Drum editing is both extremely boring and tremendously exciting. The tedium of quantizing hits that are microns late or fractions early is repetitive and stifling. And yet, seeing where it all goes is almost like watching a rocket take off.

As of January 28th, 2009, over half of the drums from Saturday's drum session have been edited for further tracking. "Come Alive," "Static," "Don't Join the Army," "Nightmares," and "Two Shadows" have been combed through for best takes, quantizing, and tom editing.

Since we only did three or four whole takes for each song, there wasn't as much to go through as I am accustomed to. Less talk, more rock.

There is a certain echelon of musician that shuns technology. I've heard it in the circles and coteries I run in, "Oh, I never use Auto Tune." Or, "I would never use Beat Detective on my drum tracks." Worse still, is the notion that using these valuable, powerful production tools are some how "bad." I love technology. I use it a lot. I recognize the pandora. And, I love what it brings to the fold.

The challenge with these tools is using them and not letting them use you. I prefer natural sounding performances. Something that's a little out of time is unnatural and distracting. On the other hand, something that is perfect is also distracting. In subjective arenas, like music, perfection yields mediocrity. I like for tracks to remain human but not distractingly so. I use the tools to serve the song and the listener.

One of my favorite aspects of digital recording is waveform editing. The ability to "tab to transient" and delete information selectively does wonders for seldom played, resonant drums. Of course, I'm talking about the toms, those big drums that hang around the kit that are played mainly in transitions. Digital editing is the best gating you could ever ask for.

"Hey, Angel" and "Rip Van Winkle" are left. Those were very well played in the tracking stage, so I don't think it will be too much longer before bass tracking begins. "Two Shadows" was the most difficult to edit, but only because shuffle rhythm is natively weird.

And, we're off.

Dale came over to the studio on Saturday, January 24, 2009, for a day of drum tracking for The Return of Spring. It was a great day of music and fellowship. I think we both had a good time. Dale particularly enjoyed playing "Nightmares." When I asked if it was the song's compound time, he just said, "it was fun!"

I like the results I get from my drum tracking method. I've combed through just about every manual, book, magazine, DVD, audio recording, and website about recording drums. Everything pretty much says the same thing: if you have a good drummer play a good kit in a good room, it's hard to get a bad drum sound. So true. The only other tid bits of info that have been remotely helpful are two: 1) for more attack out of a drum (whack!) get the mic closer to the center of the drum; for more tone (boom), stick to the rim and 2) make sure your overhead mics are in phase.

With the exception of the kick drum, I had Audix dynamic mics on the rims of all drums. I'm going to have bass guitar carry the extreme low of this stuff, so I opted to use the nice hole in the front, center of the kick drum for the kick sound. Getting overhead mics in phase is pretty easy: just make sure the capsules are as close as possible and at a 90 degree angle from each other. It creates a nice stereo image of the drum set.


We started off the day by getting the room set up and mics in place. I hear you snoring. I know, boring stuff. Once we were ready, we started with "Hey, Angel," a popular song from the Mark & Mike show. For all of the songs, I had some basic ideas mapped out. My understanding of rhythm will never be as sophisticated as an accomplished percussionist's is. So, I deferred a lot of things like fills and such to him. Having basic kick and snare patterns were helpful because they helped inform where the bass guitar would hit. I'm glad I took the time to map that out. We did about four takes of the song, the last one being the best.

The day continued. We progressed through the songs quickly and deliberately, recording never more than four takes for a song. The pre-production helped speed up the process considerably. Again, it's always worth spending some time with a song before hand. We recorded drums for "Static" and "Nightmares."

Just as it's never a good idea to use the same guitar through a whole album, I don't like to use the same snare drum throughout a recording session. We changed out the snare after three songs. "Two Shadows" was probably the most difficult of the songs to track, but only because it's in 12/8 meter. I thought the snare was just landing a 32nd note out of place. No, it's a weird shuffle rhythm in 12/8. That will be helpful when editing the song. Gotta change the meter on the grid.

The biggest surprise for me was the translation of "Come Alive" from a drum machine part to a walking, human rhythm. I love what Dale did for this song. It's amazing how much more exciting real drums are; for me, there's really no comparison.

For the last two songs, I wanted to change things up a bit. Dale played "hot rods," or splintered drum sticks, on "Rip Van Winkle." These are typically used for when the drummer is asked to play "quieter," but they do offer a unique timbre to a drum kit. The best commercial example I can think of is the drums on Oasis' masterpiece "Wonderwall." That drum fill on the break after the first chorus is nothing but hot rods. Awesome. It added a new dimension to the kit we used throughout the day.

We had time for one more tune at the end of the day so we snuck in "Don't Join the Army." For this song, we changed up the sticks, but instead of hot rods, we used a frayed plastic stick and what looked like an extremely small broomstick. I like that we retained the intensity of a full drum set, but allowed space for an acoustic guitar in the future.

The next step in all of this is combing through the drum takes and picking the best parts. Pro Tools 8 makes compositing much faster, so I look forward to saving time here. I started on "Come Alive" yesterday in the last few minutes of the day. I hope to be ready for bass overdubs by the beginning of February.

Drumming takes up a lot of time, tracks, and sonic space. It's important to know what you're getting into when you're getting into it. I've found a method that works for me.

Stay tuned!

Singing through a song, with its metronome playing, is probably the best way to make sure a song is arriving at the right tempo. I fully expected "Two Shadows" to clock in faster than it did. "Frogs" by Failure inspired the song. I envisioned the track sounding something like that. Over the last two years, as "Shadows" has become a staple in our acoustic duo shows, it seems to have naturally slowed down. I pushed it a bit, still, just for excitement value. When playing with the click track, it felt good. I'm gonna roll with a tempo of 135 beats per minute for this one.

"Come Alive" is a green tune. It's only been played live once. And, I haven't nailed all of the lyric changes, yet. Still, there's something I really like about the demo of it that appeared in 2007. I'm going to use it's native tempo of 155, as well as the basic midi'ed drum pattern as a reference. I anticipate that the album will come out swingin'. I guess that's good, seeing as how spring sometimes comes in like a lion.

"Nightmares" has seemed too slow since I initially clocked it. I played along with it today at an adjusted tempo of 145 bpm. Now, it swings and rocks just right. All of the other tunes seem to be working. Tomorrow, I'll give the scratch tracks a final listen. I'll also need to set up the room for drum tracking. I have a basic "drummer's" template saved, which saves a lot of time when jumping from session to session.

I'm looking forward to Saturday. Drum day is probably my favorite day in the studio. There's so much to do and so much to capture.

In some free time today, I was able to lay down click tracks for "Static" and a forgotten song, "Don't Join the Army." Holly was listening to "Army" a few days ago on her iPod. As the song filled the living room, I realized it had fallen through the cracks. How could I have forgotten that one?

"Army" was one of the first songs I wrote when I returned to the idea of doing a seasoned theme solo album. Did you know that The Promise of Summer was originally supposed to be The Return of Spring? Songs like "Rusted Radio," "She Alone," and "Don't Fade Away" were coming out a little more "rockin'" than I had anticipated. So, we shifted focus. "Army" was left behind.

"Don't Join the Army" is a double edged sword. On one hand, it has an inherently offensive superficiality to it. On the other hand, it's one of the most honest songs I've ever written. It's a snapshot of my life that I cherish. It should be recorded. I'll sort out the details later. Considering what people might think about a song is creatively damaging. Can't do that.

Although, I don't know that I'll get to it in this round. I made a click track and banged out a basic drum pattern idea for it.

"Static" came together really well. It's exciting with just a click, kick & snare pattern, and scratch mandolin. I compared the tempo of "Static" to ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky," one of the most perfectly crafted recordings I can think of. Lynne's tempo, arrangement, and production is exciting every time I hear it.

I'm noticing that most of the songs are clocking in a bit short, with just about everything at 3:30 or under. That's not a bad thing, necessarily. I gotta remember that it's OK for a song to last four minutes...as song should be as long as it needs to be.

Mastering a collection of tunes recorded in several different environments is always a challenge. As I write this, I'm proofing the next collection of free downloads from mikegarrigan.com: Best of Podcast, Vol. 2.

The second half of 2008 offered a few different kinds of tracks for the podcast. For one, Murray did a few remixes, as well as an instrumental track. His remixes of "When I Was Five" and "Birthday Song" have been mastered under my supervision for this collection. His "Alpha 1" instrumental is also included.

The Garrigan Bros. had a decent live board recording from a September show that afforded some, well, interesting live recordings for the podcast. "Imaginary Jumpsuit" and "Tom vs. John" are included in this collection.

A really good live version of "Sour Milk" from the Mark and Mike acoustic show on July 18, 2008 at the Evening Muse is included.

"Where There's A Door" from the Candelabra Sessions (2006) makes an appearance. Also, an acoustic demo of "Goodbye" from January of 2008 made the cut.

And, four songs from the fall 2008 Morning Pages demo sessions are included: "The Morning Bird," "Wicked Light," "Shine On," and "Ain't We The Same."

I hope to post this collection tomorrow. As with the last grouping, the files will be in a hi-res mp3 format, fully tagged for iTunes. I'll also be removing the first volume, so if you haven't downloaded it yet, make sure you do before tomorrow morning.

If you're a musician playing in Chapel Hill, it's only a matter of time before you're walking a little farther than you might have anticipated. I couldn't find any parking, once again, in Chapel Hill before our show on Saturday, January 17th at the Local 506 club on Franklin Street.

Even back in 1993, when I first started gigging regularly, this was a reality. I hoofed it from Morrison Hall to the corner of Columbia and Franklin just about every week, usually for a spot at open mic at the bakery. Here, in 2009, a similar reality reared it's head. I parked on Cameron Ave, about three city blocks from the club, and walked, gear in hand.

But, man, wasn't it worth it? I had a great time at the show. Mark and I did an opening set for Longwave and Aminal. We played as an acoustic duo, of course.

The set was:

Last Night
Hey, Angel
I'm Still Waiting
Two Shadows
Baby, I'm Your Man
October
Walking on Broadway
God Lives in My Backyard
Sad Songs
Automatic
Telling You I Love You

All of Mark's songs were drawn from his forthcoming solo album, Walking on Broadway. My tunes came from my past works. Two songs I'm going to record for my next solo album were played, too.

I'm excited about Mark's new album. I feel a profound sense of possibility. Playing the gig last night, it felt like we were on the verge of a new chapter. I'm thrilled. Can't wait to see what happens.

After completing some mix revisions for Serotonen, a new band from New York that I've been working with since August of 2008, I had some spare time to complete another click track for an upcoming song.

"Nightmares" is a complex tune. It changes from compound time (5/4) to standard time fairly regularly. This makes for some craziness when setting a grid. I'm used to the new interface in Pro Tools 8, so it wasn't too hard.

I always liked the tempo of Pearl Jam's "Last Exit," the song that kicks of their third album Vitalogy. In fact, I remember wanting to write a song like "Last Exit" after I heard it for the first time. I guess that's where "Nightmares" came from. That, and a 12 hour layover in Pittsburgh in March of 1995. Long story. Not really a particularly good one either. Doesn't even have a happy ending. I did get a fair song out of it, though.

I clocked "Last Exit" at 141, give or take a few beats per minute. I have a specific drum beat in mind for this song, so I mapped that out quickly. The chorus has always been a bit of a question mark for me. I tried some basic ideas that I liked. I haven't settled on fills yet, but I have a basic kick and snare pattern than builds as each new chorus arrives. This will help grow the intensity as the song progresses. I think I'm going to leave a lot of the brass up to Dale on this one.

I'll need to revisit some of the details later. It seems like the song needs an hour or so of time, just to develop the patterns a little more.

Stay tuned.

Mark's website is up and running.

There's a few pictures as well as a blog that has pictures from last November's tracking session for his album. Check it out, if you're interested. I like the new message board, too.

I spent a few hours today writing click tracks and basic drum arrangements for "Hey, Angel" and "Rip Van Winkle." "3308," one of my new songs, had a less esoteric alternate title before its completion. It's original demo file was named "Rip Van Winkle." I like that name a lot better.

The purpose of a click track is to establish a guide tempo for rhythm track musicians. This is usually a drummer and bass player, but sometimes an entire band can record guide tracks at once. On some sessions, the click is nothing short of an emperor, a tyrant of rhythm that cannot be reasoned with or altered. On other sessions, the click is a suggested guide. I like to take a heavy rhythmic guide from the click. But, when it comes down to feel vs. click, I err on the side of feel.

The tempo of a song is key. If a song is too slow, it's often perceived as boring or lazy. If it's too fast, it seems hyper and unpolished.

For "Hey, Angel," I listened to three of our live recordings of the song. The tempos on those recordings ran from between 92 beats per minute (bpm) and 95 bpm. Two of the three commercial samples I referenced were much faster than that: "Sour Girl" by STP clocking in at 105 and "Off He Goes" by Pearl Jam measuring 100 bpm. "Miracle" by Foo Fighters seemed at about 95. I opted to speed the click for this recording up to 97. When I played to it, I could get all the words in with ease but it didn't seemed rushed. Every song is different, but I think it was a good idea to measure the tempo against commercial tunes.

"Rip Van Winkle" had its native demo tempo set to 106. I had a clocking problem when I tracked the demo. The Focusrite Octopre, an 8 channel input for my rig, requires an "optical" clock source when it's being used. This is just fine if the sample rates for the Pro Tools session and the sample rate on the Octopre are the same. If there's a discrepancy, the track will not playback at the proper speed when the optical source is ejected.

I liked my performance on the demo so much that I just sped it up to be in the right key. The only artifact from this was that the tempo was no longer exactly 106. It generated an imperceptible remainder of 0.05 beats per minute. The smallest deviations make midi tracks arrive at the wrong time after a minute or so of being "off" by 0.05 bpm. It was easy to just change the session tempo to 106.05. As a result, the final version will have the oddity of being 106.05 in tempo. I guess that's OK, with the song being called "Rip Van Winkle," and all...

I like to suggest kick and snare patterns to my session drummers. Dale is great with coming up with parts of his own, as well as tweaking the ideas I come up with. If I write the variations between sections the way I hear them, it makes the session drummer's job easier. I don't want to tie his hands, though. I always like to see what he can come up with.

With both songs, I wrote in midi drum parts, playing through the Digidesign Strike program. I like the suggested variations. I'm eager to hear what Dale comes up on these two songs.

Hopefully, I'll have some free time next week to get the other four songs clicked and mapped out.

Now that the studio is broken in, I've decided to return to a project that's long over due: The Return of Spring.

I started this record in the summer of 2007. I quickly abandoned the recording once in became clear how much work construction was going to be. There's a lot of "sweat equity" in that place. I built all of it, with the exception of the framing, the acoustic treatments, and the hanging of the doors (which, is a surprisingly difficult skill).

Dale Baker, the drummer with whom I began the project, will return on Saturday, January 24th for some basic tracking. I'm excited to get back to recording from the songwriter's perspective.

Today, after a writing session, I sat on the studio couch and looked at my list of songs. I've narrowed it down to 15. I'll end up cutting four; my other "season" albums each have eleven songs on them. This one will be no different.

On the 24th, we'll lay down basic tracks for five songs: "Nightmares," "Hey, Angel," "Two Shadows," "Static," and "Come Alive." I have an extra song, "3308," that we'll track if there's time. I'll edit the tracks later.

"Nightmares" harkens back to the early 90's. I've had this song sitting around for over ten years. It's never made it to an album, probably for the reason that it always seemed like the acoustic counterpart to "October," from The Lessons of Autumn. I'm excited to give this song a proper place in my catalog. It has an intro piece that will be recorded separately.

"Hey, Angel" and "Two Shadows" have been live favorites at the Mark & Mike shows of late. I hope Mark will want to contribute his parts to these tracks.

"Static" appears on the Live at the Evening Muse DVD/CD. For this recording, I'm going to attempt a hybrid of the original demo (which tries hard to be "Mr. Blue Sky" but falls short) and the mandolin version that went over so well at that show.

"Come Alive" and "3308" are two newer songs that I debuted at the Deep South show last month. They went over well. I'm eager to record these green pieces.

I plan to record "April Moon" and "Jenny" which both appeared on the Muse album. I'd like to try some different instrumentation on these; strings or horns come to mind as a fun possibility.

The six songs that began the project are also going to be re-visited--"Water & Wine," "The Great Divide," "Out of My Mind," "The Original Pullman Palace Car Dream," "Focus," and "Falling in Love Too Fast."

So, if all goes as planned, look forward to hearing this record sometime later this year. I'm excited to share this news. Stay tuned!

I had never seen a polar bear in person until yesterday.

The North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro, NC is becoming one of my favorite places to hang out. My wife and I have an annual pass; it's a great place to take a walk and enjoy fauna from around the world.

This bear's name is Wilhelm, or Willy for short. He's in his 20's. Polar bears live until they're about 25 or so. He's an older bear. I'm sure it was hot yesterday for him, even though it was about 39 degrees as we walked around. I look forward to seeing Willy again.

It was nice to have a day off. We enjoyed it.

I haven't been to the ocean in a few months.

Lately though I have been dealing with Waves, the pro-audio plug-in company that makes useful applications for in-the-box computer based recording.

This past week, I've been working with a new band. For most members of the group, working with me was their first experience in a recording studio. We agreed to limit the recording session to four, 4-hour sessions. The goal was to complete five songs in those 16 hours of recording.

The session surprised me. I usually recommend eight hours for each song to be recorded. These kids did it in a little over three hours per song. Two things made that possible. For one, they were well rehearsed and never bit off more than they could chew with a given part. The other had a lot to do with the speed at which I could dial in workable settings with some new Waves plug-ins.

One of the reasons I really like the Digidesign Smack! plug-in (emphasis not added, the exclamation mark is part of the name) is that it's OPTO setting allows almost a "set it and forget it" dynamic control. With OPTO compression, you get the best of both worlds: limiting of the peaks & bringing up the undertones of a given sound. I've had to really try hard to screw up the sound of OPTO compression; that's a good thing when you have to set a compressor at the end of the day and your ears are fried.

Two of the Waves plug-ins included in the Musicians 2 bundle offer a similar ease of use to the Smack! application. However, both offer a completely different style of compression than the OPTO setting on the Smack! plug-in.

The Renaissance Axx plug-in caught my ear immediately. We had tracked a single electric guitar that would benefit from dynamics control. Rather than take the time to use some of the more surgical dynamics plug-ins, the Renaissance Axx was very easy to get a good sound out of almost immediately. It only has three controls, so, as with the OPTO setting, it's really hard to mess up. The compression ratio is a "fixed ratio curve"--the more energy it perceives, the higher the ratio it employs. It's kind of like an OPTO setting in that way, but it neither runs through a photo optical cell nor pretends that it is (as an emulator does).

If using the Ren Axx plug in was easy, the Renaissance Vox was even easier. If I just need to put some tasteful dynamics control on a vocal track, this is the easiest thing I could use. Set it just to dig in at the peaks, find the right spot in the mix, and move on. I like the Smack! compressor on vocals, but it does take a few passes to get it just right.

Most people who ask me to engineer for them don't ask me what I'm doing when I pull up a box, open a plug-in and dial in a sound. What people want is their tracks to sound as good as possible as fast as possible. It's really not of much interest to someone who just wants to put up a song on Myspace for me to explain what compression ratio I'm using on an overdub. In that way, the Waves plug-ins from the Musicians 2 bundle is great for smaller budget sessions. I can get a professional sound without having to spend a lot of time on it. That goes a long way for everyone.

When this new band gets their stuff up on Myspace, I'll be sure to post a link. I don't think they have a name, yet. All things in time.

Please excuse the jargon.

I have been visiting the Digidesign website just about every week since I saw that Pro Tools 8 was announced for release. Pro Tools is the recording platform that I use. A new version is always of interest--there's usually something new in these version upgrades.

I started with Pro Tools back in 2002 with version 5. It was great back then, even running on OS9. When OSX came out (for the mac, of course), the upgrade to Pro Tools 6 was considerable. It offered a totally new look to the user interface. Pro Tools 7 wasn't much of an upgrade, but it offered some new MIDI applications as well as some work flow improvements.

With Pro Tools 8, the visual changes, packaged applications, and virtual instruments are a massive change: arguably the largest overhaul Digidesign has made to the industry standard recording platform. Is it worth it? Yes. Does it come with a price? Yes.

The ticket price of the upgrade, for LE users, is $149. For all the stuff you can get for this price, it seems stupid not to upgrade. I encountered a few hidden costs, most of which were a function of my operating system not being up to date.

My operating system, 10.4 (commonly known as Tiger) did not work with Pro Tools 8. The solution was to upgrade to 10.5 (commonly known as Leopard). The cost of this upgrade was $129, purchased at an Apple store in Durham, NC.

Four of my essential, third party plug-ins did not work, or were not recognized by Pro Tools 8, once it launched.

Ozone 3, by iZotope, required a simple patch that I downloaded from the iZotope website. I use Ozone 3 for spectrum analysis, eq matching, and mastering (mostly in Peak 5).

Auto-Tune 4, by Antares Tech, did not load. AT 4 is incompatible with Leopard. I was able to upgrade to Auto-Tune EVO (version 6) for a reduced upgrade price from Antares Tech. I use Auto Tune regularly as a part of my work flow. This cost $129.

RCompressor and REQ by Waves did not load. I use REQ and Rcomp on stereo tracks, usually on aux busses. I considered not upgrading these, just because some really nice compressors and EQ's are now bundled with PT8. But, I had some works in progress that used these plug-ins on key mixes. So, I reluctantly upgraded these, too. The plug-ins were available on the Waves site for $200 a piece. Better yet, Waves offered a Musicians 2 bundle that included both plug-ins as well as two additional compressors (RVox & RAxx) and two valuable effects (doubler and multi-tap). I found this bundle at Sweetwater for $200 total.

Even with about $500 in hidden costs, the upgrade is still worth it. I got to use Pro Tools 8 on two sessions this weekend. I was surprised how quickly everything went.

The first upgrade element I enjoyed was a plug-in called TL Metro. This simple plug-in allows for a click track/metronome to play while the session is in low latency mode. This wasn't an option with the earlier "click" plug-in that was bundled in Pro Tools 7. I was able to edit the click on the fly, mainly to suit the needs of the band, while not having to print and loop an audio track version of the metronome. I saved about 5 minutes per song with this easy application. The program will come in even more handy if I have sessions with tempo elevations or depressions. Thanks, Trillium Labs!

The "save template" option is much more intuitive. Before, I used to save templates as session files. This sometimes made for trouble down the road if the "save audio" locations weren't separate from song to song. The new option makes template creation really, really easy. I saved 10 minutes per song by loading a new session from a saved template rather than from scratch.

Although this is probably not new, the ability to use a MIDI controller to tap a tempo for a song is pretty slick.

The "cadillac" feature of Pro Tools 8 has to be the track compositing feature. Now, rather than shuffling through playlists on the same track, the virtual tracks fan out in different colors below the main track. It's easy to cycle through the alternate takes and select the performances you like. Then, it's easy to "promote" the track to the main track. There is also an ability to rank regions. This feature allowed me to comp a vocal in 10 minutes. This used to take hours. I have no idea how much time I saved with this feature, but it was really nice. This feature alone makes the upgrade worth the price.

On a session from Saturday, I had a piano player come over to track some demos. She wanted a real sounding piano. I offered the option of using her Yamaha weighted keyboard as well as the new "mini grand" instrument plug-in. With each track the "mini grand" out performed the Yamaha "in-the-box" sounds. This virtual piano sounds just like the real thing. Earlier this year, I spent a few studio days recording different grand pianos. The only thing missing from the "mini grand" are the pedal squeaks, headphone bleed, and player noise. While these are sometimes desirable, generally, they get in the way of good piano tone. It was a little too good...kind of scary what they can do with computers now-a-days.

I had trouble navigating the tempo events window. It turns out that it's a separate menu, available in the Events menu. That was a real, "duh" moment. In general, the midi editor is better. I just need to get used to the controls being in a separate window. After a few weeks, I'll probably be used to it.

Pro Tools 8 offers a "score editor" that seems like a great idea. Unfortunately, it doesn't export to earlier versions of Sibelius. I don't do scoring and notation as much as I used to, but this will be another $150 upgrade for the near future. And people wonder why studio time costs what it does.

All in all, the upgrade to Pro Tools 8 is worth the price, even with the hidden costs I encountered. These costs are a function of me not keeping my other systems absolutely up to date. I don't blame anyone but myself for it. Just know that, if you're running earlier versions of plug-ins, you'll probably encounter some of the same troubles I did.

I look forward to using Pro Tools 8 this week. I have a variety of sessions that will, undoubtedly, bring up some new mentionable events.

I saw Nikki Meets the Hibachi for the first time at the Ninth Street Bakery back in 1992. The acoustic duo showed up to a full house of eager fans. They set up their PA quickly and launched into a set of tunes from their first few records, Roast Beast, Hannah's Amorphous Hat, and The Bluest Sky. I was a fan for life after that show. The Bluest Sky, a stripped down acoustic album, recorded in the zeitgeist of the late 80's Chapel Hill music scene, remains one of my favorite albums of all time, too.

And, here we are, January 2, 2009, with everything in my life (and in Nikki's life--they had been relatively inactive for a good while, and then released Back Around, a great companion piece to The Bluest Sky) that happened in the last 17 years since then, and I'm recording this awesome acoustic duo in my new studio.

One of the things I like about all of Nikki's recordings is that, when I listen to them, I feel like I'm sitting around the campfire, taking part in the story. When we talked about how the "recording" would transpire, we agreed that it would be a good idea to at least try recording both acoustic guitar parts "live" together. As you can see in the picture above, Elaine and John set up facing each other. For separation, I put up two Primacoustic baffles, separating the signals. This helped us achieve the isolation we need to process the tracks separately. There's nothing like the sound of a band playing together. The result was really nice. I also printed direct lines for the acoustic guitars. It seems like the modern sound for acoustic guitars is a blend of direct signal and condenser microphone.

I continue to love the new room. It's acoustically transparent. I can set up microphones in the right places and get the tones I want without having to compromise. The struggle used to always be a result of how the room was coloring the tones I was printing. The rough mixes I sent home with the band have no eq or compression on the guitars. And, they sound great.

The songs we recorded were "Swim or Drown," "Better Dealer," "Look What You Done to Me," and "Stay." I look forward to developing these songs a little more in the near future.