Doubtful Sounds at Depot

Late last month, Matt & I went in to Depot Sound in Devonport to try recording in a real studio (rather than our front rooms or basements). There are some pictures up on the Doubtful Sounds Blog. So far, it seems to have gone well, but of course we've yet to hear the mixes.

Certainly having to nail eight or ten songs in a couple of days with a clock ticking is a very different experience to recording a single song over however many evenings it takes. I guess one advantage is simply that booking a studio forces us to try and record stuff.

How much better the recordings are compared with what we can do at home - what's a good balance between working at home vs in the studio - are things we still have to figure out.

Matt woz hair

So Matt (who still has hair, unlike, well me) came down on 11-12 August. We recorded something: I'm not sure what, yet, let's just say it Needs Work. In other news, well the Pop Album has been mastered; it needs to trimming, and cover art. Then we should feed it into the maw that is powertoolrecords.co.nz. Oh yeah: to get all this to go, the long-suffering mac was upgraded to 10.6.8, protools 9, and ELEVEN. Orange goodness.

Doubtful Sounds Session

Matt was down in Wellington this weekend - well we made it a long weekend and took today off as well. Probably the main stuff we did was go over the track we have so far, working out whether they were done for mixing or we needed to record more stuff. I attempted a first lead line on Where the Wind Blows - re-recorded the bass to make more space for a guitar break, so now have to record a lead line. I figure it will probably take a few weeks to write and then learn the part, then I'll be able to record it properly. Matt is going to finish up Here Right Now, which only has backing vocals but no lead. We played a bit on two new Matt songs: Small Boy and She's the Bomb; started recording an older one of mine (Preaching Jesus - off the lost & stolen demo takes) and a 12/8 chord progression that Matt called Apocalypto - "No matter what the chords are, we can always turn it in to a ballad". Matt's put some demos up on myspace.

Theme from the Doubtful Sounds

Matt & Richard were both around today, so we got to play with recording in the front room of Darkest Karori. We all got a bit acoustick - Matt & Richard on guitars, me on my trusty mando (that really does need new strings - if not an upgrade). Matt overdubbed bass (see if you notice, should sound out of place if you listen hard). Then, there is the first ever real video coming soon to you-tube near you: low-res goodness in an imitable style. After that things degenerated. Matt does look cool with the Rick (but then everybody does). And Richard got to unleash his inner guitar god. (Hmm, but we didn't record any of that. Duh).