A little behind schedule

Hey everyone.

Recording has gotten off to a slow start. Joe and I have officially started recording tracks for two songs: Santa Claus is Comin’ To Town and All the Right Reasons, a song that I wrote. Last weekend we tracked acoustic guitar and some of Joe’s vocals for Santa, and this week we laid melodica and acoustic bass guitar for the same song. I’ve been editing and producing the tracks as we go, so with the addition of drums and maybe some electric guitar, Santa Claus will arrive… in town.

Tuesday and Wednesday, we switched our attention to my song, All the Right Reasons, which is a tongue-in-cheek song about Christmas commercialism. (You know, like Silver Bells, but with less sugar-coating.) We recorded piano and my vocals. Then, I used my newest toy, Reason 3.0 (with the Reason Drumkits Refill 2.0) to start programming other stuff… like a sweet overdriven rhodes keyboard and some incredibly real-sounding fake drums. (Huge thanks to Tyler Winters for letting me borrow his copy of Reason!) I’m using Logic Express to control Reason 3.0 as a rewire “slave”, and it’s a really powerful production tool.

So yeah, we’re a little  behind schedule. If we are going to finish this EP before Christmas, we need to pick up the pace. So far, we have not planned our sessions very well, which has led to some inefficient recording.  Also, while I don’t have much of a life right now, Joe has a job, so he can’t just chill and make music all day like me. My plan to remedy this situation is to start preparing the project files with greater detail in advance. We’ll be more deliberate with our goals for each recording session to make sure we’re accomplishing what we need to accomplish. When Joe and I can’t record together, I’ll be mixing and editing on my own. In fact, producing what we’ve recorded so far has taken up most of my time this week. My friend John Hunter is also a recording enthusiast, and he says it best: “Music is a full-time job.”

So that’s where we are for now! Check out the Photos page for a few pics of the recording process so far. We’ll keep adding to those as we go. Oh, and FYI, other songs we have planned for the EP include O Come O Come Emmanuel, Snow Miser/Heat Miser (from the claymation movie A Year Without Santa Claus), You’re a Mean One Mr. Grinch, and more!