VI - John's Between Sunlight and Shadow Studio Diary

With 2 official recording sessions under our belt, I'm pleased to say that the process is going very well. Our first session was on 9/29/2001, during which we recorded the drums for a few sections of Between Sunlight and Shadow (Stratum, Matt in G, and the Metal). Jamie was magnificent, nailing all of those on the very first take. We broke for lunch at around noon, and found that our collective energy level had dropped several notches upon our return. Nevertheless, we did try to record both Hold a Candle and the E-F# sections. Neither of them went well, mostly because I was struggling with keeping a consistent tempo on the piano parts. I tried to not get too discouraged with myself, but I must admit it was frustrating. Everyone agreed that we should call it a day and not push ourselves beyond what felt good. So we called it a day and felt good!

The second session was just last night, 10/9/2001. We got started around 6:30 or 7:00, and Jamie nailed Ground Zero and the Quirk in just a couple of takes. Since we still had some time left, we decided to re-record Drive. None of us was really ready for it, but we refamiliarized ourselves with the structural details and went for it. I think the feel of the piano was much better on last night's take than on the one from late August, although I did make a couple of boo boos. I also gave Matt some misinformation about the verse structures which caused him to flub his take. Oh well. We're really only shooting for good drum takes at this point, so it's no big deal. We'll have plenty of time to perfect the keys, guitar, and bass once the drums are all done.

Session #3 was on the evening of 10/12/2001, and consisted of me doing keyboard and rough vocal work. Scott and I only worked for a couple of hours, but I pretty much finished all of the synth tracks for Drive. We took a few extra minutes to throw down some vocals on Invictus, and I learned alot about how my distance from the mic affects the overall quality of my vocals. Unfortunately the takes themselves are not keepers, but hopefully the experience and feedback from Scott will help me when I'm ready to lay down some serious vocal tracks.

Quattro Sessiono (?) happened just yesterday (10/22/2001), and was a winner. We ripped through 4 takes of Hold a Candle, and decided to leave them for judgement at a later time. I continued to struggle with my plastic $95.99 MIDI controller, so there were some lags and rushes and moments of overplaying. I'll nail it one of these days. If not, we'll just have to live with the best available take. Matt attacked the bass track for Traces, which contains some of the most difficult bass riffs on the whole CD. (Thanks Andy! :) He was very well-prepared, and did a great job considering he has only logged about 60 minutes of playing time on the 5-string bass. I jumped in after an hour and did some synth work on Traces, and Matt finished up with one more stint of bass playing. The session lasted about 4 hours, and I think we accomplished quite a bit. I did take a few minutes towards the end of the day to plug in JP's Korg Karma and record a quick choral section at the end of Traces. JP, bless his generous and tolerant heart, was kind of enough to lend me his state-of-the-art Korg Karma for 2 weeks. I'm trying to figure out where I want to use it before I return it to him. Once we're done with all the main tracking, I'll borrow it once more and decorate the CD with a few of the Karma's amazing sounds. Thanks JP!

3 sessions later, November 4, and I feel like I'm about to explode with frustration and anticipation. These little 3 hour sessions are killing me, suffocating any chance for creative voices to find themselves and breathe. Everyt hing went well today from the perspective of patience and fortitude, and yet I feel overwhelmed with a sense of ur gency and compulsion to work day and night until this thing is out and done and finished. Unfortunately that is no t possible due to several factors, all of which I resigned myself to accept months ago even before this process be gan. Today's session mirrored the last two, all three of which consisted of the playing of seemingly random instru mental sections of an inconceivable 40-minute piece of music. Each 2-3 hour recording session relies on complete a nd total faith that the grand design of the composition is worthwhile; each note that is played without any refere nce to the overall meaning of the piece relies on the (perhaps misplaced) trust that it fits in to the bigger pict ure. I have complete and utter blind faith that this is the case, and yet it's not enough; I feel the need for a l ong, uninterrupted session wherein each level of the song is recognized, addressed, challenged, and ultimately rec onciled into THE final version. Perhaps the merged version of everything we have recorded to this point will lend itself to the realization of this hope; I do not know, though, since I'm still in the process of downloading it fr om Scott's computer. In the meantime, I'll pour and drink another glass of wine, and cling to the faith, the belie f, the KNOWLEDGE, that we will complete this project and be proud of the final product.

Another 2 month lapse in writing, which either means that things have been going really well or really poorly. Hon estly, I'm not sure which. Most of the drums, bass, and keyboards are done - Jamie and I have spent the last coupl e of sessions hammering away at our vocal parts. The biggest missing link at this stage of the process is the guit ars, and Matt is spending some time on his own working out and rehearsing the many parts that still need to be don e. The pressure on him has been and continues to be tremendous - playing bass for the very first time and THEN hav ing to record 45 minutes worth of guitar is a monumental task. Jamie and I have plenty to keep us busy, though, so guitars will just end up being one of the last things recorded. No big deal - the pieces are all very clear, so i t really doesn't matter to me what order they get plugged in. I just know that we're all VERY anxious to hear the guitars since they provide the meat of many of the sections. Go, go, go!!!

After working on vocals for a couple of sessions, we pulled a rough mix of the first half of the song and took it home to listen to. It's very difficult to listen through the flaws (of which there are plenty) and objectively dec ide what is and isn't working. As I look at the Spock's Beard web site and see that they're already back in the st udio for some intensive recording work, my frustrations with the pace of our process and the impossibility of maki ng spontaneously creative decisions are once again eating away at me. Being frustrated is useless, though; if I were truly creative, I would find some way to make this happen faster.

The last 4 weeks have been the most productive of all, and the results are VERY encouraging. Matt has been kicking butt with guitar and vocal work, and Jamie and I jump in whenever he gets tired. Our target date for finishing al l tracking is March 15, and then we'll take 2-3 weeks for mixing and mastering. Scott has a knee surgery scheduled for March 20, so he may need a few days off to recover. But only a few, dammit! Special thanks go out to Alan Mal lery for once again loaning his Roland JP8000 to me. I spent about 75 minutes on Tuesday night laying down some tr acks with it, and the sounds are absolutely perfect. Thanks Alan!

This process definitely reminds me of the Halloween ice storm duathlon in which I participated a few years ago. Th e first 2 1/2 hours felt like 2 1/2 hours. The last 1/2 hour felt like 3 1/2 days. I keep saying that we're gettin g close, and I'm pretty sure we are, but at this point we're so delirious and dizzy that it's hard to tell. The ni ce thing is that we're delirious and dizzy from focusing on minutia that we never got to focus on during the makin g of Color of Space. If we had to stop today and release Between Sunlight and Shadow, I think I would be pretty da rned happy with it. Just a few more weeks of details and dizziness and delirium, and we'll have a CD we can all be more than pretty darned happy with.

September 2002 is upon us, and we have a new CD! The final stretch towards completion was long and difficult, and included glitches in just about every phase. The important thing is that everyone (Scott, Gary, Jeremy, Matt, Jami e, me) and everything (mixing, mastering, artwork, printing, duplication, etc) came together, and it is a very gra tifying feeling! Jamie, Matt, and I got together last weekend to celebrate and put a tiny bit of closure on this p hase. It was a great night - we had a blast watching the studio videos from the last 12 months, talking shit about how much we kick ass, and finally listening to the finished product. CD number 2! Done!! Wow. Life does not get much better than this....