Thursday, December 16, 2004
Rock in the Studio
Muso has made its first recording as a full band. It's called the Glassel Park EP, because, well, that's where we practice. Glassel Park. So there ya go. Two weekends ago, we holed ourselves up in the practice space, a master bedroom-sized room with a twenty foot ceiling, with microphones a-dangling and chords a-snaking. I guess if we were real hipsters we would've gone totally lo-fi and recorded it on a Fisher Price tape recorder or something (no offense, Sam Beam), but we wanted to make it sound like some effort was made.
I suspect recording music is like making a movie -- a lot of set up and technical fuss to capture chunks of material that will be assembled later into something coherent. It's odd that the actual playing is just a starting point. The songs take shape after they're put to tape, or computer, in our case. It took three guys with relative production knowledge two days to record and get very basic mixes of five songs. I can only imagine the chaos and near-brawls that ensue for sweet bands like Hoobastank that have actual budgets and teams of producers and engineers, not to mention the clashing Ego and Douch factors.
Some of the process is really cool, like the butterflies in your stomach when the music's played back for the first time. But some of it's paintstaking (like when we had to re-record an entire song because I f'd up the time with a single ill-crashed cymbal), and really boring -- see the hours I logged sitting on a stool delicately eating crackers so that the crunch wouldn't bleed into Josh's guitar.
All in all, I'm happy with how it turned out. It's a diverse mix of songs, which I hope smacks of a band finding its sound, instead of one that's oblivious to it. But the bottom line is there's some booty-shakin' rock to be heard, people. It should be packaged and ready to go in the New Year, as well as downloadable from our website. I'll keep y'all posted.
Muso has made its first recording as a full band. It's called the Glassel Park EP, because, well, that's where we practice. Glassel Park. So there ya go. Two weekends ago, we holed ourselves up in the practice space, a master bedroom-sized room with a twenty foot ceiling, with microphones a-dangling and chords a-snaking. I guess if we were real hipsters we would've gone totally lo-fi and recorded it on a Fisher Price tape recorder or something (no offense, Sam Beam), but we wanted to make it sound like some effort was made.
I suspect recording music is like making a movie -- a lot of set up and technical fuss to capture chunks of material that will be assembled later into something coherent. It's odd that the actual playing is just a starting point. The songs take shape after they're put to tape, or computer, in our case. It took three guys with relative production knowledge two days to record and get very basic mixes of five songs. I can only imagine the chaos and near-brawls that ensue for sweet bands like Hoobastank that have actual budgets and teams of producers and engineers, not to mention the clashing Ego and Douch factors.
Some of the process is really cool, like the butterflies in your stomach when the music's played back for the first time. But some of it's paintstaking (like when we had to re-record an entire song because I f'd up the time with a single ill-crashed cymbal), and really boring -- see the hours I logged sitting on a stool delicately eating crackers so that the crunch wouldn't bleed into Josh's guitar.
All in all, I'm happy with how it turned out. It's a diverse mix of songs, which I hope smacks of a band finding its sound, instead of one that's oblivious to it. But the bottom line is there's some booty-shakin' rock to be heard, people. It should be packaged and ready to go in the New Year, as well as downloadable from our website. I'll keep y'all posted.
