New quiet psych record in Atlanta...

[bickle]

Hi all,

I'm doing my first serious, full-on album project at home after years of screwing around, collecting gear, reading Tape-Op, etc. We have a good band, good equipment, etc. - I'm just the bass player/recording geek.

We just had our first session over Memorial Day weekend, and we're going to be blogging on our progress here:

http://jupiterwatts.blogspot.com/

Hopefully some of you will be interested, b/c I'll be posting roughs and tons of recording details that only Tape-Oppers will truly appreciate. Plus, you can hear real-life examples of gear that was almost definitely acquired due to recommendations on this very message board.

Thanks for checking it out, and for all your help getting us this far!

[bickle]

Hi again,

There's a new post up with another rough mix; this was a sort of "problem" song that we like a lot better now. It would be great to hear some comments, especially since a number of tapeoppers have stopped by without saying anything!:

http://jupiterwatts.blogspot.com/2009/0 ... asing.html

Also, I've given a little more detail on the previous post, where you can really heard the sound of the Grundig gdsm 200, which is supposed to be the same capsule as the sennheiser md409. I've never heard a 409, but the Grundig produces a totally 3D sound:

http://jupiterwatts.blogspot.com/2009/06/here-goes.html

Oh, and I never mentioned that the last post has lots of gear porn! Thanks in advance for any input you all may offer...

[bickle]

Shamelessly bumping this once more, since I just posted two new mixes I'd love to get some feedback on. They can be found here:

http://jupiterwatts.blogspot.com/2009/0 ... r-bit.html

In particular, I'm curious what folks think about the melodica part on the first song, "one by one." I was really surprised how hard it was to get a decent recording of that thing! It's still not perfect, especially since it goes off pitch sometimes, but we think we have a keeper take.

The second song, "the target," features my first attempt at drum replacement. I hated to do it for this project, but I blew it with the snare drum sound - you can hear the badly-placed mic at the beginning of the song, where we actually liked the character of it. Unfortunately, it was getting totally lost in the mix, so I had to trigger a sample to make it pop out a little. There's still some tweaking to do, but I'm pretty happy with the results, and it was fun to learn how to do it. I used AudioSnap in Sonar, and it was actually a breeze. The sample comes in after a minute or so, it should be subtle but easy enough to detect.

Would love to hear what people think!

[vvv]

My stream-of-unconciousness reviews:

"One by One": I like this song, a lot. The melodica sounds fine. The vocal is a touch sibilant ... The word "all" at 2:11 has a hard compressor artifact ... also "all" at 3:58 but not as bad ... Terrific stereo imaging and depth ... This sounds a bit like REM when I liked 'em.

"The Target (7-4-09)": at 0:08 I hear a little click, pretty acoustic guitar, some of the finger-noise is just a touch distracting (2:12 has a loud one - some spot level reduction or even de-ess might help), the drums is fine atho' I would drop the sample just a cuppla dB(?), they groove nicely with the bass, you guys should be real proud of this song, huge download but doesn't feel like too long, again with the Stipeish vocal what is very cool and cleaner here and I like the electronic noises a la Radidiohead, cool percussion, bassist has a good feel, guitars is right and the mix is huge, love the outtro and now y'all should buy the guitarists(s) a beer.

[bickle]

Wow, thanks for the kind words and the good advice! It is much appreciated. I have the month of August off, and that's when I'm going to be doing all those little things like fixing small bits and pieces, so I need lots of suggestions for that. I should have mentioned that both vocals are scratch tracks, recorded live with all the other basics. That vocalist/guitarist/songwriter is one of two in the band; both of these are his songs. I think he did a pretty good job on the vox for scratches...

Funny you mention those guitars at the end. He improvised that guitar solo (the one panned right) maybe the day after we tracked the song, and then did maybe six variations a month or two later, since he wasn't happy with the original performance. Now I have to choose between them, and the original is still my favorite - seems like it happens that way so often. But I put two in here just to see how it sounded (that's a newer one in the middle). I kind like the dual guitar solo. Gonna go listen to the Velvets' "What Goes On" now...

Keep the comments coming, this is just what I need!