Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Some self-deprecating words about Production Value

I'm going to go all geeky for a post and talk about how we recorded our EP, Seymmone O'Jhae reveals "My Life as a Fake."

(I know... I set myself up on that one: my geek-ness will not be limited to this single post. It's sort of hardwired.)

We recorded everything in our rehearsal space and living rooms, and mixed it ourselves on our laptops. Other than Todd Stefanson at Spare Room Studios (yeahh Todd!) who took pity upon us and mastered it for us, no professionals were harmed in the creation of these tunes. It may not be the slickest batch of tunes you'll hear, or the most-polished production value you'll come across (other than the mastering), but it is 100% the DIY (do-it-yourself) attitude of four guys in a room that are trying to share their stuff with their friends.

For the most part, the songs were recorded into a program called Logic on Apple MacBook Pros using a Motu Pre8 digital interface (which converts sound into a digital file), and then mixed down with Logic. None of us are recording or sound engineers, so we started from scratch to learn this stuff. We still have a long way to go, but we're far enough along that we don't feel too silly in sharing our efforts at this point!

Some of the songs were put together in a process that sort of resembles what goes on in an actual recording studio, with one part being played, such as the drums, and then the other parts being overdubbed on top of that original recording. Other songs were live-off-the-floor performances with a few minor overdubs to add parts or fix things up. At least one of them was pretty much a straight-up live-off-the-floor effort, at least as far as the music went. And a couple of them were built with a combination of sound samples and live performance.

Gone are the days of just pressing "record" on a ghetto-blaster. (Haha. I referenced a ghetto-blaster. I am so 1980s it's ridiculous.)

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