a new album is in the shop!!

since this blog is WAY too big to load in any sort of timely manner now, i've started a new blog for the next album HERE!! Matt Littlehale is working on a real New Ancients web page where these blogs will be organized better. There's a clip of him in action on the new bog page. A video of someone making a webpage?!?! what a time to be alive.

Come and Get it!

And here it is in real life:

That's it... Tim and I picked it up from Pennsauken on Tuesday. Check those guns out:

I think matt is setting up an online order page over on the ORB site for you out of towners who would like to buy this, but if you're in the area, come by any orb event during the week and grab a copy (you also get a pretty fine poster and postcard if you like). Those of you out of state who pre ordered will be getting your orders in the mail soon - next week we'll begin sending them out. Thanks to you all for helping make this project a reality and thanks for being so patient for all these months!
enjoy!

July 12th is the date...

when we should have the CD in hand.
here's the latest from the manufacturing plant on the CD -

Detailed Information:

Operation Finished Date Status
Prepress 2006-06-21 Finished
Screen Prep 2006-06-30 Finished
CD/DVD Replication 2006-07-02 Finished
On-Disc Printing 2006-07-02 Finished
CTP Computer-To-Plate 2006-06-27 Finished
Packaging Scheduled

it's coming....

Out it goes!

My work here is done.
Brian Jones and I finished up the layout details LATE last night (or early this morning) and the package for Disc Makers is on it's way:

That's it... over a years' worth of work stuffed in that little package. Let's hope it gets to Pennsauken alright.

Art is IN!

It's official: Dave is finished with the artwork for the album! No, you will not get to see it just yet, but you can see this:



What's this in the mailbox? Hmmmmmm... Hmmmmmmmm ???


Classic Dave Ulrich. What am i looking at? *NOTE* this is NOT the art for the album, just the art Dave did for the package that the real artwork is in. Got it?

OK - Jonesy is doing the poster and postcard layout (that's right - if you buy a CD you get a free full color 11x17 poster and a postcard) and he and I are doing the last minute tech additions (thank yous, contact info, release #, etc) that go inside over Dave's work. Hopefully, by the end of this week, the entire package goes out to the press plant. 15 working days later (assuming we didn't screw anything up), little Timmy will be driving down to the Philadelphia area to pick up 10 boxes worth of New Ancients product. You may now start getting choked up.

Album layout sneak peek....

Here are some of the preliminary cover ideas we've come up with for this CD. Get comfy, cause there's lots here. I know you're all excited to see these...



A little kung-foo anyone? This one's for Andy. *snicker*




nice pipe. I think i could set my watch by that haircut.




no idea what this is all about.




good times ahead!




a recent New Ancients photo shoot




costume change. are the collars big enough?




more of the same




Hair. Discuss.




Hjarter Fem means rock.




...by a karate chop to the spine by that guy in the first cover.




too serious i think.




where there sings songs about logs, there goes no audience... me thinks.




after all, isn't this what ORB is?




looks like a tuesday night YAG meeting.




...no comment.




in honor of mustache week.




poor kid. nothing says "this album rocks" like a sheepish photoshoot with pops.




one of my favorites. hey tim! "I like Stuff!"




that one dude on the right blew a fuse in his unit i think.




do my legs look too shiny in this one?




too grim?



well, there it is. Let us know which one you like.

Still Waiting.....

Hey hey -
Quick update to say welcome back to Tim, Emily and Jonesy. They have returned from their globe trekking and have settled again (for the time being) back in NJ. Nice.
In CD news, no super duper developments yet other than the CD art is currently in the works and we've been reviewing roughs via email. Looks real good so far. Also, we're working on new songs already. Yup. Scary huh? this CD isn't even out yet and i'm talking about new stuff. As long as we pay this one off quick (which looks like it will happen pretty soon), we'll do another. Expect that in about a year though. We have 4 brand new tunes we're testing out on people thursday, tuesday, and sunday nights at ORB as well as probably 6 to 7 older ones that we never got to on this album that we can pick from.
In the meantime, i've been working on new songs for The RingOut (Tim, Jeff and my other band) and songs for Chris DeLaCruz. So much good stuff... anyway - that's it for now!

The Waiting Game....

is what we're currently playing... waiting for artwork from the great Dave Ulrich. I'm tempted to post his phone number so you all can call him to get him moving... but in the meantime, we still need funds to pay for the project; so here's a neat little paypal button to make pre-buys extra convenient:

If you haven't done so already, please click that thing and order a CD or 2 for a friend. Alright... sit tight for more updates as things happen... things are always happening.

And There It Is

Know what these are?

You guessed it! The final masters of this crazy CD we've been working on for like a year now. (Why 2? one's louder than the other - i need to listen to them both and see which one feels better and doesn't melt your CD players when actually played). So to back it up a bit here, Christian and i traveled once again out to Plinky's place in Dayton NJ in order to get the finishing touches put on the mixes. But, before you can do any sort of critical listening for sonic integrity of a project like this, it's a good idea to stuff yourself with at least 2 feet of heavilly oiled (and vinegared) italian sub:

We chowed while plink got the songs loaded in his system. I think he may have erased my hard drive i brought with me with all our songs (after they were transfered luckily). I'll just send him a bill later for that.

As you can see, he's quite the man of mystery! What does he really look like? Not many know, i can tell you that much. We also had the daunting task of picking the order of the songs on the disc. It's like a game of tetris trying to line up tempos and moods and lyrical content in order to make a nicely paced and flowing album to listen to. I think we got a winner though.

And that was it! 2 disc burns later and we were flying back east with the finished product in the stereo! Hard to believe it's all done.

Next up, Dave Ulrich has been handed the artwork by Jonesy as he has gone west to meet up and capture Tim and Emily in order to bring them back to New Jersey. Many people miss them much. Especially me. Anyway, dave will be working on the layout and as long as i badger him enough... we'll have it off to press soon!
Well, that's it for the weekly updates... next time you hear from me it will be that the art is done or that materials are off to the press plant. I will keep you all posted. Again, thanks for everyone who is helping out with the pre-buy - we're still going strong with orders- but we need lots more, so get your friends to chip in.
Now for you moment of zen: Christian playing one of plinky's many many fine and rare instruments:

The Last Monday Night Session

Last night was the official LAST night of tracking/mixing for The New Ancients. You heard me right.... we now have a full album awaiting mastering to be done this wednesday. The album also has a title... you ready?
"Light For Dark Eyes".
There it is. Don't complain or make other suggestions, as they will be promptly ignored. The batteries in the cam were dead, so tom only snapped a couple pics... here's basically what the night looked like:

Christian and i made little changes to things here and there to try and tighten up the mixes before we take everything to Plink's in 2 days. That leaves just tonite to make any REAL last minute fixes, which is good because i want this project done and off my plate. Again - this is the curse of having your own studio based on a DAW (digital audio workstation - i.e. computer): you can tweak and make changes ad nauseum till the cows come home and never be finished. I try to keep reminding myself that Ted Templeman and Van Halen recorded Van Halen I in like 8 days or something. 8 Days from first hitting record to masters! that's the way to do it. Anyway, by the end of the night we had full mixes of every song on disc that christian, michelle and i are to listen to and make notes on for possible mix changes late tonite, then christian and i will be heading to 17th ave productions (ONLY ONCE THIS TIME!!!!!) tomorrow. I'll get the cam charged up and take a pic or 2 of Plink in action. That's about it for this week... again - the camera was dead so no vids for your moment of zen... but i found a pic on a web site that should suffice: Check It Out Here.
See you Thursday!

well, it's official....

i'm still not sure i really believe it, but:


Yes. Christian is officially done with tracking his parts. That means no more hoping his voice holds out over the hours of phone calls and meetings he takes part in each day, no more trying to schedule studio time around his super-busy schedule, but most importantly, it means this thing is just about done.
But, i'm getting ahead of myself... first thing we did last night was to review the notes that Plink (the mastering engineer) sent me regarding the first 8 songs i left with him. He agreed to review the work and give me mix comments; things that could be changed to make the mixes better before we master them. I had to go back with the last 3 or 4 songs anyway, so if there were things i could change in the original songs, i could do that and bring new versions with me. Here's a shot of us going through Plink's thoughts on the mixes:

Most of the comments were small changes - some were matters of taste - but overall, i think the mixes are pretty much there. We quickly got to work and tracked christian's lead vocal for "Happy Souls" in record time. After that, it was on to a background vocal for "Jesus Master" which also went really quickly.
The real Dan P solved calculus problems while we worked.

Before i knew it, that was it! it was over! Christian was really all done, and it was only like 9:30. No champagne was broken out and sprayed around the room on each other's heads and into the crowds like you see when the Indy 500 is over. No large tubs of Gatorade dumped over my shoulders or reporters shoving mics in my face asking me "what are you going to do next!?!" like in the Super Bowl. We celebrated by firing up the 1964 Hammond M3 and trying to write an organ line for "Happy Souls".

Which is pretty funny to watch as neither Christian nor i can REALLY play the organ. We can fake stuff ok, but it's like seeing two chimps pounding away with sun-bleached thigh bones on a log deep in the jungle trying to come up with a suitable part.
Here's a clip after the bone pounding was over and we started getting composed:

By this time, most of the peanut gallery had left (Tom, Steph, Dan and Alex) leaving only Michelle, Christian, and myself. We planned the rest of the tracking to be done, which looks like one more session for Jeff and myself to knock off 2 background vocal parts. In the meantime, i will be putting finishing mixing touches on "Jesus Master", "Happy Souls", and "Life Is So Bright".
Alright, that's it for today.... so, this may be the last one of these on this blog; get ready! Christian presents us with our moment of Zen:

You wouldn't like me when i'm angry....

Having had a home based recording studio for some years now (10!) i've evidently arrived at some level of proficency in setting things up like pre amps, compressors, effect, patchbays, and computers. As a result, i often get questions from people starting down the same road of home recording on how do do certain things, and i'm always up for helping people and giving advice - i enjoy doing that. It always seems like most questions are computer related, as they are the source of most mystery and headache in the small home setup. Now, with respect to computers, they present an interesting dicotomy in the recording world. They make it very easy to get certain jobs done fast and efficiently, but on the other hand, they are complex systems that can easily get screwed up so bad, they make work impossible.
I hate them.
Which is really funny, in a sad sort of way, because both my primary career (software engineer) and secondary job (recording engineer / musician) both rely heavily on them. The last thing in the world i want to do is fix computers. When they break on me, i basically turn into the Incredible Hulk. I get the bugged out eyes and the white hot rage, i want to do things like break though cinder block walls and flip cars over, or run down the highway barefoot. I don't have the green body paint, huge muscles, and ripped wranglers of course, and there's also no crazy newspaper reporter following me around trying to catch me in my alter-ego (as far as i know), but you get the picture.
Anyway - on sunday i broke yet another rule that i always warn people about.
Never upgrade any part of your computer (hardware or software) during a project if you don't really have to. Especially when the project is near completion.
So, guess what i did... yep. I decided that it wouldn't be a big deal to go ahead and update my OS to 10.4.5 from 10.3.something for no good reason. Midway throught the update, the Apple updater program warns me about something that has failed
and the system needs a re-bootin'. Ooooooh Kaaaaaay. Reboot.
wait
wait
wait
Nothing.
machine will not come back up.
*eyes turn white and begin darting around the room ala David Banner*

I will spare you all the horrors that soon followed, but suffice it to say it looked a little something like this:

In the end i got really lucky, after doing an OS re-install i only had to reinstall
the MOTU drivers for my 2408, the drivers for my little remote control thingy, and copy all my plugs back into the library folder and when i brought up DP, (and the New Ancients project) everything worked. (as far as i can tell). Whew!
So last night we had quite a large crowd stuffed down there; little Nick showed up:

and we finished up the main vocal for "Jesus Master". Christian's voice was still recovering from 2 weeks ago, but he had just enough gas to get about 5 takes of the song down. As soon as we heard him getting tired, we sent Steph and Alex out for some Riccola throat drops... (Ricco-Recon). In the past, i've had great results with this little bottle of throat drops called "Singer's Saving Grace". It's a super expensive herbal tonic of sorts that helps give extra life to a tired voice with only a few drops down the hatch. When we were tracking vocals for Million Time Winner's "Writing The Broken Line", Christian was drinking this stuff constantly, and it really worked! Give him another one Stpeh:

It worked! Here's Christian excited about finishing yet another main vocal part:

Next, it was on to some horn parts for the choruses of"Happy Souls". Matt Pucci came in with his trombone and quickly nailed his part:

He needed a music stand for the notes he wrote, but of course all my music stands have somehow mysteriously dissapeared into the briney depths of the ORB basement. It's like the Bermuda Triangle down there. Here's what i'm now resorting to:

About an hour later, Blue showed up with the trumpet again and played a part over Matt's 'bone. Warm up, QUICK!

Eventually everyone left leaving me and Blue to finish his part up, giving us peace and quiet to get work done. We pushed Blue's lips pretty hard... he hit some crazy high notes for the rideout of the song. Let's just say he wont be blowing up balloons any time soon. I bet this morning his lips are swelled up like 2 big red hotdogs. Ok - 2 more sessions and this thing is done, for real. Thanks as always to the great Tom Sasso for pics and vids.
So there it is.
And here IT is, your moment of Zen, courtesy of Alex:

so i crossed NJ 6 times in 3 days....

Uh Oh...what's this?!?!?!

This past friday i headed to 17th Ave Productions in Dayton NJ (yes there is a Dayton, NJ) to have the final mix of "Dying Faith" mastered by Plinky for the documentary that Christian Smith and Revelation Studios are doing. I got there late in the morning and after talking shop for a while we got the song (along with about 6 others) transfered onto the studio's system only to find out all the files were corrupted, screwed up, and unusable. I think steam actually came out of my ears. I had to drive an hour all the way back across NJ to my place, get my hard drive with all the files on it, grab some cheese and pretzels for lunch, then immediately drive an hour west back to plink's studio to master the 3 versions of the song that Revelation Studios in Pasedena needed. That left me with exactly one hour to get back to Middletown, pack my crap, and head over to Shrewsbury to where the ORB high school retreat was leaving for the weekend in Hammonton NJ (i was asked to go along to help out). Once i arrived in Shrewsbury, we promptly got on the road for a refreshing 3 hour trip (yes, for some reason it took us 3 hours to get to Hammonton) to the camp where we were headed.
So this weekend in the blueberry capital of the world was something to behold to say the least. I'm sure there will be tons of pictures up on the ORB website fully covering the entire event, so I will just say that this was one super-high-quality group of people to get to know. There is just too much to say about everything that went down - and this is the recording blog, so....
In light of the retreat, i decided to give everbody the night off last night from recording, as we were all totally run down and in desparate need of sleep/repeated showerings/backrubs/baths/hot tea/extra long toilet time etc. Also, Christian has NO voice left after multiple talks and constant yelling, screaming, and laughing. Barely enough to even talk. So as i predicted, no singing was to take place. I ended up working alone last night comping vocals for "Life is So Bright"; one of the last 3 songs to have the finishing touches put in. Looks mighty different in the studio when no one else is there:

You can almost hear the crickets in that picture.

Jeff Ulrich will hopefully be doing vocals this week and i will schedule another mastering trip (this time with the hard drive in tow!).
Finally, just to let you all know, the pre-buy is going very well. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that we're *about* halfway there to paying for the pressing. Keep spreading the word and convincing friends to join the pre-by club. OK - that's all the news i have for now. Next week we'll have more of course!

stay clean -

pete

The Girls Are Done! The Girls Are Done! *ahem*...

Hi Inter-netters...

Lots of news and stuff to report this week, so i'll get right to it.
First off, we are well on our way to paying for the CD pressing now. BIG UPS and thank yous for everyone who has coughed up money for a pre-buy - we've had lots of response already which is good because the faster we get the money, the fast the CD will be in your hands. Again - if you haven't done so already, you can give me (pete) some cash or write me a check and i will be sure to get you on the waiting list. You can also donate online through paypal (which people have done already! thanks internet superheros!) by sending payment to sales@jerkrecords.com with a note that it's for The New Ancients CD pre-buy.

During the last week i finished "Boundless Love" by re-recording a guitar part (thanks for the help Sabrina Nilsen) and redoing the drum part. For the drums i ended up playing a super small set made up of Sammy's 20" Ludwig kick, my '67 Rogers snare, and my super old and decroded (<- from what movie? anyone?) Zildian hi-hats. One microphone in the room set back from the kit was all the song needed i think for the super-stripped down feel it has. i think it works...
So last night we finished up Michelle's final vocal parts for "Happy Souls". Congradulations girl, you're done! She celebrated by quietly knitting in the background. And by "quietly knitting" i actually mean talking loudly while i tried to make critical listening decisions on the mixes. It's cool, that's what everybody does down there. We had Joe sitting in on the session noodling around on my old nylon string acoustic i had when i was a pup:


I also finished up my vocal parts for "Life is So Bright", so now that one is basically in the bag. Steph looks excited about that:


We added some more little toy sounds to "Boundless Love" to finish that up for good as well. Here's a pic a Christian rummaging through the ancient suitcase i carry all my noisemakers around in:


All that's left now is final lead vocals for "Jesus Master" and "Happy Souls". Now, we just need Christian to stay healty and not blow his voice out. And that's a tall order, trust me.
What else?
Rumor has it that this week our own Brian Jones and Dave Ulrich are getting together in NYC to hash out design details for the packaging. I only hope the musical content will be up to par with what these two come up with. Seriously... they do fine work. Want to see one of our previous projects that Dave has done? Sure you do:
They liked Dave's work so much they still use it in the catalog!This is the company who will duplicate the CD.

In other developments:
Christian Smith, author of Soul Searching
and professor at UNC Chapel Hill, is doing a documentary on kids and how they relate to religion and the church these days. He found out about ORB and had to come check it out. Soooo, a few weeks back there was a film crew here from Revelation Studios in South Pasadena, CA getting footage of ORB and following a couple kids around their daily routines and whatnot. The director found out that we were recording these songs and were interested in hearing what we had. Long story short: they want to use "Dying Faith" in their film. That means, friday I'm on my way to get a few versions of it mastered. Now, i consider myself a pretty shoddy 2-bit tracking and mix engineer for the most part, but i am even worse at mastering, so i will be taking the final mixes to our friend Plinky at 17th Ave. Productions for this last stage. I've done lots of projects with Plink over the years and he is a true master at engineering, mixing, mastering, and production - so it's always great to get his input on my work. It's also nice to finaly get out of my place and work in someone else's, so i'll take some pics of the session so you all can see a real studio in action. I'm excited about this film development because it presents the opportunity for this music to be heard by tons of people all over the world, and more importantly, i don't have to do anything! i love that part. Anyway, I will keep you all posted on wen and where this film can be seen.

Ok, that's enough. In closing, it wouldn't be an update without one of these: Your moment of zen, Steph style:

Steph Finishes... Or Does She?

Howdy Snappers.
Last night we hit yet another mile marker: Steph has officially finished her parts on this recording. *please take this time to weep gently with your face in your hands, or on the shoulder of a loved one close by*.... *ok, now snap out of it*.
Christian was sick yesterday (as was i, but i didn't have to sing, so here i am), so he didn't make it to the session. Steph was there with her friend Alex - who i'm pretty sure is her new agent/manager/bodyguard and as usual Tom Sasso was shootin' pics and talking about fights at hardcore shows and spraypaintin' stuff. We also had a special guest appearance by the one and only Andy Bova who was sitting in to pick up recording tips as he is just setting his studio up with the same system i use here. He doesn't know what he's walking into though. Look at the fear in his face:


Also absent (again) was Tim. Where has he been? I've been needing my assistant! I need someone to get me my coffee! Untangle those mic cables! answer the door! let the dog out! let the dog back in! rub my back! rub tom's back! *ahem* He and his girlfriend Emily decided to take some serious time off and head out across the country on their way to Hawaii, then back to the west coast, then at some undetermined time coming back here (hopefully). They are traveling with some grizzled old sea captain too, so they've got that going for them. While you're wasting time reading this blog, you may as well waste some more by checking in on their whereabouts at Their TRAVEL BLOG HERE. Navagation on that site is a bit cryptic, but worth it in the end. There are some great pictures of their travels. Maybe by the time they return this CD will be done? maybe? maybe not. only time will tell. It always does.
Anyway...
We worked on "Happy Souls" last night for the most part, along with a bunch of little mix tweaks for a few other tunes. Here's steph being patient while i teach andy some fancy computer skillz:


And here we are talkin' shop and wastin' time. Look at that pic of me. What a nurd! I look somewhat taken by andy's sky blue hat:


Tom had a brand new 100 watt lightbulb installed in the side of his head earlier in the week. I think this helps him take great photos:


Here's a classic shot of one of the biggest studio no-no's there is. Tom manages to catch me with a cup of joe perched on the mixing board. I should know better as in the past i have spilled 3/4's of a bottle of beer into the exact group of faders on this console. No good. Although it may be argued that it made the board actually sound better. At least it made for a fun night of cleanup.


Now, back on the subject of Tim. In honor of him not being around, i did a re-mixed version of one of his Patrick Swift songs called "I Like Stuff" after someone brought up the idea while eating at the Red Bank diner on saturday night. So sunday, i got to work. Now, it's technically not a remix as i did not have any of his source tracks to actually re-mix, this is a brand new tune with samples from the original flown in. It's a good example of a "one-day-song". I played bass, keys, and Sammy's drumset for this recording. Listening tips: crank volume, crank bass control, insert little glow sticks in mouth (or baby pacifier), turn off lights, remove shirt (not you girls), drink 3 red bulls, spin in circles repeatedly. Enjoy!
I Like Stuff ReMix.mp3

So, there you have it -> But before you go, here it is, your moment of zen:

Want a CD? here's how you can help....

Quick post here - i just finished a session with Jeff Ulrich doing vocals for 'Boundless Love' and a guitar part for 'Happy Souls'. 'Boundless Love' is just about done now... here's a squiggly shot of jeff with his shiny new blue and gold guitar:

I used our new pre amp for all these tracks. I've only done like 5 sessions with it and i love it already. You want to see it? probably not, but here it is anyway:

So anyway, regarding the topic of the post, we are starting a pre-buy in for the CD. What's that? glad you asked. We're trying to raise dollars (lots of them) to cover the cost of pressing this thing, so we are asking for donations in the form of a pre-buy. You cough up 10 bucks now, and you get the CD when it's done (a month or 2 from now). No need to worry - this thing is getting made even if i have to sell that pretty little number in the above picture in order to pay for it. Hopefully it wont come to that. If you feel inclined to help financially, you can talk to me personally - pete(at)jerkrecords(dot)comm - or paypal us some moo-lah to sales@jerkrecords.com (make sure to indicate "The New Ancients CD pre-buy" somewhere in the paypal payment). I will keep track of who has donated so everyone gets a copy. I'll use my fancy computer.
Anyway, the more of you who donate now, the quicker it will get into your hands... so - thanks!

...and another one's gone and another one's gone

A little tip of the hat to Queen of course to indicate that yet another song is done (Our Song Be Sung). This one may be my favorite so far. Last night we had another small crew at the studio working on guitars and vocals; which can be great for getting a lot of work done quickly, but as Sasso and I found out (being the only 2 people there for the first couple of hours) that's not always the case. We got this new pre amp / eq unit in last week (the Vintech x73i) and i'm still trying to get used to it. Every time i get something new into the rack, i need to spend months working with it on all kinds of sound sources and mics to get a handle on how it performs. This thing sounds soooo good... but for some reason it took us quite a while to dial in the right guitar sound. That and i was having a hard time playing the part i wrote for the song. Here's a pic tom snapped of me fiddling with my new toy:


Once i got it together though, man... this tune really fell into place. I can't wait for you all to hear it. How bout a taste? OK - tom shot a small vid of me doing a line for a verse. Note... the guitar is a 1973-ish Fender Telecaster (owned by Matt Agresti) and the amp is an older Fender Bassman coupled with some moldy old Fender 2x12 cab that says "Dream Band" on it. Both of these items come to us compliments of the venerable Andrew Light. I love it when people leave their gear with me. We are using an sm57 a bit off center into the x73i, then hitting an 1176 a bit hard to get a nice squishy clean sound. All that desciption for a 3 second clip of me playing 7 notes:


After getting these last guitar tracks out of the way, we moved on to doing a bunch of vocal takes for "Boundless Love". That track will be a much more bare bones song(from a production standpoint) than some of the rest of these; which is good as i'm getting impatient to finish this thing!! Here's a shot of Michelle furiously knitting while waiting to do her parts:


This week I believe the artwork for the release is being started (or talked about at least)... i'm excited about that. We have top notch people lined up to work on a CD layout, so along with that you can expect all the usual band related chochki like shirts, buttons, stickers, web related things, and so on and so forth.
Finally, it wouldn't be a recording update without one of these.
Here it is, your moment of Zen:

We're Back Baby.....

Long post today kids, so go get a nice beverage and some salty snack to stuff in your maw while you read the last couple weeks of shenanigans. Lots to report today as we were in Italy last week and a few sessions happened between now and then. First off, it's time to announce the name of this project we've been working on. We thought for a while about what to call this thing; we can't call it The ORB because there's a techno band in Europe somewhere called "The Orb" or "ORB" or something, so there's no way i can press a CD with a band that has the same name. Also, for whatever reason, we didn't want "Worship Band" showing up anywhere in the name... just didn't feel right. Sooooo, we finally settled on a name, and the band will be called The New Ancients. We figured it's fitting since we're putting new modern treatments to super old hymns. Anyway, if you don't like the name - too bad. it's staying. Now - onto the BLOG.

Part 1 - Italy

Now, i know it's got nothing to do with recording this album, but i'm writing the blog, and i figured what the neck. Our trip last week was a short 5 day jaunt to Florence, Italy (me, sandi, christian, and michelle). Why'd we go? For Sandi and I, it was a gift to each other for our 10 year anniversary coming up this summer, and for Christian, it was a birthday present from Michelle. We just happened to pick the same trip from a travel club thingy called Club ABC Tours, so we all went as one big group. We stayed in the Hotel Baglioni in the middle of Florence:

Our Joint.


Here we are in a super small Italian Elevator in the hotel.

Here's a short video of Chrisian doing his best to contaminate the Italian population with some of his super duper USA germs:


Florence is once of those European cities with 10 billion little cobble stone roads that go in all sorts of wacky directions, clogged like an artery with a non-stop jam of scooters, bikes, and cars (and by cars i mean large go-carts). For example, here's

the "Ape50". It's only got 3 wheels (sorry i didn't get the entire thing in the shot). Yeah, they drive these on the freeways.

We stayed near the center of town where the "Duomo" (HUGE cathedral) was. We gave this thing many different names during the trip: The DoJo, Dong Dong, Dim Sung, Big Don, BranDon, etc, etc.
Here's a shot of the duomo from up in the bell tower next to it.Note the maze of streets below... we will deal with those things later.



Seems like music really is the universal language of love and unity.

Christian was given a little job by one the local shopkeeps here in Red Bank. The owner of the Red Bank Bead Shop gave him a shirt and asked for a picture or 2 of him wearing the shirt in front of something famous for an advertisement or something. We had a field day with this one. I'll spare you from some of the more childish ones of him posing with statues with weenies (which were by far the best).

This should bring in some serious business.

We rented a car one day and drove out into the countryside to a town called San GiMiniano (i think) which was like right out of the middle ages. We were given a tip by our friend Kim Dean (who lived in Florence for a little while) to go see the "Torture Museum" there. Oooo! sounds like fun! It was indeed a load of laughs:

As long as you got a kick out of reading about how they used to saw people in half while they hung upside down by their ankles using a huge tree saw, or how they'd pour molten lead in your ear, or break all your bones in your arms and legs and thread your mashed up limbs through the spokes of a large wagon wheel, then prop it (and you) up on a pole for people to throw their poo at while they ridicule you. Ahhh... what a time to be alive.
Next, it was on to Sienna, where we walked the streets and tried to stay clear of torture museums (there were lots). It's tough not to be the "LOOK AT THE AMERICANS" types with our crew:

Here's Christian hanging on an iron ring in a wall that medieval folk may have used to tie up their horses (or tie up some poor rube who was being chastised by the town for missing church service once). It was there for a thousand years and now some dingbat may break it for the sake of a picture in a blog on the inter-zoo.

We visited many old cathedrals there, which was pretty wild to see how people used to go to church. Especially considering how we do it these days in a church like The ORB. Maybe we could get a place like this to hold our services:

Don't remember where this one was... but it had a gift shop:

"Blessed is He..... who saves 10% on all items in the t-shirt section"

While walking around these cities, we tried to make it a point to get pictures of streets, shops, piazzas, etc. with familiar names. For Example:

Note the double fist gellato action sandi's got going on. (kidding - one's mine).

We eventually had to drive back to Florence in the dark - yeah that was fun - i have no idea how we made it back through all those streets and alleys in one piece. Here's a clip of the ground we covered coming back into the city:

Keep in mind sandi and i walked up to this point from that duomo in the distance.
We walked a lot.

All in all it was a great trip - it was my first time in Europe and I loved it. I want to go back really bad. Hopefuly nect year sandi and i will make it to Spain so she can show me where she used to live. We'll see. There's so much more to tell about the trip, but this is a blog for an album being recorded, so on that note...

Part 2 - Back to Work

Now that we had a band name decided on, there was a new sense of direction and drive to get this thing done. Once again, i'll spare you reports of the countless hours of mix and edit tweaks i do every day, but last night we got some good ground covered. In attendance was most of the usual riff raff plus Dan and Jay (who played some tasty electric guitars on Dying Faith a while back) and Jonesy. There may have been others... sorry if i forgot you, but i was busy trying to hear christian sing over the constant din of talking, bag rustling, and jocularity.

I wanted to get a mando part out of Jonesy, but we were deep in vocal country, and it's a Big Country.


Jay gets the camera ready for full coverage.

We did a bit more keyboard work last night -

Christian looks on insanely as i knoodle the knobs in the background.

Here's a clip of Happy Souls in progress:

Love that MicroKorg.

We completed vocals for Our Song Be Sung (tracking for that is basically OVER), and got a good chunck of the girls parts on Happy Souls done. Magic Dave wil be here tonite i think to play piano for that as well. Lastly, it wouldn't be a blog update without some kind of clip of christian acting like a lunatic:

There you have it.

OK, i'm tired of typing and i've wasted my whole morning at work here writing this up, so it's time to stop. Thanks to everyone for hanging in there with us while we are taking forever to finish this CD. Trust me, it will be worth the wait.
OK, I'm out...

bongos and bells....

Short update today; as i'm pretty sure you're all getting very bored of what appears to be the same pictures, videos, and banter every week. In attendance this time was Steph (who was only there as a vocal coach of sorts), Dan and Eugene, Jarred (for a little while), Tim (assisting), Michelle, and Tom of course shooting vids and pics.


Last night was more tracking with Michelle for background vocals on Life is So Bright and Our Song Be Sung. While we waited for Michelle to get to the studio, we knocked off a bunch of little support overdubs: I actually sang a part for Fairest Lord Jesus. Jeesh. I received much crap from the peanut gallery while i did that for some reason. After i did my vocal lines, Jarred mentioned that he liked my voice and he wanted to hear me front a band. Yeah, all i need is another band to be involved with. Especially in a front man capacity. It will never happen.


Tom Sasso smacked the bongos for a part in Happy Souls (yes... Tom Sasso and His Bongos is on this CD now. Actually, he played my bongos which belonged to my grandfather. He got them in Cuba in the 30's, so it's really Tom Sasso and Ted Sari's Bongos from Cuba). Also, Eugene also snuck onto the CD by playing a keyboard part for Fairest Lord Jesus. We needed a glockenspeil-ish sound for a part in the bridge and he miraculously came up with a pretty close bell/chime sound on my microKorg. It literally took him 15 minutes to design the sound and 15 seconds to actually play the part. Thanks Eugene, here's your Food Pellet.
Here's Tom warming up for a vocal part he will never do:


Jarred wants to do something on this project i think. Tom caught him trying to show off his mad bass skillz. Sorry dude, i recorded those parts already. Although i'm sure i did not look that good doing them.


After Michelle finished her vocal parts and half of the crew left for the night, the rest of us listened to our progress on all the tunes up to this point, making some mix changes and tossing around ideas here and there. I spent many many hours over the previous week doing mix and edit tweaks by myself, and some of the songs are finally closing in on completion. I have a little chart of what needs to be done still, i will post a pic of it next week maybe. Actually, there will be no post next week as Christian, Michelle, Sandy, and I will be in Italy for 4 days. That's right, Italy. Maybe i'll do a blog about that, even though it has nothing to do with the recording. We'll see. Ok - this actually turned out to be a lot longer that i hoped. sorry. see you next time with pics from our trip!

how to stink up a room...

Why that title? well, lets just say i wish there was a way to transmit smells over the interweb here. like some sort of html tag in which you could embed odor to make a smell come out of the speakers of someone's computer. That way you could get a taste (almost literally) of what our little iso booth was like after last night's tracking. We had Steph singing (who had copious amoust of garlic at some point during the day), Michelle singing (she smelled fine), Christian singing; and when i say singing, i mean farting with a bit of singing in between, and Blue (Rob) playing trumpet after coming directly from working at Panerra, smelling like garbage (but in a good way).
We spent most of the night tracking vocals for "My Faith Looks Up". Here's a shot of Christian warming up. Notice the Mustache left over from Mustache Week at ORB. I'm pretty sure that it helped him nail some pretty sweet lines.


Tim looks on (with a mustache of course). Shouldn't he be running a bowling alley right about now?


So here's a clip of Cwis getting into it - i'm telling you the mustache really helps!:


Steph and her friend Alex check out the action from the back of the control room. Notice the piles of crap everywhere. What a mess. We need an intern to clean up and do the other stuff that i don't want to do. Anyone interested please contact me at pete (at ) jerkrecords (dot) com. Be aware that the job will be thankless, low pay (that means no pay really), and you will learn just a little bit about how to make mediocre sounding recordings.


And Now..... the Action:


Michelle gets serious for her parts. Very Serious.


Here's Blue getting his tooter ready for some tracks on "Savior of my Soul":


Tim and I get one of the MANY amps (that have been left at the studio by other people) ready for some overdubs. Sshhhh... don't tell.


Christian gets one of his overdub lines together. How does he do it? See clip:


How did it turn out?


Once again Tom Sasso took all the pics and vids. Good job my man. It's funny - i told him that shorter clips are better for the blog here than real long ones, so when i got the camera back this morning and looked at all vids, most of them were like 2 or 3 seconds long and totally unusable. I guess that's what i asked for. Here's the man:


OK - only a few more tunes needs vocals and then it's on to heavy mixing/editting.
until next week -

Steph Goes to Work

Last night's session was vocals with Steph. We had a small group in the studio which is always more productive, cause you don't have to yell "shut up!" constantly to 6 people directly behind you kabitzing while you're trying to hear the subtleties between microphones and preamps when picking equipment to match with different people's voices. Tom Sasso was there popping pictures and vids again, so here's what he saw:

Steph in the booth getting ready.


Here's steph doing a line from "Life is So Bright". (The audio on this is a bit quiet because you're hearing everthing from outside the glass, so turn up your speakerz). From that look she shot Tom, i don't think she was all to keen on this take. Don't worry Steph, DO IT AGAIN!


LittleHale was present to provide motivation and "Nerd Kicking" as neccessary.

We finished up with Steph's parts pretty quickly, so while we waited for Christian to show up i did a few taborine and backup vocal parts. This is were i get to run the session (for the most part) from that little remote control dealie i mentioned a few posts back. Very useful. Still, you need someone sitting behind the desk telling you that your performance sucked, so....


Steph took the controls. Good Job! You get a Food Pellet. (and an album credit).


Here I am in the box furiously shaking my tambo. We didn't have a camera fast enough to catch the action, hence the unavoidable blurriness of this shot.

After Christian showed up, we put a couple small parts of his down for "Faith Looks Up" and talked about how we wanted the vocal for that song to be structured. That song will end up quite different from the way it is played at the ORB... hopefully you'll like it. That was about all we did... the next session hopefully will be thursday morning, then the next monday again. We are getting closer though: a couple acoustic tracks, and a few lead vocal tracks to go and pretty much all of the tracking will be done. Then it's on to mixing. Ugh.

until next time...

Two posts in one day!?!

Well, i actually just recorded some drum work and figured i'd put the clip up that Sandi shot. I had this crazy idea of getting a drum loop recorded by playing along to a very sped up clip of "faith looks up", then playing my recorded drum segment back at normal speed. If you did this with magnetic tape it would just sound like real low and mushy drums. But in this case i wanted a real grainy, digitally streched sound, so i used this fancy digital looper thingy that i use when i do the space-terror-rock-jazz-thing with The Big Mechanical Bull. When you dial back the tempo on recorded drums, they sound really cool and techno. Or something like that. Here's a clip of me recording on my son Sammy's vintage Stewart and Ludwig orange sparkle set carefully wedged in the corner of his room. Check out the decor.


later nits -

That's all we did??

OK, monday's regular session was postponed because i had another job i had to get done, so Christian and Tim did some work by themselves on tuesday afternoon while i was at my other job (you know, the one that actually provides me with a constant paycheck so that i can feed the familly and pay the mortgage). On one hand, sessions like these are a bit sketchy, because i am not there to "oversee" the production and provide artistic direction - not that these guys aren't capable of doing great things; they are! but you never know whats going to happen. For example, a totally ridiculous synth part may be commited to a track, or a vocal may be done with the microphone facing the wrong direction (this has happened before and i wont mention names) or soda may be spilled into something important. On the other hand, i love walking in at the end of the day to see all the fantastic work that has been accomplished without me having to be chained to the console all night.
Well, tuesday's work didn't really fall into either category. Tim and Christian were set up to do acoustic and electric guitars, vocals, and pretty much anything else except drums and bass - which i usually handle anyway. They had 3 or 4 songs to get overdubs done on, so i was sure that large chucks of the work would be knocked off.
Not Quite.
When i came home they played me "Life is So Bright" which they had been working on for 3 hours or so. The result? A synth track, an acoustic track, and a track of electic guitar - actually, they didn't get that because the amp was flipping out and had to be swapped. As i listened to the stuff they had (which was really cool for sure) Christian just kept saying "i can't believe this is all we did!".
I figured i'd take some shots of them while they were doing some electrics...
Tim is playing the old Million Time Winner Les Paul. It is as heavy as a bag of concrete.


Here's a stirring shot of micrphones pointed at a speaker.
Wow.


This little video clip pretty much sums up how i found these two "working" when i got there. I wonder why so little got done?


I want to get this project done in January, but there's pretty much no way in the world that's going to happen. There is so much to do still - i feel like i will be editting every night from 11 PM on for the next month. Next session i hope to knock off at least 1 vocal track, so hopefully we'll get some shots of the ladies singing instead of christian acting like a lunatic. Although that is always worth not getting some work done!

until next week...

Small Update

Hi again.
Real quick before i begin: i know the videos on the last blog were not showing up correctly. I am looking into that and will fix it. Keep checking back daily. They will show up eventually.
Last night was a lighter night as far as attendance goes, as Sandy was having a super meeting upstairs with all kinds of MOPS women. That's mothers of pre-schoolers for those not in the know. It's a christian women's support type group for moms with little kids. they meet at our place once in a while to plan their yearly curriculum or something. I think they were up there having a raging kegger or playing poker. Anyway - they needed it a bit more quiet, so no loud amps or drums for this night. Also, no waves of ORB recording types coming up and down in and out of the studio rummaging through the fridge and my snack cabinets. So, in attendance were only Christian and Michelle. Before the Ladies Upstairs all showed up, i was able to do a drum track for My Faith Looks Up, which is what we were going to try to work on for the session. Here's what the drumset looked like with microphones of all sorts pointed at it:


I got a new toy for the studio and i am loving it. Usually my new toys are really expensive things that do things like "make the microphone louder" or "make that signal quieter and then louder". But this one everyone else in the session gets a kick out of.

This thing is a wireless remote control for the computer recording system. It lets me start and stop playback, add new tracks or takes, rewind, fast forward, undo, save, etc etc. from anywhere in my studio. Very Cool. It's great for thos who do a lot of recording on their own. For me, often when i record drum parts, i'm in the control room pressing "record", then booking it through the amp room into the drum isolation booth, hopefully in time to start playing. If i screw up, i need to run back and undo, rewind, and start again. For our session last night, i used this for recording Christian doing electric guitar overdubs while totally relaxing in my chair not hunched over the console.


Here's a short video clip of Christian writing guitar lines while sitting on the control room floor. Check out the sweater he's rocking.



We got most of the foundation tracks of this song done, so it's on to vocals next. Michelle worked on her homework while we fiddled around with the knobs and whatnot:


Thats about it for today. Next session is thursday morning with Christian again. See you then!

happy new yearz.


today we have the first ever photo and video update. Monday's session was attended by myself, christian, michelle, jeff, tim, and tom sasso. Matt Littlehale strolled in at one point too. The night's objective was to get some support acoustic guitar tracks and vocals done. Tim and I started before everyone arrived and got a good chunck of Fairest Lord Jesus completed, with him and i both recording guitar parts.
Then things slowly ground to a halt as the rest of the crew showed up. I gave the digital camera to the peanut gallery while we tracked and here's what it came back with.

Tim and I discuss the finer points of music making.


Christian Arrives.



Pre-production starts. This is where we talk about how we want a song or partsof a song to sound like and who's going to play what. Here's a video of
the intricacies of such a discussion.





Hi Michelle. Poor girl - she teaches unruly kids all day and then spends
her night with us.



The boys look on as christian tracks acoustic guitars.




In the Hot Box recording something. I can't remember what though.





Jeff was going to sing a lead - we made him come all the way out and he never
got a chance to actually do anything except clog up the works and make
a lot of noise.





I contemplate the situation.





Tim takes the helm as we really get into serious business.






The night finally falls to pieces as Christian tries to do a guitar track
for Savior of My Soul. He is in the tracking room in this clip.





Tom took the pics and vids. Love him, you can do no less.
Alright, thats enough for now... see you next week.

hey ho and welcome to my little corner of the orb web site.

i'm suprised you managed to find it tucked all the way down here.
Anyway, my name is pete and i'm the one recording and producing this
CD that the ORB is putting together. What's this CD all about?
Well, we at ORB have been singing a handfull of songs for a while now
that we feel are pretty spiffy. They are a mixture of original songs and
older hymns that Christian has written new music for and sometimes added
choruses or little re-arrangements. Since we have tons of very musically
inclined people here, we decided to record these before we forget 'em.
I must say that this is some of the best stuff i've ever recorded and
it features some absolutely genius playing by the people who are apart
of our community. We're really excited to let you all hear what we've
been brewing up over here, so in the meantime, you can read about it.

I've ordered web-master-matt to give me this space so that i can keep
everyone up to date on the progress of the project, as i hear requests
constantly for more tunes to be done. Keep your pants
on, we're gettin' there. I will put up pics and maybe a short video clip or 2
(if jay ever gives me his tape) so you can see what the recording process
looks like along with a weekly description of what we get done.

So... to kick it off, here's what's done:

Mercy Chases Me
Be Merciful
There Still is Room

Here's whats almost done (as of this post):

Dying Faith
Jesus Savior of my Soul
Jesus Master
Fairest Lord Jesus

Here's what still needs a lot of work:

Our Song Be Sung
Happy Souls
My Faith Looks Up

There are a few more we have not even started yet, (or even picked out for that matter),
but we will try to hurry up and get this done for early next year ('06).

This is the ORB Worship CD Blog

All of the news, updates, pics, samples, and whatnot that you could ever wish for.