From the drummer’s perspective: my experience recording a 31-song behemoth
From the drummer’s perspective:
my experience recording a 31-song behemoth
From this album’s conception, it was an exercise in pushing ourselves.
I remember being in the studio at our engineer Dave’s house and feeling like we might have taken on too much.
This was the third project we worked on with Dave where we stayed at his house while we recorded.
The first project was a 7 day trip where we wanted to experiment heavily in the studio. We recorded one song, Bolo tie, over the length of the trip.
The second trip was 9 days and we wanted to push ourselves a little more. We recorded most of homesick over the course of that trip, except for a couple vocal overdubs, percussion, and auxiliary keys/guitar.
Overdubs took about a month.
For the happiness is easy sessions, we were originally planning on recording 9-10 songs. We had 17 days so we thought we could really dial them in and have some fun.
The idea was floated of recording all of the songs we had written over the last couple months. 19 songs.
That meant we would have to record more than one song a day.
We decided to go for it.
And that was the beginning of a crazy year-long project that ended up being a 31 track, 27 song, monster.
(dave probably totally stressed at all the work we have to)
Because some fans were asking for more live-sounding recordings that matched the live-in-the-living-room vibe, we originally planned to set up all our instruments and record live in the studio.
So we set up, miced everything, and tried it.
Some songs felt successful recorded in this way but most songs were resistant to it.
Ultimately, after a day or two of this, we decided to switch gears and go back to a tried-and-true system that we knew would work.
In the end, of the 7 or so songs we tried like this, only the beginning half of Mary made it into a final recording.
In this snippet, you can hear me counting everyone off in the room before starting the song. In the break around 25 secs you can hear a chair creaking as one us moves around during the recording.
For the most part, there is an order to the way things are tracked. This allows us to minimize set up and tear down of mics which can be pretty time consuming.
First, a scratch track is laid down by the main rhythmic element, whether it is acoustic guitar, mandolin, or occasionally piano. This is typically done by Casey, but sometimes it’s done by Sean if he is playing the acoustic guitar.
(dave setting up mics for mandocello on taxidermy)
The purpose of this is to establish tempo, arrangement, and feel of the song.
Essentially it is a road map that everything else can be recored to.
suddenly I wake up was the only song on the record where I recorded the piano first. This is because piano is the main rhythmic element.
(recording piano on suddenly i wake up)
After the rhythmic element and a scratch vocal is recorded, the drums are set up, miced, leveled, and recorded.
When we finish recording drums on a song, I take the recorded audio and edit it on my computer (we call this comping, as in making a composition by choosing multiple takes and cutting them together to make a final performance) while the next scratch is being recorded.
In this way, we tracked the majority of the drums to the 19 songs over several days.
It was a marathon for me. And it was admittedly pretty exhausting.
It takes an incredible amount of focus to record for that long and by the end of it, I was tired.
But being in the studio is my favorite thing in the world, so I enjoyed the hell out of it and I actually do enjoy the pressure. It’s always exciting.
When you’re in that mode, it somehow feels like your performance is the most important thing in the world. Like every decision you make could have an impact on the song and therefore an impact on real people’s lives who listen to it.
When you’re really in it, it is a spiritual feeling and it’s fleeting.
It’s hard to get myself to go there but I find the drums always come out better when I do.
I think the best performances happen when musicians treat the music with a similar reverence and allow themselves to tap into that spiritual magic.
(casey "helping" with a crash and definitely not trying to make me laugh during the tracking of the intro of in here alone, which was ultimately cut from the record)
Here’s a little sniff of some drums I had a lot of fun recording. A sample of NO I’M FINE!!!!!!
These drums were recorded in five takes and majority of the comp was from the fifth and final take.
This is kind of a testament to the way Dave tracks and the speed at which we were moving in the studio, as soon as Dave felt we had a good take we moved on.
After recording drums in a fury over several days, the bulk of my tracking in the studio was done.
I was then left to help arrange the songs, weigh in on everyone else’s tracking, and record b3 organ, pump organ, and piano.
(here's a little glimpse of tracking b3 on happy in hell. dave didn't like this take and it didn't end up on the final recording)
We tracked all the main guitars, mandolin, acoustic and electric guitars at dave’s and we left at the end of the session with 19 songs that ranged from having only a couple instruments on them to being almost completely recorded.
We left the studio in July for a four week tour and when we got back we had a spaghetti-mess of recordings on our hard drive.
The songs were unedited and recorded quickly so some parts had to be retracked and rearranged.
We were all unsure how this album was going to work out.
Yes, there were some amazing moments on the album but it needed a ton of work.
As we started editing and overdubbing we could start to see the album take shape. We started to send songs back to Dave to mix them.
When we had the majority of the 19 original songs done, our peers and counsel started pushing us in the direction of releasing the album as it is was, but we felt like it was still missing something.
The album in that stage needed more accessibility in the music, more “hit” songs to round out the heady, complicated sound of the rest of the album.
We went searching for more songs and wrote and recorded another 12 tracks at our home between November 2023 through April 2024.
In the end this album had so much audio it filled up half our 2 tb hard drive.
But when we finished the last couple tracks in April of last month, I think we all collectively felt like “okay, this thing is done, and you know what, it rocks.”
Had we stopped after 19 songs, had we not gone searching for more songs, we wouldn’t have written mad girls love song, you are a body, am I waiting for something, bad news and others, which are some of my favorite songs on the record.
There’s a lesson somewhere in here about trusting your gut.
(here i am in studio. probably coming up with some absolutely genius idea)
This album from its conception was a process of pushing ourselves. At times we were unsure if what we were doing was the right move or if we had, as casey kept saying “jumped the sharks.”
I think we set out to do something really ambitious and although it took a ton of work, in the end, it paid off and in the process, we learned so much about recording and songwriting.
Ultimately, I just hope we made something that you rats can enjoy.
Because otherwise as an artist, what’s the point?
Thank you all for being patient with us as we felt around in the dark for this one.
Thanks for all of this information. I had a feeling from listening to Homesick for Another World, that you don’t record to a click track. Please correct me if I’m wrong, If this is the case then that would help explain why all of your music has that open lose pocket feel to it. If I’m completely wrong about you not playing to a click, then please explain how you keep that grove in the pocket?