Hey everybody!
The album is ready to be born, I'm maybe an hour away from saying goodbye to my new friends Max and Emily! This is by far the most progressive album ever released by a Yale group, and OOTB should be very proud of themselves as well as Max and Emily for all the hard work they have done. It's been a good week, and I hope you all enjoy the album!
-Bill Hare
Saturday, August 15, 2009
So close...
We're a couple of hours away from the end. Everything is sounding wonderful. We're about to go to dinner, then come back and finish. Holy moly.
Oh man
We're making our first bounce of a finalized mix (Between the Lines). This is exciting.
Won't be able to write much today, since we'll basically be making involved decisions the whole time. But then we'll have the finished album.
Good morning, though!
Won't be able to write much today, since we'll basically be making involved decisions the whole time. But then we'll have the finished album.
Good morning, though!
Friday, August 14, 2009
Cheesy is fun
Bill Hare just had me record this extra plucky rhythmic guitar part in the bridge of The Freshman, on syllables that I can only describe as "bng, bngk-a-dng-a-d-bng, bng, a dng-a dng-a." I love the way it sounds with the rest of the vocals there.
Joh Joh Noh Doh
Good morning good morning good morning. Today is exciting---we're doing drafts of the last two songs! We're starting with The Freshman and then doing Everytime We Touch, a fun arrangement that quotes a lot of other songs. (Not that quoting is particularly original. The arrangement is fun anyway.) After that, all that we still have to do is go back and take a second listen to our drafts, tweaking the mix based on things we hear now that we didn't hear before. Then Bill will master the album, using some extra compression and equalization to make sure the tracks come together to form a cohesive album.
Right now Bill is laying the groundwork for the Freshman. He just set basic compression and equalization levels for the Trio, which isn't in the original song--Steven added two extra lead vocals to form block chords with the solo in the last chorus. It rocks. (If you can't tell, I like writing about what Bill is doing. Gives me something to do between real paragraphs.)
(Now he's putting a filter on one of the snare tracks in the vocal percussion to make it sound scratchier.)
(Now he's letting it play and moving knobs and things on his mixing boards. Must be important.)
(Now Woodstock just jumped up on Emily's lap. He's the orange cat in the pictures that I'll put up in a couple of days when I have my camera cable.)
It feels crazy that we're wrapping things up, and that in less than 48 hours the album will be finished. It basically consumed the last six months for all of us, and it thoroughly consumed my summer since mid-June. I'm not complaining. I've learned a lot, and most of it has been very fun. And it's been really cool to see each song come together piece by piece.
Alright, we're getting into the fun stuff. Time to pay more attention.
Right now Bill is laying the groundwork for the Freshman. He just set basic compression and equalization levels for the Trio, which isn't in the original song--Steven added two extra lead vocals to form block chords with the solo in the last chorus. It rocks. (If you can't tell, I like writing about what Bill is doing. Gives me something to do between real paragraphs.)
(Now he's putting a filter on one of the snare tracks in the vocal percussion to make it sound scratchier.)
(Now he's letting it play and moving knobs and things on his mixing boards. Must be important.)
(Now Woodstock just jumped up on Emily's lap. He's the orange cat in the pictures that I'll put up in a couple of days when I have my camera cable.)
It feels crazy that we're wrapping things up, and that in less than 48 hours the album will be finished. It basically consumed the last six months for all of us, and it thoroughly consumed my summer since mid-June. I'm not complaining. I've learned a lot, and most of it has been very fun. And it's been really cool to see each song come together piece by piece.
Alright, we're getting into the fun stuff. Time to pay more attention.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Ah won't go home without you!
We're well into our third song of the day, Won't Go Home Without You, by Maroon 5. Matt Wade sings it. He's from Georgia. (Also, this song is fun. I keep wanting to bounce.)
(Also fun, this ridiculous video that Bill Hare wanted us to see.)
More musings... One of the more interesting parts of working with Bill has been getting his insight on our album-making process. He stopped working at one point to ask us whether we had only two people per voice part in our group, or if we had decided specifically to record that way. The latter is true--we're just under twenty people, but we have two people record each voice part on each song, and we rotate it so everyone records pretty evenly. And Bill thinks that works best---he thinks it's kind of ridiculous when a whole group records everyone on every song, leaving him with eight different bass tracks to mix together.
More interesting: So last album, we recorded two people at a time, in the same room, on separate microphones. I had us record one person at a time, hoping that we'd have better quality control and actually take less time in the end, but recording background vocals actually took a really long time---about 40-45 minutes per person per song, on average, with 8-10 people per song. But Bill says he actually tends to record four people at a time, all on the same voice part on different microphones. The big difference is that while we would have each person record about 4-8 measures in a row, stop, talk about it, and do it again, he tends to take a very small chunk and loop it over and over again, and the four people will sing it more and more comfortably and more and more together, and eventually the timing and the tuning and the energy just lock. And he gets a voice part recorded in around 45 minutes, all four people. We must try this.
Alright, I'm going to stop writing. Won't Go Home is almost done. Looks like we might start a fourth song today.
(Also fun, this ridiculous video that Bill Hare wanted us to see.)
More musings... One of the more interesting parts of working with Bill has been getting his insight on our album-making process. He stopped working at one point to ask us whether we had only two people per voice part in our group, or if we had decided specifically to record that way. The latter is true--we're just under twenty people, but we have two people record each voice part on each song, and we rotate it so everyone records pretty evenly. And Bill thinks that works best---he thinks it's kind of ridiculous when a whole group records everyone on every song, leaving him with eight different bass tracks to mix together.
More interesting: So last album, we recorded two people at a time, in the same room, on separate microphones. I had us record one person at a time, hoping that we'd have better quality control and actually take less time in the end, but recording background vocals actually took a really long time---about 40-45 minutes per person per song, on average, with 8-10 people per song. But Bill says he actually tends to record four people at a time, all on the same voice part on different microphones. The big difference is that while we would have each person record about 4-8 measures in a row, stop, talk about it, and do it again, he tends to take a very small chunk and loop it over and over again, and the four people will sing it more and more comfortably and more and more together, and eventually the timing and the tuning and the energy just lock. And he gets a voice part recorded in around 45 minutes, all four people. We must try this.
Alright, I'm going to stop writing. Won't Go Home is almost done. Looks like we might start a fourth song today.
I use fewer exclamation points than Emily
Hello again! Another productive day so far---we've only been at it for a little over three hours and we've already finished one song (Fix You) and we're probably about half an hour away from finishing a second (Between the Lines).
I guess this is kind of a shameless plug for the album, but what strikes more and more is that every song ends up being far better than I'd imagined it would be. And I'd already thought our album tracks were very strong, so that's saying a lot. Everything just seems to end up sounding really appealing and exciting---Bill is great at bringing out the energy and motion in our arrangements.
Also, I don't mind making a shameless plug. I'm really excited. That's what I want to talk about.
Emily is making fun of me by writing "blog blog blog blog" on a sticky note on her laptop. I do not know what she's getting at.
Ahhh fun! He just made Rachel LaViola's "wih-nih-nih"s do crazy stuff---they sound really distant and echoey and they're moving back and forth from left to right. And all the while they're going through some kind of distortion.
The above will probably sound pretty normal to members of pop/rock a cappella groups at other schools, but it's still a pretty new thing for us, so you'll have to forgive my giddyness. Our first album to have lots of effects and production on it was our previous album, just two years ago, so we're still basically in uncharted territory. I wonder if Yale will end up going in this direction en masse... I really like how our songs sound this way, so I hope we keep making albums like this.
Alright, about to go to lunch. Two songs finished and it isn't even 1:00 yet. Sweet. Four to go.
I guess this is kind of a shameless plug for the album, but what strikes more and more is that every song ends up being far better than I'd imagined it would be. And I'd already thought our album tracks were very strong, so that's saying a lot. Everything just seems to end up sounding really appealing and exciting---Bill is great at bringing out the energy and motion in our arrangements.
Also, I don't mind making a shameless plug. I'm really excited. That's what I want to talk about.
Emily is making fun of me by writing "blog blog blog blog" on a sticky note on her laptop. I do not know what she's getting at.
Ahhh fun! He just made Rachel LaViola's "wih-nih-nih"s do crazy stuff---they sound really distant and echoey and they're moving back and forth from left to right. And all the while they're going through some kind of distortion.
The above will probably sound pretty normal to members of pop/rock a cappella groups at other schools, but it's still a pretty new thing for us, so you'll have to forgive my giddyness. Our first album to have lots of effects and production on it was our previous album, just two years ago, so we're still basically in uncharted territory. I wonder if Yale will end up going in this direction en masse... I really like how our songs sound this way, so I hope we keep making albums like this.
Alright, about to go to lunch. Two songs finished and it isn't even 1:00 yet. Sweet. Four to go.
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