Recording Vocals

Kelly and I met with Daniel Reekay at the studio for the seventh day of recording, only to put in about 3 hours.

I began by discussing mixing with Daniel and mention some specific places in certain songs where I had questions about what I was hearing in the rough and about specific parts. We went through the editing a bit before Kelly arrived.

We began by working on "Election: 1800." Kelly did several takes on them and finally got what he was happy with. We talked some about the guitar we've wanted added to it, but ultimately we declared the song finished with the stipulation that if Tha D gets in the studio and records something before it's time to mix it, he can add something else.

We then did several takes of "Gold Rush," which just seems to have fallen on the back burner since it hasn't been touched since its initial tracking date. Kelly got the verses the way he wanted, and we then focused on the chorus. We want it to sound like its inspiration, an un-named Poison song, but I quickly felt like we fell short. What we have sounds pretty dense with so much falsetto over Kelly's lead, but it was still shy of what we wanted. Kelly had to split as three hours had gone by so fast, and Daniel and I played around with the song after he left to see about creating the sound we want. Daniel showed me how his vocal tuning software worked, which I found very interesting.

Our deadline of November 1st is three days away, and it's safe to say we won't make it. The vocals are going more slowly than we'd hoped, which is good since we're happy with them but bad in terms of cost, the factor that is now working its way to the forefront as our biggest challenge. I think Daniel's guitar sessions will also take some more time than we originally planned, and so we could have worked up quite a bill even before we add in the mixing.

The bad thing about all this is that now the Jan 1st deadline to have the CDs in hand won't happen. This makes it harder to think about release shows and other ideas until all those details are more worked out and closer in sight.

The best we can do for now is get in there and do what we can while we pay for what we can and work to complete the album as quickly as possible. Nine tracks are completed. Four more to go.