...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!