My Recording Vacation/Seclusion/Millionaire Fantasy Camp

Many moons ago, my parents told me that they would be heading to the Masters once again (as they always do), and this time would be going to Florida after, extending their vacation. "Can you check on the house a few times?" my mom asked. "Sure... how long are you going to be gone?" "Two weeks."

Holy lord, I thought- I can have an entire house on the lake in the middle of the woods all to myself for 2 weeks? Some people would see this as a formula for enormous parties, or romantic getaways, or drug-induced freakouts. I saw it as a way to finally, FINALLY learn logic and start recording music again. And I did. 

It was incredibly weird to be there alone, and I'm not ashamed of admitting that I was a bit freaked out pretty much every night for the first week. I bought a humidifier solely to add noise to my room at night, and most lights and at least one TV were on at all times. Call me a wimp all you want, but the house is old, SILENT, and in the middle of the woods. I was 100% completely alone. I've heard some weird animal sounds before (possibly a squatch), had a few "someone is definitely watching me" moments, and whether it's ghosts or just animals outside, I was praying I wouldn't hear or see anything while I was there. It's amazing how quickly one can revert to being a little kid afraid of the dark when you go from living on a busy street in a ghetto to trying to live in a huge house in the middle of nowhere. 

It was beautiful though- this was the moon one of the first nights:

My mom even left an easter basket for me with like 5 cadbury eggs (yes, this was that long ago- I'm pretty behind on blog posts):

So what did I do for 2 weeks? On the negative side, not enough. I got caught in too many sleep, internet or TV traps and didn't work as much as I should have. I'm a huge celtics fan, and there were like 14 games in the time I was there, so I watched a ton of celtics games, relaxed like a king, and ate like a champ. I took most of these for FATGUYFOODBLOG, but I never posted any of them since they are kind of just ghetto little creations rather than things people can go out and buy. Here's a few of my better meals: 

I had a bunch of these ghetto pizzas. I created these bad boys over one summer vacation in middle school when my mom was working, and I've missed them. White bread, spaghetti sauce, chopped up pepperoni and cheddar and montery jack cheese, toasted. You have to cook it a lot to make it crisp and avoid soggy bread, but these are so good, and the pepperoni spice really comes through. 

Ghetto nachos: Usually done with ruffles or wavy lays, I added a few tortillas to this to mix it up. But yea, it's just potato chips, cheddar and montery jack cheese, and instead of dipping in salsa, you dip in ketchup. So good. 

Here's my homemade Friendly's Turkey Club supermelt- turkey, american cheese, tomato, bacon and thousand island, fried up nicely:

And lastly, while a lot of you were having big meals with family on Easter, here's MY Easter brunch: 

My time there was basically "rich guy fantasy camp." I didn't have to do anything, and I had a big house on a lake. I  had zero reason to relax to the level that I did, but in this situation, it was really hard to get myself motivated to do anything. This picture says a lot- this stuffed animal known as Pillow Fighter, was a stuffed animal I grew up that was marketed to beat up. In recent years, he's become another pillow. One day that I got up way too late, I turned around and saw him gesturing to me, "come back mike- look at how nice this is..."

"go ahead, just lie down some more"

After a few days though, it started to hit me that I was wasting an opportunity, and I got my shit together- at least sort of. Here's a terrible panorama of the before and after of my Dad's office/mancave, which would become my studio:

I knew I wanted to buy an electric guitar for recording, as my current setup was a piece of crap. I went to guitar center and got an absurd deal that I couldn't pass up. I wanted a PRS like Hilton has, but his is like 3 grand. I had previously played PRS' cheap version of his guitar (the SE) but didn't love it. It felt cheap and the neck was really thick, making its play the complete opposite of what I liked most about Hilton's guitar. I had seen the Paul Allender model online and thought that it was pretty awesome looking- whereas Hilton's has beautiful birds on the fretboard, this one, since it was designed by the guitarist of Cradle of Filth, had bats. And it was deep blood red. I thought it was beautiful but kind of hilarious. And there it was at Guitar Center, for $350 bucks?! I picked it up, figuring it would suck, and was blown away. Truthfully, the action is too low and the top string buzzes, but a tuneup will hopefully fix that. Other than that, the neck was super thin and it was hilariously easy to play. A beautiful guitar that retails for 1200 bucks, usually sells for 800, and was in my hands for 350? Sold.

After initial recording and experimenting with drums and guitars, I finally admitted that I really truly did need to own a bass. So my new guitar got a brother a few days later. 

I eventually realized that since it would be easy to record piano at anytime and I was instantly so into playing with guitar sounds in logic, I put the keyboard aside and figured out how to record drums.

Here's the mess next to my computer- the mixer with a hundred cables next to all the stuff I had to move to make the studio, with a crate full of more crap, next to piles of papers to do taxes with (ppbbtt). 

And don't worry people who read this from apple, Deeteez came too. 

I had dreams of recording new emo songs mixed with some dongus bologna songs, but like my recording trip to Saratoga last summer, I wasn't prepared to do this. Except last year, I didn't know logic and tried to learn it AT Dustin's house. This time, I spent a lot of time before heading to Maine following the lynda.com training and basically knew how to record once I got to Maine. I figured out the rest of the key stuff as the trip went on, but I immediately realized why bands have songs already recorded in rough form before trying to do the real recordings. I always knew that, but it definitely hit me when I sat there wondering what to record that I had nothing. I had sketches of songs from waaay back, but hadn't played them in forever and didn't know exactly how to put them together now that I had everything in front of me. I also wasn't feeling quite stupid/hyper enough to make some really bad dongus songs. So, I kind of just messed around and hoped something would come to me.

The first night I found an amp setting I liked in logic (for those who don't know, logic is a recording program that is detailed to a level of true absurdity- you can do ANYTHING in it, and one of the highlights is the ability to play with preset guitar sounds, and adjust them by types of amps, types of cabinets, types of mics, mic placements, and can EQ everything to make a billion different types of sounds You can just plug your guitar right into the computer, no amp needed). I found a guitar sound that was very Brand New-esque, and wrote a crappy little guitar line in an attempt to turn it into something. I recorded a messy demo of it that night, then spent 4-5 hours the next day figuring out layers, beats, structure, etc. The rest of the details and the song itself are posted at the end of this incredibly long post.

After that, I decided the best way to familiarize myself with recording and to get back into playing music, writing layers and singing was to start a project I've thought of doing for years: record an album of covers of songs by women. Why? Not sure, I just thought it would be neat to limit myself to that, and to try and make songs I've always heard one way sound a lot different. I think the most fun way for me to bring these songs to the world will be to have a separate blog entry for each one once its finished, with all the disasters and details of the recording process. But I'll say this- the first one I did was of a Taylor Swift song, and it will be released in the next week or so. 

Here's what it looked like in the beginning. LOTS of vocal takes, and these weren't even all of them:

This turned out to be a fantastic way to get into recording again, and I recorded the basic parts to 3 different songs, nearly completing 2 of them. I guess I'll leave most of the details to when I post the songs, but boy, were they a learning process. From things like having ghost power on while recording vocals creating a buzzing, to learning to EQ things FIRST, then mix because EQing changes volume like crazy, to mic placement, the room affecting vocal takes, learning to record guitar both directly in to the computer AND with a room mic, etc, etc, etc. I'm still learning, but I'm getting there. 

This started to make a lot of sense after awhile- why make stupid mistakes and learn on my own songs that I'm investing a ton of time into when I can make them on stupid covers? 

As the days went on, my time spent working on music grew, but I learned that 5 hours was just about my limit before I hated everything I was doing. I also reverted to being nocturnal. Most of the ride home stuff was recorded overnight, from midnight to like 10 in the morning. By my last days, I went to bed at 6 or 8am, not really getting into the groove of music until around 12-1 after trying to start earlier. It's weird, but I've always kind of been at my best at weird hours. The last morning, I was belting out (fairly bad) vocals at 7 in the morning while our neighbors were leaving for work. Ahh, the life at reclusive millionaire fantasy camp. 

Here's Sebago Lake at 5:30 in the morning, saturated a solid amount by HDR: 

Here's completely blinding sun the next morning at 7- I literally couldn't even look at it:

And while I'm sharing HDR shots of beautiful Sebago Lake, here's the beach across the lake from our house. I pulled over for this one.

My last day ended in true Mike fashion, with me trying to record 4 takes of drums in the last 15 minutes I had before I had to go get Ben, my mom's cat, from the kennel. Once I got him, I began the sad process of cleaning up. It's been a dream of mine to have a studio set up like this for quite some time. I'm not good with taking advantage of a specific time- I am absolutely someone who gets randomly inspired- and the ability to just walk downstairs and play any instrument and record it/edit it, etc, was pretty glorious. It truly was living the dream, and I wish my Dad didn't use this as an office, otherwise I would have left most of this set up and headed home a lot more often. Maybe that elusive house with no neighbors and a nice basement will finally find its way into my life...

Here's a classic ball of wires that any musician knows all too well: 

Here's pretty much all of my musical equipment (minus mics and the mixer) in one picture. I have accumulated quite a lot over the years. It's kind of neat to look at this. I got everything other than the acoustic guitar for very cheap, but still- this adds up.

Before:

After:

When I was done, I went down to the lake to see the sunset and attempt to swim. I was sticky and disgusting, and exhausted from packing up everything. I swam in October last summer, so I figured April wouldn't be any worse- why not at least try to be able to say I swam in April? It turns out that having other people with you makes a big difference. This was about the same temperature as in Octobter, but with other people, it's a hilarious game of who can go farther, screaming obscenities at the pain, etc. By myself, it was just pain. So after 1 foot, I decided against it and headed out to get a pizza and watch the Celtics while Ben and I awaited my parents' return.

Satanic Ben:

I forgot to take a picture of my car loaded up, but with the added drum cases I bought, I was truly shocked that this all somehow fit in my Nissan Altima. An entire drumset, 8 mic stands, my imac (in the box), all recording gear, 88 -key keyboard with seat, drum throne, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, bass, huge tote full of other things, an overflowing bag of laundry, and an LL Bean bag full of everything else. I am the master packer. Let's just say that driving wasn't exactly comfortable.

In the weeks since, I've spent many many hours editing everything, including several calls to Hilton for help, which I always took very seriously. 

For an example of how maddening this is, here are 4 comped tracks of drums, opened up. This means that I recorded a take of drums, then another, then another, then another, with each take on basically a drop down menu for each individual track/microphone. SO, 4 takes, each represented by 8 different mics. The point of this is to mix together parts of different takes to get the elusive, studio-trickery "perfect take." This is only half of the tracks, and is fairly simple, and this hurts to look at. I don't like doing this- it's smart and makes sense for getting good takes, but it's a nightmare. 

Here is a screen shot of the nightmare involved with adjusting volumes. When you suck at recording, you hit drums way harder one second than before it, or strum inconsistently, sing inconsistently or horribly, etc. The trick to making a song sound good is to adjust volumes like crazy, and it's an absolute nightmare. This is where not sucking at recording would help a lot- most of my time editing has been doing this. And with 6 takes of vocals, trying to figure out what best 2 or 3 (or 6) work best together, then figuring out which one needs to be loudest, then figuring out which part of each track needs to be turned down or turned up, or muted entirely (I've found that my throat makes a weird sound when I'm done holding a note), etc etc etc: Nightmare. 

Here's an example of what one project can look like. This is basically final, and this is a simple song. Some ride home songs had 100-120 tracks. A lot of that was one specific sound covering up another (which is easier to fix now), but still. I'm terrified of what my future holds. 

So, expect cover songs to be posted soon. Expect more dongus bologna songs (and a full album) by the end of the year. And expect new legit music that I really am proud of. 

First experiment:

I never got around to doing vocals (I will eventually), but I think the end result of this jam sounds like Brand New mixed with some sort of post-rock heavy band mixed with 90's grunge. I had a blast putting this together, even though the song itself isn't the best and it's still a bit messy. I had to do several takes of everything in order to get perfect takes, and drums were a BITCH. It turns out that not playing for a solid year, skill level goes down a bit. I couldn't do what I wanted at first, but eventually found my style and was able to play pretty close to how I did when I played a lot, only much more messy and terrible. It was a struggle, but it worked out, kind of. Here's the in-progress "final" version (instrumental):

(if it doesn't play, go here) 

I'm proud of this and think it turned out to be a nice little post-rock grunge jam, but clearly, I'm still learning. The first thing I noticed was that the way I play drums doesn't work at all for recording. Mic placement was a BITCH, especially using SM57s, which are longer/taller than a lot of drum mics, but I eventually figured that out by putting the main snare mic pretty much in my crotch. But after that, I immediately noticed (and you can hear it in this recording) that when I hit the snare, I let the stick settle on the drum head (rather than pulling back the stick). Live (which is all I've ever really done), you don't notice this, but in recording, it rattles and records every subtle rattle/bounce as the stick sits there. This is one thing I clearly need to work on. 

The next thing is volume. I think I have volume of mics pretty much figured out, but when mixing, I turn everything up super loud, and as the song goes, it gets louder. This is clearly a problem, and not just for the fact that it shouldn't be slowly getting louder as the song goes. It's a main problem because I won't hear clipping at all in logic, but once I import it into itunes (where there is an additional volume controller which is always up all the way for me), the song clips like crazy. I actually remixed this entire song (no- not remix like techno remix, remix like redoing all volume changes), and I still screwed it up. Hopefully I'll get my act together on that, and maybe recording a super loud heavy song wasn't the best thing to try first. 

I did figure out a nice little trick though- making track 1 (and 2 in this song) be songs I think my song sounds like, that way I can compare the volume and prominence of drums or bass in their song to mine. Like, does my bass volume sound right here? Let's check to see what it sounds like in this Brand New song. Oh, ok, mine is still fairly quiet. I like this, and wish I had figured this out right away, rather than now. 

I think that's about it for talking about this song- I definitely need to figure out WHERE sounds can go so I don't have to just keep turning things up and down in order to hear them better. Do I attempt to figure out how to mix in surround sound, or do I just get better at moving things around on each side?

_________________________________________________________________________________ 

While this recording trip wasn't as successful as it could have been on paper, it was HUGELY successful for me as a person. One of my goals I set out to achieve when I started this whole new life thing a year ago was to reignite my passion for music. I played more in the last year, but not a lot. I recorded nothing. Now, even though it's just cover songs, I'm working again. I'm playing again. I'm staying up super late looping parts and writing layers. I've played more guitar in the last month than I have in the last 3 years probably. And I LOVE playing electric guitar through logic and making weird sounds. I love trying to make up bass lines (although finding the right bass note is much harder than I realized). As much as I'm still having trouble accepting what my voice sounds like (more on that later), I'm singing more, and I love the moment where I realize a made-up harmony works perfectly. The feeling of creating layers has always been my favorite part of music, and I'm doing that again. I have not only reignited my love for playing/writing music, but I've stepped into the future and (basically) learned a program that is not only fairly limitless and used by a lot of my favorite bands, but I also really genuinely enjoy playing around with it and learning. 

It turns out that a lazy 2 weeks of sleeping the wrong hours and barely going outside, eating garbage and getting sucked into internet holes can be insanely beneficial as long as you have just enough passion for something and a studio in your basement with the ability to play a billion different sounds though your computer. More soon!!

currently listening to: Owen- "I Do Perceive"