I’ve been pretty busy the last month or so, but it’s finally time to tell you about the new album my band Spacecats is making. It’s far enough along now that you can listen to some rough mixes:
https://zingman.com/music/mp3/spacecats/recording_session_240316/edit_mixes_2
We recording the whole thing, ten songs, in a single day back in March. The project grew out of a desire to have some samples of our music to use to try and get gigs. We had been taping our rehearsals, but using just a portable audio recorder with a built-in stereo mic to capture the live sound of the room. It sounded pretty good, but nothing like a professional record. The inability to separate the instruments or control their tone and dynamics was limiting.
Our friend Gavin, who sets up our rehearsal space, heard us talking about this, and mentioned that he is trained as an audio engineer and we could use our rehearsal space as a recording studio. A plan was hatched.
Meanwhile, we’d all be writing songs, and at some point last fall our drummer Rick started bring in more and more material. Soon we realized we probably had enough songs for a full-length album of original material, if we focused on getting the songs tight. This took a little time, because once we started, there was alot of work on the details of the arrangements. Also, the guys in the band kept bringing in new tunes that upped the overall level of the project, so we added them in and dropped some others. In particular Rick brought in a song that was replete with meter changes following a really interesting but complex pattern. My kind of weird.
We had originally thought we might be ready to record right after then new year. But between wanting to get the material tight, people in the group having to take a week off at various times, and the availability of the studio, we couldn’t book a date until mid-March.
Although the rehearsal space, the big room downstairs at Lagond, is not a professional studio in the sense that it lacks a control room, we like it because it’s big and has good acoustics, and most of all it has a really nice grand piano. It also has a mixer and PA for doing live events, which can be hooked up to a computer easily enough. The studio also has a deep bench of high-quality microphones. So we really had everything we need.
Gavin came in early that morning to set everything up. We decided to do it like a traditional jazz record, everything live in the studio. The instruments were close-mic’d but not completely isolated, which meant limited options for overdubs later because there’s be some bleed-thru. So what you hear is the real thing!
The setup was: six mics on the drum (kick, snare, rack tom, floor tom, and left and right overheads for the cymbals and hihat); two mics in the piano for left and right, plus a third just outside for ambiance; direct inject plus a mic on the amp for the bass; and two different mics on the sax, one a large diaphragm condenser and the other a ribbon mic, to capture different tones. That’s thirteen channels total.
The session went smoothly. Everyone was relaxed and playing well, and Gavin was able to capture a good sound without difficulty. Once we got set up and soundchecked, we started running down the set list. The goal was to get two complete takes of each song. Sometimes we had a false start or broke down in the middle, so we ended up with some partial takes, or even three complete takes sometimes. After five songs in about three hours we were getting tired so we took a break for lunch. We front-loaded the more difficult songs, so after lunch we jammed thru the rest in about two hours. All in all it couldn’t have gone better.
I brought the tracks home and imported them into protools, and set up a project for each song. I put each instrument on its own bus since we had multiple channels for all of them, then did a basic setup with some light compression, EQ, reverb and dynamic compression on the master out.
The next step was to go thru and listen closely to everything and decide which takes to use, in some cases editing together the song from several different takes. Also in this phase I tightened up the timing where it was needed, and pasted over the occasional clam. I must say overall the group has a really good sense of time and the tempos were very consistent between takes and within a song. For one song, I dropped in a minute-and-a-half sax solo from another take and did not have to adjust the time at all. I discovered we sometimes to a slight ritard at the end of someone’s solo or anther turning point in the tune for dramatic effect.
Now I’m at the point where I’m listening again for the mix, to try and get that as good as can be. In particular I’m paying attention to how the bass sits in the mix, and how to make it present but not to overbearing.
Here’s the list of songs in the order we recorded them, which is probably not the order they’ll appear on the record.
Kamala – written by Rick our drummer, features a 4-against-6 latin groove that breaks into swing in the bridge, and a thru-composed structure with a break after the piano solo that I call the Zappa section. I play soprano sax on this one (and tenor on most of the others).
There’s Snow Tomorrow – written by Josh our piano player, a light mid-tempo number in a minor key, with a sort of wistful feel. When we were coming up with the arrangement, I thought it would be cool to have the sax in a supporting role and the piano mainly carry the melody, since Josh has such a great feel for it and we don’t have any other tunes that do that.
Los Gatos del Cosmos – one of mine. An uptempo samba in the Hungarian minor mode. Starts with an atmospheric section inspired by the Police, which reprises in the middle as the foundation for a drum feature section. Lots of fun to play, lots of dynamic ups and downs.
Paris on the Hudson – written by Rick, this is the one that features lots of shifting time signatures, and a tricky melody and chord progression to match. I guess you’d call it a swing feel, sometimes waltzing, sometimes in four, sometimes in double time.
Lift Off – another by me, this is an uptempo swing number inspired by John Coltrane’s Countdown, and features a tricky 2-5-lift-inside-a-2-5 as the main motivic idea for both the harmony and the melody. Also has a drum solo.
Lance’s Guitar – a power ballad by Rick with a beautiful melody and a striking chord progression.
Pour Me a Fifth – another light mid-tempo number by Josh, this one is 3/4 time and has a minor-key chord progression that moves around the cycle of 5ths alot, and a melody that reinforces that idea. Ken’s bass playing gets really abstract and melodic on this. I play soprano.
Autumn Eyes – a ballad of mine, very open and atmospheric sounding. Features a bass solo. I play soprano. We later did the one and only overdub on this song, some piano comping behind the bass solo. It’s amazing how well my synthesizer piano patch matched the sound of the grand piano from the studio.
Dr. Pluto – a funk jam, my composition. We had a few funk and R&B kind of numbers we were rehearsing (indeed our tagline was Jazz and Funk, or maybe it was Jank and Fuzz), but this was the only one that made into the set for the session. I wrote it with the bass having the melody line, and the sax doing a response. The title comes from a cool-looking sparkly bass Ken brought to rehearsal once. It said Di Pinto on the headstock, but from a distance I misread it. Josh plays electric piano on this one.
At a Laundromat in Pamplona – Josh’s composition, basically a samba jam. This is one of our looser songs, with the whole middle section being just two chords. Toward the end I do this rising thing that Ken calls the Kamasi section. Josh plays electric piano on this one too. A perfect way to end the set.