My New Band

[Jamie French]

Just us dicking around with some songs, basically shaking the rust off an old partnership.



Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thisislandearthband

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jamie_Orion

July 28th marked our first official practice. We began with a toast.

[Pelheckitt]

Love the trash bag lined walls.

[Jamie French]

Painters drop cloth. They sell it in clear and black. I use it for all sorts of stuff.

Love the trash bag lined walls.

[Charly Spoons]

Whoop! I thought that was fun. Surprised at all the thumbs down in here.

[gmb]

Needs a good bassist (me.)

[Jamie French]

We're just a duo... what the video shows is us messing around with some chord progressions, rhythms and basic melodies... the finished songs will be fully fleshed out and orchestrated. I play bass (20 years), guitar, accordion, banjo, keyboards, sing, etc.

The finished songs, (recorded in my home studio) will have a built in click track that only my drummer will hear through his in-ear monitors. I'll be playing whatever rhythm or lead instrument benefits the live version of the song the most on a song by song basis, (as well as vocals.)

So basically the audience will get the sound of a 5 to 7 piece band for songs that require that much "band". We've actually been doing it this way for years in all sorts of other projects.

Needs a good bassist (me.)

[my my my!]

We're just a duo... what the video shows is us messing around with some chord progressions, rhythms and basic melodies... the finished songs will be fully fleshed out and orchestrated. I play bass (20 years), guitar, accordion, banjo, keyboards, sing, etc.

The finished songs, (recorded in my home studio) will have a built in click track that only my drummer will hear through his in-ear monitors. I'll be playing whatever rhythm or lead instrument benefits the live version of the song the most on a song by song basis, (as well as vocals.)

So basically the audience will get the sound of a 5 to 7 piece band for songs that require that much "band". We've actually been doing it this way for years in all sorts of other projects.

aww , the beauty of click tracks. LIke you Jamie, we used the "scratch" track for whatever instrument played entirely through the song.

Jamie, are you using a dedicated brand DAW or a protools setup? If you are, how many individual tracks are you dedicating just to the drums. I used to love putting 15 or 16 mics just on the drums themselves. then a rhythm guitar, a 2nd backing rhythm, a lead guitar, bass, other assorted percussion and effects, and 2 tracks for lead vocals, and another track for backup vocals.

I used to record in a 24 track studio . the old type with motorized faders for each track

[Jamie French]

I use Reaper. Open source, no security bloat programing, (dongles, etc.) features 100% of the functionality and requirements any professional sound tech, engineer, band or producer could ever ask for from basic tracking to, film scoring to extremely complex midi routing. Reaper does it all, (with a very cool company ethic to boot.)

When a song is ready to be tracked, I'll lay down whatever instrumentation it needs and create two master copies, one for live purposes, that includes everything short of drums, vocals and whatever instrument I'm playing live and one that actually serves as the finished recording. The two projects are mixed independently since they serve two separate purposes.

Once enough songs have been amassed, I'll take the "album cuts" and stem out the tracks to bring to a music studio that has a really nice, live drum room where we cut the drum tracks. Live drum tracks are the one thing I simply don't have the proper resources to pull off professionally so we have to take an 8 piece Yamaha Stage Custom Pro, (all birch) to folks who can handle the job.
I'll then take the masters from that studio and mix everything down back at my place. I send it off to a mastering house in Illinois that I've been using since 2009 and that's that.

When my drummer and I were part of an industrial/hardrock trio, we had a very formulaic way of recording all our parts but now that we're writing songs that vary wildly in style and composition we record in whatever way best suits each individual song.

I trained my ear and cut my teeth on shitty Tascam four tracks since '97 and have recorded in countless studios in my 20 years of playing professionally so I'm no stranger to completely analogue set ups and massive boards. Right now I'm running individual tracks through a UA 610 Solo preamp into a MOTU Audio Express. My vocal mic is a Sure SM7B. I use some $200 AKG condenser for my harmonies and back ups and a whole host of other mics for my cabs and acoustic instruments. My I/O is solid, my instruments are quality and my signal path is simple and clean... you have to try really hard to get an shitty recording out of my set up.

aww , the beauty of click tracks. LIke you Jamie, we used the "scratch" track for whatever instrument played entirely through the song.

Jamie, are you using a dedicated brand DAW or a protools setup? If you are, how many individual tracks are you dedicating just to the drums. I used to love putting 15 or 16 mics just on the drums themselves. then a rhythm guitar, a 2nd backing rhythm, a lead guitar, bass, other assorted percussion and effects, and 2 tracks for lead vocals, and another track for backup vocals.

I used to record in a 24 track studio . the old type with motorized faders for each track

[my my my!]

The 4 track tape recorders from Tascam were a good education on the nature of multitracking, ping ponging, levels, mastering and all that. then you move up to 8 track mini disc/cd, then to a fully functioning 24 track studio lol. ahhh, the days of tascam 4 tracks, I still have mine and use it for preproduction/rehearsal demos.

Drums are always the hardest to record in my opinion. specially with the use of overheads. trying to capture each tom is fairly easy, but once it comes to cymbals, it gets more difficult because the cymbal overhead mics pick up everything.

cant wait to hear your stuff fully recorded Jamie.

[gmb]

Lost my whole home studio in the great flood 2 years ago.
Still haven't begun to start over; too depressing...