Extra session

We found some time on Saturday night to get a little more recording done on ATM; right now it's all been getting the "keeper" guitar tracks down, replacing all the old scratch tracks we recorded on the fly while we were composing. With the borrowed Quad-X amp, we're able to crank it up and get a sweet guitar tone. It's all been rhythm parts so far, Josh has quite an ordeal ahead of him for the solos. Speaking of which, I also cut my first attempt at the fretless bass solo, which had some nice parts in it but still needs work.

Re-Tracking, Pt. I

Started re-recording some guitar parts last night. We imported Mike's drum tracks into Awaken The Man to see how everything lined up. It all lined up perfectly, so away we went. My Carvin Quad preamp is currently in the shop, so we ended up borrowing my friend's Quad to record with while mine is being fixed.

We didn't get a ton finished because it started getting late. What we did record, however, sounds amazing. The Quad is an awesome-sounding preamp, and I'm totally stoked at the progress we're making in finishing things up.

I'm hoping we can get some more tracking done this week, but schedules are a bit tight so we'll see what happens.

We also discussed a few very general ideas about a concept album for our next release. Personally I'd love to make a double-CD just for the sake of going completely over-the-top.

Drums are done!

We went to Mike's on Sunday to finish up the drum tracks on the last song, "Awaken the Man." Easily our most complex song, arrangement-wise (though not nearly as technical as some of the other tunes,) it took a bit of time to complete; but as always, Mike (Mr. Consistency) laid down a track that was not only slammin'- but also totally enhanced the song as a whole.

Josh came up with the idea of a fretless bass solo during a section in the song that we weren't totally sure what to do with - it should be a cool addition, and a timbre I hadn't thought of before. We're considering whether we want me to cut it (I'm not a terribly gifted soloist, but I'm sure with some effort I could do it justice) or whether to solicit the playing of another guest artist (we have one in mind, but it's a long shot).

So the next set of tasks before us is to import all the drum tracks and start tightening up all the parts; there are some guitar and vocal tracks that need to be re-cut, and some keyboard and organ parts that need to be cleaned up and refined. Mostly details now, and all the work is in the details!

Last track of drums

We're tentatively scheduled to go back to "Eyeball" on Sunday to get the last track of drums recorded for the album. "Awaken the Man" (the title track, which - oddly enough - will be the last track on the album), is easily one of our most ambitious long-form songs (if not THE most ambitious). We're both looking forward to see what Mike has envisioned for the drum parts. Should be awesome!

Details, details, details

Last night was a mellow session. Since we technically didn't have any songs to work on for the album, we just chilled out and worked on some of the finer details; things like album title, song order, places to get the CD mastered, artwork, blah blah blah... all of the crap you have to do to get a CD done.

It looks like we've decided to name the CD Awaken The Man. We like the idea of naming it after one of the songs, and ATM seems to have a lot of imagery for us to play with. We talked for a bit about what the CD artwork will look like, and we have a pretty good idea of what we want. I'll be meeting with the artist (the same person who did the backgrounds for the website) next week to tell her what our vision is, and let her go to town.

We also finalized the song order. I had been thinking about it for a little while, trying to space the epics and shorter tunes evenly. Mark had a few suggestions, and we agreed that until we could actually listen to the transitions between songs, the order didn't matter much. That being said, we spent a portion of last night cutting and pasting the beginnings and endings of all of our songs to listen to the transitions. I was surprised that we were pretty damn close to my originally proposed list. We listened through a few times, changed the order of two songs, and BAM! (That's a good thing.)

We'll be changing the Songs page shortly to organize the songs by CD, some cover artwork (when it's ready), etc... Stay tuned for that update and official song order.