Greetings From The Studio

We've been hard at work in the recording studio laying down the instrument tracks for the two new songs we've debuted live, "Bulletproof" and "Break The Mold." We recorded the drums for them back in July at NYU's super-nice Studio 510. You can check out our pictures from the session too, if you want.

If you're following along on our Twitter or Facebook status updates, you'll know that we already finished up the bass and guitars for both songs, and the vocals for "Bulletproof" too. You can check out some videos of us recording on our YouTube page.

Bass is typically the easiest thing to record, once you find the sound you want you just need to record the parts once and your done. Guitars take a lot longer because you have to play each part at least twice, one for the left and one for the right speaker, and sometimes as much as six times depending on how many layers you want. In the biz they call playing a part for a second time "doubling".

Sometimes Shane and Garrett play different riffs during the same section of a song, like in the choruses where Shane usually does some type of lead part with a counter-melody to the vocals while Garrett plays chords. If they each played their parts once we would have the two guitars we need to pan to the left and right speakers, but we wanted these songs to be as thick and heavy as possible, so any time there were two separate parts for a given section of the song we doubled each part separately. That means each chorus has 4 layers of guitars!

Add to that any any doubled harmonies to the lead, or doubles on single hits/accents that we want extra heavy and you will see how we wound up recording as many as six guitar parts (rhythm, lead, harmony, all doubled) in some sections of these songs. Then Shane has to lay down his solos. He does some sick lines in these songs, so they took a decent amount of time as well. Tally all that together and guitars are probably the most time consuming thing in the recording process for us.

Now that they're out of the way it's on to vocals. Vocals can take a while also. Because they're the first thing people pay attention to when they hear a song, there can't be any weakness whatsoever in the delivery. Some people double vocals too, but we usually just do one pass of lead vocals except for individual words where we want extra emphasis. We feel that we can get a fatter, in-your-face sound with one vocal track and a good blend of effects to create depth. If you double a vocal it will add some dimension, but if that double lacks any energy/passion then it will subtract from the lead rather than enhance it.

Once lead vocals are done we'll see about putting some harmonies in, "Bulletproof" doesn't really seem to have any fitting places to add them, but "Break The Mold" might. We double the background vocals so we can pan them to the left and right speakers just like the guitars, but usually they are only a few words long so they don't take much time.

Keep following our Twitter/Facebook for in-the-moment updates, and we'll make sure to give you another detailed update here in the near future.

EDIT: Sorry that the link to the YouTube videos was broken, we fixed it now.

September '09 Metal iMix

This month’s Metal iMix is up! There was really no rhyme or reason to the songs we picked this time. We just tried to find a bunch of bands that we haven’t put on previous playlists, but they have a good mix of our influences.

Dark New Day and Soilwork both have strong, melodic choruses like we try to write, and Sinergy has the heavy palm muted verses just like most of our songs do. Shadows Fall’s “Another Hero Lost” is an awesome ballad with a cool arrangement. Everything through the first pre-chorus is just vocals and acoustic guitar. Then instead of going right into the chorus from the pre-chorus, they go into a guitar solo and back into the verse. The guitar solo/interlude part is also when the drums come in, but they still leave out the bass. After the second verse the drums pick up with the side-stick on the snare for every beat in the second pre-chorus. This starts building up for the chorus, and then the bass comes in during the second half of the pre-chorus, which makes the build-up twice as huge. Staggering the entrance of the drums and bass like that leaves room in the arrangement, and each time you add a new instrument it brings up the energy another level.

Here’s the Metal iMix for September ’09 – Enjoy!

[EDIT: No idea why there are the white outlines in the iMixes, tried to get them to go away but they won't...sorry!]

Summer Wrap-Up

It’s the first day of September, Mike is back in college, and with fall right around the corner we figured it’s a good time to get you caught up on the busy three months we just had, in case you missed anything. And while we’re at it, we’ll give you a sneak peak at what we’re planning for the next three months, too!

The summer opened strong. We played two shows in just over two weeks, one on 5/30 at the Ivy in Princeton, NJ, and the other on 6/16 opening for The Dirty Pearls at Crash Mansion in NYC. The Dirty Pearls show was a bit of a surprise last-minute performance, which we explained when we announced the gig the day after it happened. After that we took a break from playing out for a while, but we ended the summer on a high note by picking up a sponsorship from Sold Out Tour for a month of free radio promotion at the Gotham Rocks showcase on 8/8, again at Crash Mansion.

If you missed any of the shows, or if you had such a good time you want to re-live the experience over and over again, you can check out the media section of our website for pictures and video from this summer’s shows.

While we were on our short hiatus from playing live, we worked on new material and recorded drums for two of the new songs – “Bulletproof” and “Break The Mold” – with highly regarded producer and engineer Rod Hui. Roddy was Brian’s college professor for his lab on mixing records, and we wrote a nice long blog post about how we put the session together with him and what we were hoping to accomplish.

Now that the summer shows are over, we’re going to head back into the studio soon to record the rest of the instruments and finish up those two songs. We’re aiming for a winter release, if all goes well.

That brings us to two weeks ago. Right after the Gotham Rocks showcase Brian got a new computer for the studio for a few reasons, most importantly to be able to run the newest version of the recording program Pro Tools. It has been a very rocky transition, to say the least. Between losing all of the live recordings from the Gotham Rocks show, to problems with new video software, he’s been spending all his time trying to get everything in shape. Thankfully it looks like we’ve finally got everything back under control.

In the middle of the new computer disaster, Brian was interviewed by Dr. T from iLike2Rock.net. We were offered a featured spot on their site because of our performance at the Gotham Rocks show, and we were asked to do an interview so that they could put together a podcast featuring the band. We are this week’s "Band Of The Week," and a podcast, including two songs from Standing Over Shadows and the full interview with Brian, is up on their site. You can also use the direct link to download the mp3 for the podcast.

That pretty much covers everything that went down during what we feel was a productive and eventful summer! Here’s a peek into what the fall holds:

Right now we’re working out an arrangement to get a small distribution deal finished for Germany and Western Europe. The details are still being worked out, but we were contacted by a company that wants to help stock and promote Standing Over Shadows overseas. This isn’t a major distribution deal, so don’t expect to see our album sitting in the checkout isle of Tesco, but it’s definitely a good first step to reach a foreign market.

We’re also looking to expand our audience in the homeland. We’re planning to play more shows in our area during the late fall or early winter, but also keep your eyes peeled for a few shows that may be held outside of the northeast too! Again, nothing is finalized, but so far things look pretty good!

The next thing up is recording the new songs. Because each of us has a lot going on this week individually, and then we have a holiday weekend, we don’t plan to head back into the studio until next week. Soon after Labor Day we’ll start putting the finishing touches on “Bulletproof” and “Break The Mold,” and we’ll be posting our progress on our Twitter Feed and Facebook Status, so friend/follow us if you want to stay in the loop!

That’s all for now! We give you our sincerest thanks for making this summer so successful for us!