe. overall, i'm pleased but there are some pretty rough spots were i just lose the beat completely. i guess my 28 year-old self didn't feel the need to match the tracks better since i seem to get it back together after the times i lose it. as my friends in nh used to say, "close enough for rock and roll." i guess that's why i've always been amazed when i have played with eric and antonie and marcus and the other fine drummers i've had the privilege to play with...they can actually keep a beat. i can't. as i remixed the tracks i tweaked the eq so they sounded a little more full and added a slight reverb, sending each of the two tracks slightly to the right and left to further add depth to the recording.

two tracks of acoustic rhythm guitar...i recorded the tracks as such: one track is the line input of my acoustic the other is from a microphone. i recorded both tracks at the same time, sending one input to the left side and the other to the right. in my remix i increased the volume and presence of the tracks, adding some eq to brighten the corners and make the acoustic rhythm more pronounced.

one track of bass guitar...i simply added some eq and increased the volume from the original mix.

two tracks of electric rhythm guitar...i recorded each track individually and sent one to the hard right side while the other is slightly on the left. i did this to give the recording more fullness and depth. when remixing, i actually lowered the volume on these so as to de-emphasize the fuzzy electric and try to increase the richness of the acoustic.

two tracks of electric lead guitar...i don't often play electric guitar and even rarely try to solo but this song has a hook to it that just sticks. i dig it. each of the leads are panned slightly to either side. i guess it should be said here that i am amazed with early rock and roll recordings from the beatles, buddy holly, elvis...everything was recording in mono so they didn't have the luxury of making a recording sound full by panning to the stereo left or right. now it is essential that mixes are defined and refined by utilizing the stereo spectrum. the days are now here when right and left have become passé due the advent of surround sound. bands like the flaming lips have spent the last several years remixing their older records to a 5.1 sound and record labels have found a new way to market and sell dated recordings. i guess all things must change.

for those of you keeping track at home, that's only nine tracks when i said earlier that i had recorded twelve tracks of instrumentation. i really didn't feel the need to include the extra three in the new mix. two of the three were percussion tracks which i'm sure you can understand why i got rid of those.

in all, this recording is very exciting to me because it isn't the normal folk song thing i do. it's pretty well a rock instrumental which suits me just fine. i wrote in my history of home recordings that my friends and i always had goofy names for our songwriting/recording projects. my initial moniker was north dakota which later became justified sunshine. i've felt that now is a good time to start a new chapter with a new name so this project is under the banner "traveling light."

i do hope you enjoy.

recording diary: a history

music and sound recording has been an interest to me for years. i remember sitting in an empty church listening to jeremy playing u2 songs on the piano. as jeremy went through these self-discovered arrangements, the songs took new life in my very keen relationship with the irish band. the thought kept going through my head that this is the music i wanted to listen to: relevant, personal versions of songs i was familiar with. sooner than later jeremy would play for me original songs, put together a band and started playing shows. i caught the dream when jeremy gave me the first cassette he recorded in his bedroom on an already outdated boom box. i gave my girlfriend's little brother twenty bucks for an old stella harmony acoustic guitar that he found at a yard sale and i tried to teach myself how to play. jeremy and i would get together playing originals and covers for each other and it became inevitable that we would begin a series of home recordings that would last for years to come.

bob, the bassist in jeremy's band, spent three months out of state at 'the recording workshop' and soon after we had pooled our money to get a tascam porta-studio four-track (the porta07). within no time, following suggestions and tips from bob and our own trial and error, deep end records... was born and homemade tapes came with astonishing frequency. jeremy and i would take turns with the equipment and usually when we made the handoff from one to the other we would write and record some tracks together. one such project was all original holiday music, songs written for christmas, thanksgiving, etc. i remember even having a labor day song. each song was certainly meant for our own amusement rather than mass consumption but that never deterred us from laying the tape. we always named our projects. the collaborations with jeremy were named something so completely strange and tossed off that i can't even remember what it was. i think it had something to do with clouds or pillows, maybe pillow cloud. whatever it was, it was goofy but that was just the beginning of the goofiness. jeremy, jamie and i recorded a couple of songs live with drums and keys (to this date, my favorite recordings) that we called the dakota bug factory, we even named the sessions "panana beel." like i said, goofy as all get out.

during this time eric was writing lyrics at a steady pace and mailing them to me to arrange into songs. we got together as theodore and played a couple shows, one of which we were able to sell copies of a cassette that our friend zac recorded for us. years later, on the first day of work at a new store, i was introduced to dunlap whose first statement to me was "weren't you in theodore? i still have that tape i bought at one of the shows you played." at that time i hadn't even realized that anyone would remember theodore nor that i had met dunlap while he was in high school and even had photos of him taken while we hung out with mutual friends.

eventually i moved to new hampshire and for the first year or so recording on the porta07 had become my connection to the friends i left back home. i sent down a couple of my north dakota tapes while getting tapes from eric (eightball), jamie (ladybug) and jeremy (xy and panic strikes a chord) as well as local (wv) bands; falooda, richard's anger, and the urban renewal project. it was a good time.

while in new hampshire i started a fourteen year stint with a retail corporation and found my songwriting and recordings curtailed considerably. i recorded some things with melinda (clary sage), madelynn (maddy & the evil five), barbara, chris press (crispy), the beloved jay jungles (lost blues), matt (tin foil star), and others that i'm sad to say i can't even remember. eric and jeremy came up to visit once and we recorded some stuff together. i remember sending jeremy tapes with unfinished tracks of song sketches and jeremy would finish the songs and send them back.

during this time i became much more serious about my faith and concluded that it was pointless to write and record songs about trivial subjects. i wanted to focus on the personal and practical exercise of my faith. my wife, susen, calls it God-music. justified sunshine became the new moniker of my own recording projects, leaving behind the name north dakota.

eventually, eric moved up to new hampshire completing our church band, damascus road, as well as drumming with a band called crimson bridge. i recorded some of their songs with mixed results. it was new to me to multi-track a full band and the sessions presented challenges that i hadn't encountered before. i had always recorded to satisfy my own muse, so missed notes or random feedback often made their way onto my recordings. recording the band caused me to use the input and preferences of a separate group of artists. i had to get on tape what they desired to sound like. it was a wonderful experience that gave me the dream of recording bands as a full-time gig. unfortunately, i never really pursued that as a career goal. my retail life consumed me and i was never disciplined enough to pursue it on the side.

that retail life gave me the opportunity to move back to wv and start a family. i'm not sure what happened to that porta07, i assume that jeremy kept it but maybe it just bit the dust. it had served us well for more years than we could have expected. i didn't really do anything musically for a short time but soon i discovered the recording possibilities of the personal computer. while in a band with bob (shakespeare), i was involved with some recordings on marcus's computer. they both knew what was going on with the software applications and the equipment used so i just soaked it all in while the wheels turned in my head for a new recording outlet. almost immediately i purchased a small mixing board, a versatile soundcard, and a copy of syntrillium's cool edit pro (v.2). my love for recording was rekindled and i recorded a few things as time allowed. at one point a band that dunlap was playing with (sarasota) asked me to record some of their songs. just like the crimson bridge sessions, i encountered challenges that excited me about the possibilities. and, just like the previous several years, my retail life took over and i never really pursued those possibilities.

now here we are in 2010, close to twenty years away from that afternoon in an empty church. my retail life is over and i'm open to new possibilities. i purchased a new (to me) digital four-track that combines the porta07's simplicity with the versatility of the pc. my new equipment is the tascam dp-004. i'm looking forward to a new paragraph in the story of my recording life.