RSRB Week 3

week 3 began slowly. monday we recorded ld vocals, with the occasion shaker-ing. but today was all bart.

shakers, tambourines, triangles, file cabinets, maracas, bart was all over 'em.

what's that you say? file cabinets? yep, the best thing we did all day was when bart dragged a file cabinet from the office next door into the studio ad proceeded to play it - with a set of metal door hinges he found on the way to the office next door. lots of compression and sans amp later we had the most enormous, horrendous, industrial revolution steel mill soundiest, sound ever.


just as we were really patting ourselves on the back over such a great song, we decided to head out to the hallway ro record some bongos and get some natural hallway reverb.

but, as always seems to happen, we were shut down by the wonderful folks from ocean grown incorporated.

seems they didnt like the 120db of bongos getting in the way of their important sales calls.

tomorrow - finish percussion, finish mandolin fixes, finish synth stuff.

thurs - start mixing


Nerd report -
say hello to the new guys.

electric guitar, back to a, day off

well, let's see. thursday was spent tracking electric guitars. we got quite a bit done, and i think the tracks helped a lot. tilby, shupe and miner all played. electric guitars are kind of a new thing to the band, but they really help give the tracks more guts, and ultimately will help the band be more commercial.


for the most part tracks were through the wren amp, with some amp farm and matchless thrown in when needed.

thursday evening we set up for lead vocals.

friday i was to return to studio a for a rhythm section for tyler castleton, so the shupesters were going to go forward with recording vocals.


tyler had to record some backing tracks for a deseret book group. craig poole-bass, todd sorensen-drums, mike dowdle-guitar, tyler castleton-piano, staci peters-arrangments, very scratch vocals.


craig looks a little nervous about the chart

saturday found me setting up chairs, at model train shows with the dudes, and at church meetings, all while shupe and the boys continued recording vocals.

NERD SPEAK -

in today's nerd news, on friday my beloved proac studio 100 monitors were taken away by their new owner. after demo-ing my new barefoot mm27 monitors, i decided to keep them and so the proacs went on the chopping block.

farewell old friends

re-do's, dobro, electric guitar

the last few days have been full of some drama, plus a fair amount of re-recording. i wont go into detail, but there is some serious lack of communication going on with this group, and that is resulting in many things having to be re-done. so why should that bother me? im getting paid hourly afterall. regardless, for some reason it drives me insane.


but, we keep going. today we did some acoustic guitars, mandolin; even dobro made an appearance but didnt make it to the album.

then finally we got into some electric guitar. ryan tilby surprised everyone with his super-nashville abilities on the electric gee-tar. really, he can play.



sarah thinks it might be worth writing down some nerd-speak, so here goes:

banjo was recorded with - AEA R84 ribbon mic, Neumann KM184 and Blue Kiwi as a room mic

mandolin and acoustic guitar - Neumann KM184 and Blue Kiwi or Neumann U87

electric guitar - silvertone 1446, gibson sg or tom anderson tele through a wren "log" amplifier through a 2x12 cab with celestion vintage 30s. micd with an aea r84 ribbon mic and a shure sm57.

all mics were run through some combination of:
pres-purple audio biz preamp or a-designs p1 preamp or chandler ltd-1 or neve 1272
eqs-neve 2074 or chandler ltd-1
compressors-distressor, chandler tg-1 or chandler germanium compressor

tomorrow: still more electric guitar and then on to some vocals

for sale: one enormous trash bag full of candy.

look people, i am seriously getting sick of this candy. stupid costco and their 2 for 1 sale. i thought it would be a good idea to stock up for the studio candy jar. but do you have any idea what effect that huge bag of candy is having on me? i've basically become an anteater, but instead of inhaling ants, i inhale mini twix bars. damn you MARS candy company!

no joke, i must have eaten 8 of them today. they are so small and adorable, plus, for some reason, the shupesters never want to eat lunch, so what am i to do?! well, between the twix and the jolly ranchers, ive decided we have too much inventory AND ALL OF IT MUST GO!!

so come on down to Junioraudio! bad credit??? NO PROBLEM!

"Junioraudio really helped my dreams come true. Other stores turned us away, but Junioraudio was there to help me get the candy of my dreams, and now look how fat I am!"

long day today. just got home - 11:50pm. and, as a side note, i just had a delicious sandwich.

so, not much to report. last friday and saturday we recorded banjo. if you have not listened to banjo over and over again for an entire day, then you just haven't lived my friend.

today was a shupe marathon. ryan recorded fiddle, guitar and mandolin ALL DAY LONG. the good news is his instrument tracks are done. dont get too excited though, we are still way behind. the idea originally was to start mixing one week from thurs, yeah, that's not going to happen.




that last picture is actually from when we recorded Shupe's last album, I forgot to take any pictures while he was playing fiddle. I'm sure it looked quite similar.

here's shupe and ryan tilby hanging out:


sorry for the boring post today. they cant all be winners.

stupid phone camera

alright, well, here is a brief rundown of my day. not that it is even worth posting these pictures taken from my phone, but you will be happy to know that this is the last post in which we will be subject to such blurriness.


the shupesters spent the day on the film stage behind the studio shooting album cover pictures. they arent exactly a "guitar amp" band, but they wanted to be for the pictures, so they stacked all my gear up around them. this made me simultaneously amazed at how many amps i have, excited to see them all in one place like that, and nervous that something would get knocked down, resulting in their photo shoot costing me $3k.

sarah dropped off the dudes so she could do some shopping for the little dudette. Ive taken to calling the boys the dudes. not really sure why. anyway, that's dude number one in blurovision on the left and dude number two sporting the hat. we went down to our new favorite-Pastorero and enjoyed tacos and quesadillas.

after lunch I went digital camera hunting again. as I walked into circuit city I swore to myself that I would not leave empty handed. of course, while in the store I got an email from someone selling a camera used on craigslist. I left empty handed but saved myself $100! so now I am armed at last.

to end the day I played some bass for the fantastic band atherton. ive been asked a few times if i'm in the band, what do i play, etc etc. as of now, i just play whatever they need. sometimes guitar, sometimes baritone guitar, sometimes bass. i love playing with them, so i'm always up for whatever. anyway, good show, kilby court, so it was freezing, but it was sold out and actually oversold by 50 people which is about 50% more than should be in that shack, so yeah, good times.

no pics today

well, ive yet to buy a digital camera, despite spending more than a few hours visiting different stores and trying to pick one. so retarded, as im sure they would all be more than adequate at capturing low light blurry studio shots.
so we moved back into junioraudio, and when i say moved, i mean moved. holy crap, it took forever to move out of studio a.
we have spent the past 2 days comping, meaning making a composite take of all the best parts of the other takes. some songs have up to 14 takes, so it's a big job. a big, boring, snoozefest of a job. but it is rather essential, and we will be done soon and then we can get to the overdubs.
no shupe tomorrow - they are off to take photos for the album cover. i plan to spend my time immersed in the wonderful songs of one mr paul jacobsen. mixing will get his album another step closer to being completed, and help me decide if i want to keep these rather expensive new speakers i am demoing. a real win win id say.

Is It Awesome?

this week saw the beginning of recording the new Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband album. we are currently camped out in the new June Audio studio A, where we will be for another few days before moving into Junior Audio (a.k.a. June Audio studio B).

as you can see, the motto for this album is "Is It Awesome?" which is supposed to mean that we make sure everything that is recorded is awesome, but mostly it just means that we say the word awesome way too much.

and as often happens when a large group of guys hang out for too long in room with no windows for hours and days at a time, things get ridiculous and moronic.

day 1 - wednesday went great, we got set up and managed to get drums bass and guitar for 2 songs. day 2 - thursday was even better as we got 3 songs down. things slowed down a bit on day 3 however, and we got a bit bogged down. tension, boredom, etc etc. it was the general consensus that the ryan tilby was the most frustrated. but whether he was or not, the constant ribbing he took paid off for the rest of us when we were greeted the following morning with a fine selection of the donuts from a quaint local bakery known as albertson's supermarket.

needless to say, fueled by sugar, sprinkles and chipotle, day 4 progressed nicely.