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.

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!

Recording New Songs

This post has a long and a short version.

Short Version: The basic information, who, what, where, etc.
Long version: Details of our approach to these recordings

Average Read Time (Short Version): 2 Min
Average Read Time (Long Version): 8 Min

Sorry it's been so dead around here lately, we've put up some updates on our Twitter account over the past few weeks, but haven't had anything major to write about, until now!

We're headed into the amazing Dennis Riese Family Recording Studio at New York University today to record for a class run by a production legend, Rod Hui. Rod was Brian's professor for a mixing lab when he was in college, so when he heard Rod was looking for bands to record this summer, we jumped at the chance to get into a studio with a large format console, a solid compliment of outboard gear, and a highly decorated producer.

We're going to be recording two new songs, "Bulletproof" and "Break The Mold". We've played "Bulletproof" live a few times, so some of you may know that one, but "Break The Mold" has never left our rehearsal room, so we're excited to be able to lay it down before Mike leaves for college. We haven't decided exactly how we plan to release these songs yet, a large part of the decision may depend on how the recordings turn out.

Our plan is to focus on nailing the drum sounds and performances while we're there, and do the rest of the parts back at Brian's studio like we did for the last record. There are a few reasons we're going this route. The first is the simple factor of time, we only have 4 hours to set up, record two songs, break down, and get copies of the session files made. The second is space and transportation: it would be impossible for us to fit a full drum set, a 4x12 half stack and head, a bass amp, guitars, and a bass into one car and still have room to carry the band members.

If we had more time we probably would have found a way to get all of our gear in, but because we only have four hours, it isn't worth it. Even if we came in with our amp settings dialed in exactly how we want them, trying to nail the perfect guitar sound, bass sound, and drum sounds would probably require at least 3 hours of set up alone. By focusing on the drums, we can utilize the most important aspects of the studio without over-extending ourselves and trying to do too much.

--Stop here for short version--

Drums, more than any other instrument, require the kinds of tools you can only get at a big studio. The first, and possibly most over-looked, is the live room. For you non-studio people, this is the room where the drums, amps, and anything that's being recorded goes. It's separate from the control room, which is where all the recording equipment, like the mixing console, is. There are two reasons the live room in a full-size studio is important for drums, more so than any other instrument.

The sound of recorded drums on almost, if not every, album ever made uses microphones placed out away from the drum kit, so that it picks up all of the drums. These mics are called "room mics", since they're placed out in the room away from the drums. If you think about it, this makes sense, when you listen to a drum set, do you put your ear right next to the snare drum to hear it? No, you stand back and listen to the kit being played as a whole. These room mics give perspective and depth to drum recordings.

The problem with room mics is that how good they sound depends on the acoustics of the room they are in. If you have a shitty sounding room, your room mics will sound like shit. Fortunately a full size studio should have at least a decent sounding room, which is one reason why it can help a lot to record drums there.

The other big advantage of using the live room in a full-size studio to record is the actual space, and how it's designed for isolation. Without this it's impossible to effectively pull off "live" recording. Live is in quotes because live studio recording is different than live recording from a show. Live recording is when all the instruments are being recorded at the same time, rather than doing the drums first, then the bass, guitars, etc. In order to record live you need to a) have the space to put all the people performing in the same room, and b) have a way to keep their instruments from being picked up in the wrong mics.

The big bonus of live recording is that the musicians all get to play together, feed off each other's energy, and perform the song as if they were on stage. If you just have one person sitting alone in a room playing to a metronome, it winds up sounding pretty sterile and robotic. However, if you can get the band together to play in the same room, using the metronome as a guide to keep them from straying way off tempo, all of a sudden they can push and pull the beat together and really add some energy and life to the recordings. If you get the drums recorded with this energy, it's permanently captured in the timing of the drum parts. If you then want to go back and re-record instruments, like we are planning to do, that feeling and groove will still be there so the other instruments will be able to recreate it during the re-recording.

Another problem with live recording is that you also need a way to keep the instruments separated from each other. If you've got a room mic up on the drums, but the guitar player's amp is in the room with it, you're going to get some guitar in the drum's mic. This unwanted sound from another instrument is called "bleed," and you want to have as little of this as possible. Preferably none at all. It's for this reason that big studios build "iso booths" (short for isolation booths) where you can put a guitar amp and close it off from the rest of the studio. With the guitar amp off in the iso booth, you won't be able to hear any guitar in the live room, this ensures that you don't get any bleed on the drum mics. You may ask, how does one hear the guitar then? Since the guitar is being recorded, too, it has mics on it, so you just take the signal coming from the guitar mics and send it to the headphones everyone is wearing while they record.

Besides the live room, the reason a full-size studio is more important for drums than anything else is the equipment. It's not that it necessarily has better equipment, although some of it may be, it's that it has a lot more of the better equipment.

Remember the example of sticking your head next to the snare drum that came up a few paragraphs back? Even though this isn't natural, if you can imagine doing it you'd probably come to the conclusion that, besides possibly going deaf, you'd hear a very strong impact. By placing mics close up on the drums like this, you achieve a sound with a lot of attack and presence. The mics that go right next to the drums are called "close mics", and you blend them with the room mics to balance the sharp attack with the perspective of the room to get a rich, full drum sound. In order to get a modern drum sound, most people will close mic all of the drums (toms, kick, snare) and even some of the percussion (china crash, ride cymbal). This can lead to sessions with a huge number of microphones set up.

The thing is that there's a bunch more equipment needed, like a preamp and converter, to get the sound from a microphone recorded into the computer. Now, it's relatively cheap to buy enough equipment to process one or two mics at a level that can compete with a professional studio. It becomes problematic when you want to use a top and bottom mic on the snare, an inside and outside mic on the kick, four tom mics, two room mics, some overheads, some close cymbal mics, and a mono room mic. Having enough gear to handle all that on a pro level is why you need to go to a full-size studio to record drums if you want to get the kind of drum sound we're after.

If we get the drums done as close to perfect as we can, using the tools of the big studio to their full advantage, we will be in good shape when we come back to Brian's. He has enough gear to handle at least two mics at a level competitive with the studio we will be in today, and since guitars, bass, and vocals can all be done well with one mic, two or three at the most, we should be fine recording them once we get back here.

We're going to use these songs as a test to see how we should approach recording for the next album. We've been talking about going to a big-name professional studio, like Avatar or Germano, to do drums for the next album for a while. It would be pretty expensive, but still much cheaper than doing a whole album there. Since we're getting these songs done for free, depending on the results, we'll be able to tell if it's worth the money to consider doing it again in the future.

Video: Chant Session

We just posted a video from the session where we recorded the chanting breakdown in "Tread On Kings." If you can't see the video player embedded in this post head to the videos section of our MySpace page



Chant Session

The Slave Becomes The MASTER

OUR ALBUM IS MASTERED!!!

It sounds so sick, we're gonna start posting new songs tomorrow, right now we're all going to get really fucked up and listen to our shit on repeat. Peace.

Obey Your Master

Our album has been delivered to mastering! Well, the first 7 songs, we're re-writing and re-recording parts of the 8th and final song after our show on the 27th. If all goes well, we will have the masters for these 7 songs back on Friday and start posting new material ASAP so you can learn the words and sing along at the gig!

If you can't tell, we're really excited to hear the results of the mastering process. The guy doing it for us works for a major player on the east coast and cut us a sick deal. We'd hate to spoil the surprise, so we're not going to tell you who he is until all the work is done, but trust us when we say that our shit is going to sound amazing!

Standing Over Shadows Track Sampler!

Ok so technically it's been longer than a day, but we posted the track sampler (with clips from the 7 finished songs off the new album) before midnight so give us a break. These are the songs in the album sampler, in the order they appear:

1. Standing Over Shadows
2. Rock Bottom Again
3. Tread On Kings
4. Collapse
5. Eulogy
6. My Prison Still Remains
7. Devoiden

Use the small player on the right to listen!

Standing Over Shadows - Track Sampler TOMORROW!

Tomorrow we will post clips from each the 7 songs off of the album, get excited!