The Benefactors Music/Recording/CD/EP Project Blog
01/08/12
- Jordan Lawrence and David Gehring approach me at church, and ask if I could record their new band... The Benefactors,
and help them record a CD/EP/album. They need some time to get ready, maybe a month or two... probably 4 or 5 songs.
This will be the first time in a long time for me doing anything other than a solo album/project, jams, and church albums, and I think the first time I'm recording a band that I'm not in...
so it'll give me the freedom to concentrate on the recording process and not be pulled in different directions trying to do both.
02/21/12
- I attend a practice, and discuss some of the logistics with the band, since they're about ready. They really want to record acoustic drums rather than use e-Drums to drive and record multitracked
VSTi drums, so the mobile multitracking rig I just built will come in handy for this purpose as we will have to record the acoustic drums somewhere other than my studio room.
I'm interested to see what kind of sound we can get recording an acoustic drum kit, but I suspect it will sound nowhere near as good as the VSTi setup, but I'm hopeful that
I'll be surprised... and that the extra effort, time, and cost will be well worth it for everyone. First things first though - we'll have Jordan record some raw guide tracks over
top of click tracks on 02/25/12 in my studio room (click to watch & listen live) and use those to build the rest of the songs on.
Here are some photos from the practice...
The Benefactors: Jordan Lawrence, David Gehring, Landon Wilbanks, Donavon Wilbanks - Go to official website.
02/25/12
- Jordan and I spend the afternoon tracking the 5 guide tracks for the 5 songs planned for the album. For now, they're below, but as we progress, they'll be updated
with more complete versions.
Jordan Lawrence listens to a take of one of the songs in the studio room...
We're shooting for 03/10/12 to record the drums and whatever else we can in the practice space, but we're short on mics at this point. We'll try to solve that problem by then.
If time permits on the 10th, we are planning to track the drums with the mobile recording rig over top of the guide tracks, and also attempt to track the entire band playing along as well, all in one shot...
and we'll see what we get. Assuming we get a lot of mic bleed doing things that way, we'll spend some more time doing individual parts, either here in the studio room or in
the practice space. If the acoustic drums don't turn out well, then at a future date, we'll rerecord them in my studio room with e-Drums, driving the multitracked
VSTi drums. It'd be good to try that anyway, just to compare results, but will take more time and effort.
02/27/12
- Since we're hurting for mics, I order an Electro-Voice RE20. It'll make a great kick drum mic... and it'll
come in handy for many other uses for me later.
We'll use my two SM81's for overheads,
my two SM57's on the snare and hi hat or a tom...
and the new RE20 on the kick. I'm considering using my lousy pair of 993's for some
ambient/room capture as well. So we'll just need more tom mics I think, which presumably can just be more SM57's, if the band can come up with those. They should
be relatively easy to borrow, rent, or buy, compared to some of the other mics we'll already have around.
03/07/12
- All our collective mics, mic cables, and mic stands are inventoried for Saturday's recording session at David's place, and we appear to have enough.
He's told me the room's being prepped with some sound deadening material, which is a good idea, I think... and that the drum kit will be set up
by early Saturday morning, if not sooner.
Between now and Saturday, I am transferring the individual tracks for the 5 Guide Tracks recorded on 02/25/12 over to the mobile recording rig, and building
the initial mix and record templates in the software I'll be using (SAC as the front end
console for live mixing and monitoring, and SAWStudio as the back end, integrated multitrack recorder.)
I want to have all of that worked out ahead of time so as to be able to spend more time concentrating on mic setup and placement and less time configuring mixers
and channel routing.
The guys in the band are welcome to bring some headphones to monitor along with me. I can handle up to 9 independent headphone mixes with the mobile rig... so bring
them if you have them. I'll only have one extra pair of MDR-7506's with me. If you'd
like to control your own mix and have a Windows laptop, netbook, or tablet with WiFi, let me know *ahead of time*, and we'll get set that up with
SACRemote.
03/10/12
- The drummer is sick, so today's planned session will not happen. Maybe we can do this after waiting another week... on 03/17/12.
03/17/12 - Spending the day with Donavon, Landon, and David, at David's place recording the drums and bass parts for the now 6 songs. Jordan is
not there.
Lots of takes... as many as 8 on one song. Setup is from 9:30am or so until almost 11:00am, with tracking completed sometime after 6:00pm, but everything
goes as planned equipment-wise. The mobile SAWStudio /
SAC recording rig is a pleasure to work with... not a hiccup.
Here are some photos of the setup...
I'll mix what we tracked today on Sunday, and post them here. These will be Intermediate Tracks, which we'll build upon.
03/18/12 - The Intermediate Tracks are posted below. David and Jordan will record their parts along with these tracks. Once that's all
done, I'll give them a full mixdown.
03/21/12
- Jordan is coming over to my studio room (click to watch & listen live) on Saturday afternoon, 03/24/12... to
record his acoustic guitar and electric guitar parts. Once those parts are down, I'll update this page with another round of Intermediate Tracks.
03/24/12
- Jordan records his acoustic and electric guitar parts for 4 out of the 6 songs today before he runs out of time and must be somewhere else. I'll not bother with
posting another round of Intermediate Tracks until we have the parts for the other 2 songs down. That could tentatively happen some evening this coming week.
Jordan Lawrence records a take for Dangerous Game in the studio room...
03/29/12 - On Saturday, 03/31/12 starting at noon ET, we'll finish Jordan's acoustic guitar parts for the remaining 2 songs.
After that David will do his electric guitar parts.
Tune in if you want to listen/watch. We may be going at it for the better part of the afternoon.
It also looks like we'll be recording a cello part on Tuesday, 04/03/12... sometime in the evening, for Lanterns.
03/31/12 - Jordan and David spend the better part of the day in the studio with me. Jordan finishes his remaining two tracks on acoustic
guitar, and David tracks 4 of the 6 songs on electric guitar.
David Gehring records an electric guitar track in the studio room...
David Gehring listening to one of the takes on one of the tracks...
Jordan Lawrence listening to one of the takes...
04/01/12
- I spend the afternoon mixing down what we have. Since about half of the songs are complete instrumentally, it's now possible to start refining these
and taking the mix seriously. This is my first pass. Still bottom heavy (but not in a bad way, IMO.) These are now beginning to sound "real"... so another
round (possibly the last round) of Intermediate Tracks is now posted below.
We've got cello tracking scheduled for Tuesday evening, 04/03/12 at 7:00pm in the studio room for Lanterns.
Just a note to the band... I'll need the weekend of 04/07/12 - 04/08/12 "off." It's been fun, but I could use a weekend, and being Easter and all, well, you know...
04/03/12
- For our first evening session for this project, guest cellist Jennifer Laminack sits in and records the cello part for Lanterns. A single
SM81 under the bridge is all we need to get the sound we're looking for.
Cellist Jennifer Laminack Plays Lanterns...
Afterwards, Jordan suggests that he sings the vocal part for Lanterns. After a rough take, we're cut short as an evening thundershower interferes
with the quiet needed to record a vocal track.
Jordan Lawrence Sings Lanterns moments before a thundershower bubbles up...
Our next session is scheduled for Tuesday evening, 04/10/12. David will finish his electric guitar parts for You Know Better Than This and
Lowly People. As always, tune in if you want to watch and listen.
04/10/12
- David spends a couple hours in the studio room with me and finishes up his electric guitar parts for Lowly People and You Know Better
Than This.
David Gehring finishes recording his electric guitar parts with You Know Better Than This.
Jordan will likely be over on Saturday, 04/14/12 to record all the vocal parts for all 6 songs... which could be the end of the tracking phase of this project.
04/11/12
- Jordan confirms he'll be over at 12:30pm ET on Saturday, 04/14/12 to record his vocal tracks for all 6 songs. There's also now going to be a keyboard part
on Fool's Gold... so maybe after that, we'll be done tracking.
Note that after Saturday's session, I'll remove the links to the tracks below since they'll no longer serve a purpose once everything's tracked.
04/13/12
- Darby Hughes is recording the keyboard part for Fool's Gold. He'll do it at his place, and send me the keyboard track to incorporate
back into the master mix.
04/14/12
- Jordan makes quick work of the vocal tracks today, completing all 6 songs in under 3 hours. He also adds another guitar part to Lowly People.
We discuss whether we're ready to begin the mixing phase - i.e. Are there any more tracks to be (re)recorded? Other than Darby's keyboard part for
Fool's Gold, which he's working on independently, we are done tracking. Mixing begins today. Other than that one keyboard part, every thing
has been recorded.
Note that I am removing the links to the tracks below. The band plans on selling the final album as a CD and/or something online somewhere, and we're
getting close to the end of the process on the overall project timeline, so songs will be available from another source sometime soon.
While SAWStudio and SAC are hands down my DAW
and console of choice, it looks like I'll be exporting the project into another DAW that is more suited to fixing tuning and timing issues.
We have a number of those types of issues, so Cakewalk's SONAR X1 or
PreSonus' Studio One would be good candidates. I'm leaning toward
Studio One since the current version integrates with
Celemony's Melodyne, which is probably the best tool for fixing
these types of issues. This will be new for me though. I've only dabbled briefly with S1v2 and Celemony to this point. Hopefully the learning curve
will be small, the programs will be stable and reliable, and the results will be good... but having worked with the SAW line for the last 16 years without issue,
it will be slow(er) going for a time - At least until I can export back out of the other DAW and back into
SAWStudio after repairs/changes are made.
Regardless of that (since you won't really know what program I'm working in at any given time), you can sit in on the mixing session by
tuning in. Sound is fed direct, so you hear what I'm hearing (but in decent mp3 equivalent quality.) Evenings and
weekends would be the time to catch me.
04/15/12
- PreSonus' Studio One, integrating with Celemony's Melodyne,
is a great tool for pitch correction. I'm getting very good results with it for that... but re-aligning the timing of the drums in the places
(across all 10 drum mics/8 drum tracks) is next to impossible. I'm afraid most of the timing issues will have to remain.
But the good news is that I have the final mix for Let The Whole World Spin done... and have a candidate for Fool's Gold as well. Thanks
to Darby for sending the file with his keyboard track to me at just about the perfect time.
Things I still need from the band:
- An album title...
- The song list/order...
- A decision on the cover artwork... (for embedding in FLAC, MP3 files, etc.)
- Format you want everything in - Master CD (with or without ISRC codes), ISO file (with or without ISRC codes), master files (wav/flac/cue), MP3 files, etc.
... so if you're still visiting here and reading this, please get those to me as soon as possible. You'll have to think all of that through before you can "release" your final product anyway.
And as I'd mentioned I'll give you a copy of everything on blu-ray, dvds, or whatever, when I'm done... The individual tracks if you care to have someone else mix/remix things, or if you want
to change thing later, as well as all of the photos I've taken, etc.
04/17/12
- The mix for Fool's Gold is finished, and I move on to working on Lanterns, which is slow going given the amount of space and detail in the song.
I am close to being done with that one by the end of the evening though.
I'll have less available time than usual over the next 2 - 3 evenings, so I won't be able to keep this pace going. A realistic target date for finishing this project would be toward the middle
of next week, presuming the other things I'm waiting on are provided.
04/21/12
- Hard at work on these since the last post... as time has allowed. Lanterns is complete as of a few days ago, and I spend a better part of the day working on
You Know Better Than This. It is close to being done if it is not already. A fresh set of ears will decide that tomorrow. If time allows, I may be able to spend
the better part of tomorrow working on Lowly People... so having everything finished by mid week still seems reasonable.
04/22/12
- I work through Lowly People this morning and afternoon and Dangerous Game this afternoon and evening... and then take a first and second pass at the master CD.
After the second pass, with fatigued ears, it sounds ready, but I won't really know until tomorrow.
04/23/12
- Another day... another master... with minor changes to 3 songs. I think this will be the one, but we'll know tomorrow.
04/24/12
- The master CD still sounds good on several systems this morning, so the mixing & mastering phase is done! Now on to the distribution phase...
The song order as provided to me by David is as follows (they're just in alphabetical order, with Let The Whole World Spin excluded for a single release):
- Dangerous Game
- Fool's Gold
- Lanterns
- Lowly People
- You Know Better Than This
I'll provide:
-
A master audio CD (without embedded ISRC codes), suitable for self duplication/distribution. But it's probably not a valid master for a duplication house. Whoever you go with
should be able to tell you what other requirements need to be met.
-
A data DVD with
-
88.2kHz/24 bit high resolution "Master" wav files of the 6 finished songs.
-
44.1kHz/16 bit CD quality wav files of the 6 finished songs (the same files used to make the master audio CD plus the one extra.)
-
44.1kHz/192kpbs joint stereo, fully tagged (with album artwork, but without ISRC codes) MP3 files of the 6 finished songs.
-
All the photos I've taken throughout this process.
-
A Blu-ray (or DVD if it fits) with the 88.2kHz/24 bit wav files for all the raw tracks used on the album. These will be unedited, unprocessed, zero time based
tracks. You (or anyone else) should be able to open these wav files and import them into any other DAW at the 0:00:00.000 time position and
and remix as needed/desired. You'll be starting at the same point I did... taking me out of the picture if you want, adding / removing / changing
anything you want to the finished product I'm giving you. I will not include the takes that did not make the album.
I think I'll be seeing David Thursday evening, so I should be ready to turn all of this over by then. If you want it sooner, one of you could probably stop by Wednesday evening
(assuming I'm done by then) and pick it up. Please check back here for a completion notice... and contact me first to make sure I'm around if you want to do that.
04/25/12
- Jordan comes over at about 9:30pm and I turn the master discs over to him. Total time from first Guide Tracks until completion today... 2 months.
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