Author: Ronnie

I have the Tonic Room booked for April 7th. instead of the 6 hours I did last time… this time I booked all day I should be able to track 4 or 5 songs.

My wife hooked me up with tax return money. So for her, I will be recording at her request “Invisible Man” It is a song I wrote about 25 years ago that I have recently resurrected. It still needs something though so I have a month to work out just what that something is…

Session2 is on my mind. If this album is going to be cohesive I need to stay focused on the grand plan. So here it is as it stands today. First some guidelines.. All songs will be originals.. All songs will be Acoustic guitars and vocals only. 7 to 10 songs. Title of the CD is “Ronnie” maybe a subtile.. “Acoustic melodies”? “Strings across the universe”? “Universal melodies” ? “Universal strings”?
1) Record CD

Boy that sounds simple.. let’s break that down just a little. I have 3 songs recorded I need 5 to 7 more.  Some of which haven’t been written yet.. So next step decide on 3 more songs for next studio visit. The theme of this session will be 3 or 4 songs that are a little more positive. “Tangled up in strings” is right at the top of the list.. it totally belongs in this project. “I have a song to sing” I have gotten good feedback on an early recording of an acoustic version of this song. And maybe “Back to the beginning” it’s up fairly up beat. “Falling on hard times” is not as upbeat but it’s not out of the running if there is time for 4.

There you go.. 4 songs I should just practice them work out some guitar parts and Book another day maybe in April 😛

2) Print CD

Create album art and spend the money. I can get 1000 CDs for $900 with jewel cases and inserts. This also gets me on CD Baby, I Tunes, Rhapsody, and a couple dozen other services

3) Sell CD

rounding up…

• $1500 Studio time
• $500 Mastering
• $1000 Duplication and printing
• At $10 each I will need to sell 300 CDs to recoup my costs.

I feel like a rockstar,

Everyone I have given these songs to have given me great feedback. I am getting a lot of practice being gracious. Something else I have noticed.. most the people I give them to are listening to them on their computer speakers.. Which is unfortunate cause the sound is so much bigger than that. I almost want to give away a set of headphones with each track. I am so emotionally invested in these recordings I wish I could distribute them only on Vinyl so that people would be forced to play them on a stereo system more worthy  then a crappy sound card on a laptop. I guess I just want the best for my babies 🙂

Saturday Feb 2nd 2007. In the Mastering suite of Tonic Room Studios, burning a CD with 3 songs on it. I felt immortal. These recordings give life to what I have been hearing in my head for years. It’s been a long, wonderful day filled with creativity and music.

9:00 I wake up feeling a little worse for wear, It was a late night playin with the band, and maybe a couple to many beers. Is my voice going to be up to task today? I worked it pretty good last night. I burn a CD with all the song possibilities for today. Print out Lyric sheets for every song on the list.. I have it narrowed down to 10 songs. (narrowed.. yea right) I have to get coffee in me before I get to the studio… my voice still gruff, I get a triple grande Vanilla Late it soothes the pipes feeling better now.

11:00 I meet Jason Rinelstetter Engineer/Owner of Tonic Room Studios. I bring my stuff in from the car into the studio. It’s chilly I worry that it might be too cold but Jason adjusts the thermostat, and we talk about my Idea of what we are doing today. I give him my CD and we play an early recording of Darkness Within I point out the use of echo and he mentions how he hears a big production around this song .. Drums, bass, keyboards. I explain that is exactly what I have in mind but for when I record it with my friends.. today it is an acoustic version.

12:00 We have finished setting up a couple mics for the virgin guitar tracks I wish I could remember the mic model numbers and stuff.. there was an AKG pencil style mic and some big grey tube mic for catching the low end. With any multi track recording you have to start somewhere… I never expected how hard it would be to play a song start to finish on guitar singing along silently in my head with out tapping my foot. First we recorded baseline guitar part for “Darkness Within” then “Disconnected” and last “Wicked Karma”.

Time has stopped.. must be around 1:00 we start recording Lead Vocal parts. I am a bit nervous, afraid that my voice might crack up I decide to record Disconnected first.. it has the most delicate vocal part of the three If I am not on then the day is over and I’ll have to record vocals on another day. another glass of water and a cough drop.. I sing into a $5000 replica of a Neumann U47..hand made in Nashville this is a gold plated faithful replication and sounds awesome. playback sounds incredible. I guess I am singing today. Jason has a suggestion for using a technique called “Vocal doubling” on the chorus parts. This entails singing two more takes of each chorus exactly matching timing, inflection, on each syllable. then one take is panned right and the other panned left in the mix. The natural fluctuations in the human voice give a cool chorus effect that can not be duplicated with software or hardware effects. the problem lies with the singers ability to reproduce exact replicas of a performance.. evidently I am a natural at this.

3:00 ish.. I’m hungry and we take a break. I run out to the car only to find my keys in the ignition and the battery is dead. I walk across the street and get a chicken breast and a double tall vanilla late. Hopefully by the time to go my battery will have recovered enough to start my car.

After a short lunch we record Vocals for Wicked karma and Darkness Within the same process of doubling is done with these songs too. it’s been a couple hours since I recorded the Virgin guitar tracks and screw up and sing the last phrase of Wicked Karma one to many times.. It sounds cool A Capella like that so we re record the mistake and leave it in. On Darkness within I played guitar one to many measures at the end I had to hold the big end note another full measure which was already a stretch for me. I nailed it the first run through. the second take for the doubling effect I barely made it before running out of breath. and after 5 tries falling just short for the 3rd track We decided to do some creative editing 🙂

4ish Lead guitar parts.. out od the vocal booth and back to the main tracking room. It’s a lot warmer in the studio now which is nice for lead guitar. one song at a time we set up loop recording around the empty parts of the songs and lay in little acoustic riffs. I had not practiced any of this. it was all off the cuff after a few stabs there was something we could use. The solo in Disconnected really soared.

around 6:00 my clock ran out I had booked the studio for 6 hours and we still had 2 more songs to mix. Jason was totally into the music by now and offered to finish off the clock. He wanted to hear the finished product as much as I did.

8:30 Saturday Feb 2nd 2007. In the Mastering suite of Tonic Room Studios, burning a CD with 3 songs on it. I felt immortal.

Coming up on Saturday, Looks like I might actually get into the studio this week. I have had a cold all week but it’s letting up and I am thinking my voice is going to be strong enough to get my money’s worth.. I will have to pace myself at band practice tonight.  It’s been the middle of December since our last practice. granted we have played 2 gigs since then, but it will be nice to play for ourselves tonight.  Keep an eye out for a blog tomorrow on how the recording went.

This is fate.. It must be.  I just got a call from The Tonic Room, They have just finished up a major project that had them working till the wee hours of the morning every night this week and they wanted to know If I wouldn’t’ mind pushing my date out till next weekend… Just when I think I am doomed to have a sub par experience recording for the first time because of  this cold I am catching…. Fate intervenes. So everyone is just going to have to put up with me talking about nothing but my pending recording date for 1 more week.

Why am I catching a cold today?! Will I be far enough into it to screw up my voice for tomarrow.The studio is booked a month in advance.. I can’t cancel the day before! I guess I’ll just roll the dice and hope for the best. I am so bummed. Why me? Why today?  This is not fair.. I do not deserve this.

This weekend is the Toga party WOOT!

Tim, Dave and me went down to the Visual Arts Collective to check out the lay of the land. It’s a nice hall and a sturdy stage. Hope we have a full house cause the place has concrete floors could make for a boomy night. Take the virtual tour from the link above…. I thought it was interesting that they have pictures of the bathrooms…