The Three Day Album Project

One year ago, Gayleen and I holed up in my home studio and in three days, emerged with an entire album recorded together.

That material has basically sat in our digital vaults until this weekend (Labour Day weekend, exactly one year since the recording) when Gayleen and I returned to the studio to begin mixing the sucker.

Two days later, and six of the 10 tracks are finished. G and I need one full day more (if all goes well) in October to finish mixing the remaining four.

It’s sounding good. The glow of the raw tracks hasn’t diminished in the intervening year.

We’ll keep you posted on further progress as it happens…

Christopher

One year after Gayleen and I recorded this album (and not a minute earlier), something is stirring here again.

It would have made things so much easier.

G-

Earlier this week, Gayleen posted on her personal blog a list of observations and things she learned because of the three-day album thing.

• Link to post

Here’s some of what I thought, following the big weekend…

• It’s true – deadlines are more important than anything else.
• I am capable of not ruining someone else’s material. And by ruining, I mean shift it so far away from what they’d be happy with that they hate it. This sounds like a weird thing to worry about, but trust me, for anyone who loves to record his/her own music in his/her own studio, you really worry about what you would do to someone else’s music in your hands. I’ve read that Vince Clarke (Erasure) has the exact same worry and that’s why he’s produced so few people outside of his own groups.
• MIDI feels really outdated for good reason, but it feels reassuring to know you can still make it work if you have to. How many 25-year-old technologies can do that these days?
• I can’t believe it was a cable. And I’m so glad that’s all it was. (That cable was immediately trashed…)
• Houses make lots of noise you don’t notice until you record someone else’s vocals.
• Once you have The Blonde in your blood, it never leaves. It’s best to just admit it, even if it makes you laugh.
• I still really want an iPhone.
• People who whine about the virtual keyboard on an iPhone vs. the physical keys of a BlackBerry should know that Gayleen posted all her updates to our blog using her iPhone/iPod Touch, and it seemed to work just fine.
• If Gayleen knew how to use the GPS in her fancy little iPhone, she would have found at least three 7-Elevens in Spruce Grove. Or she could have at least Googled “aspertame” and “Health effects of” before doing another Diet Pepsi run.
• The mic we used was a Rode NT1 condenser mic. Mine is about nine years old, but you can buy a slightly upgraded, slightly cheaper model now (link). It’s a nice mic, I like it a lot, but the fact is G’s voice sounds that good because it is that good.
• No matter how big a dog you are, there’s always a bigger dog out there. And if you’re lucky, someday that bigger dog will come over to your house and puke on your basement floor.
• For clarification – the preceding story involves Milo and Spenser, not me and Gayleen
• Gayleen is excellent with young kids. My daughter is still asking when she’ll be back.
• Dora the Explorer ice cream isn’t even made with real Dora. “America’s Finest Ice Cream” is made of Doras, and Dora ice cream is made somewhere in rural China, I believe.
• There unfortunately is no incident involving me and energy drinks, resulting in their banishment from the Nash household. I wish there was a better story here. Turns out Juliana is just really paranoid about ingesting non-natural ingredients.
• My computer did well, under the circumstances, but really shows its age when rendering (“bouncing”) audio tracks to final mixes, or when trying to do anything requiring soft synths in Digital Performer. But for the record, yes you can record an entire album in three days, using an old G4 Mac Mini.
• I’m convinced our digital audio gremlin was a crappy driver for the M-Audio Firewire audio interface. That glitch really sucks, but I hadn’t had that happen until Gayleen and I pushed the computer to the max on that weekend.
• I need an 88-weighted-key keyboard. Even if they are huge and heavy. Other than my family’s old upright piano, I’ve never had an 88-key keyboard. Maybe I can get Gayleen to carry mine around for me whenever I buy one.
• It always drives me nuts when songwriters and musicians can’t tell someone who knows nothing about music what their style of music is, and instead give some stereotypical flakey and long-winded answer. It’s not hard. “Rock.” “Country.” “Folk.” “Synthpop.” “Rap.” Even if it’s not really something that fits well into any genre or section of a music store, you should be able to spit something out to someone who is totally clueless to what you do. Lie if you have to, but make it simple. But now…. when people ask me about Gayleen and  three-day album – “So what kind of music is it?” I don’t know what to tell them.
• You can mock Depeche Mode if you really need to. For me, this groundbreaking band has always had refreshingly little use of Celtic fiddles and other such ridiculousness. In other words, they are awesome.
• I’m well used to working in my studio by myself. I’ve done it ever since I was in high school. But my studio feels lonely now whenever I’m in it.

Chris

Gayleen: I have a fever, and the only thing that can cure it is more… actually, I do have a fever. Where’s my amoxicillin?

Gayleen: I want to hear that track reverbed to hell and back.
Chris: That’s a long way.
Gayleen: Okay, halfway back.
*Chris reverbs track. Computer generates screwy digital artifact.*
Chris: That’s the problem with reverbing things to hell. You never come back alone.

Gayleen: Daniel Lanois uses accordians.
Chris: A lot of people do it. That doesn’t make it right.

Gayleen: That’s starting to sound epic over there. And Russian.
Chris: Like Dr. Zhavago?
Gayleen: God, no.
Chris: Too bad. Because that’s what I’m going for.

Gayleen: Can you give my voice balls?
Chris: You’re still going to sound like a girl.

Chris: Now’s what we call “David Foster time.”
Gayleen: We don’t call it–
Chris: Or Timbaland time.
Gayleen: No.

Gayleen (listening to misaligned tracks): I’m not sure I could walk a straight line while listening to that.

Julie (spotting an empty energy drink can by the computer): Is that what I think it is? Oh, no. These have been banned from the house. (to Gayleen) He was drinking them all the time after Jason was born. One after the other. He went a little craaaaaazy.

Chris (after finishing his vocals on a duet): Batter up.
Gayleen: One base on an overthrow.
Chris: Five runs an inning.
Gayleen: That is a pussy rule. That is for tee-ball.

Chris is working on the last song now and it sounds very pretty. He has a real gift for picking the right sounds for a song, and playing little riffs and lines that make the sounds work. It doesn’t hurt that he plays guitar and piano-and toy piano-and sings and is an endless source of ideas.
It looks as if we’ll have a lot to work with, going into mixing and mastering. It’s been fairly amazing, hearing where Chris has taken the songs. This should be a cool album, I think, when it’s mixed and mastered. It’s sounding quite cool already. It’s a good balance between songs that build on my usual sound and take it a lot further, and songs that have a new sound I wouldn’t have imagined (the Blondes, anyone?) I’m extremely happy we did this, and excited about what we’ll get when we mix them good and proper.
I’m also grateful to Chris’ whole family, who put up with me for the weekend… And fed me. And kept Spenser company today. And were generally awesome.

Or at least the more expected. Gone came out sounding a bit Tori Amos circa Choirgirl Hotel. Which is all good by me.

Now we’re on to Perfect Pitch-aka the song I’m always terrified of going flat on.