| mattwesselmusic.com |
| recording log: carry on (recorded from july 18, 2005 to january 22, 2006) |
| january 22, 2006 ... Went back to Steve's today and spent four hours or so mastering everything. We cleaned up the beginnings and ends to the songs, as well as added a few seconds of silence at the end of each. We also fixed a couple of "clicks" in a few of the songs. I left Steve's with a master CD in my hand and will be mailing it to Disc Makers tomorrow! I'm done!! It took me 6 months ... half of a year ... over 2% of my entire life ... wow. I should have 1,000 copies in my apartment by February 25. january 20, 2006 ... Well, we finished mixing everything today. And it all sounds great! I go back to Steve's on Sunday to master (in other words, we'll put the songs in the final order and Steve will give me a copy of the CD to take home with me. It goes in the mail to Disc Makers on Monday! january 18, 2006 ... More mixing again. I had today off from work, so I was at Steve's by about 5:00. We mixed until 10:00 or so. All of the songs have been mixed, but there are a couple of songs I would like to re-mix. After hearing them on different speakers, I wasn't happy with some of the levels. I've waited this long for the album to be done ... no reason to rush it now. january 17, 2006 ... More mixing today. Five more hours worth. Four more songs to go. january 16, 2006 ... Spent most of the day at Steve's doing our first round of mixing. It's an interesting process to say the least. With Larry, we did everything on the computer. It was convenient to be able to just raise a level here or there, or cut out a part here or there. Steve does everything in a "same-time" format. In other words, we play all of the parts we recorded, and then adjust the levels accordingly WHILE the song is playing. It's much trickier, but there are benefits to doing it that way. I don't remember what any of them are, but Steve has a whole bunch of reasons. I trust him. After about 9 hours at Steve's, my ears started to hurt and it was time to go home. january 15, 2006 ... Almost ... done ... can't ... wait ... I went over to Larry Pajakowski's house tonight to fix the pitch on some tracks. I'm not telling which ones, though, to protect the innocent. It was fun meeting up with Larry and spending a couple of hours at his computer. I hadn't been in that room since be mixed "Be With Me" almost three years ago. It's amazing how fast time flies! Afterwards, I met my family at a movie theater near South Milwaukee to watch "Glory Road". GREAT movie. I highly recommend it! Tomorrow I'll be at Steve's most of the day editing/mixing the album. Hopefully I'll be leaving there with a final product in hand! january 12, 2006 ... The "last" vocal/recording session was tonight. I put that in quotations because, like last Thursday, my voice wasn't 100 percent. But we were still able to get the vocals done for "Thanks For Saying Hi", "Happy Are We" and "Carry On". Now all that's left to do are the vocals for "All The People Say", "Excelsior" and a little bit of keyboard work. Steve and I are going to meet on Monday to finish that (should take about two hours or so) and then spend the rest of the day mixing. I'm still hoping to have the project finished by the end of that day! The vocal parts for "Thanks For Saying Hi" turned out pretty cool. There's a horn part in that song, and there's a neat ooh/aah section that leads right into it. I'm excited for people to hear it. january 8, 2006 ... Steve and I met from 12:30 to 7:30 today( with an hour break for lunch). Six hours of vocals. Needless to say, my voice was worn out. In fact, I'm not sure if it will be 100 percent when I go back on Thursday to finish them up! But it was a productive day. The plan is to wrap everything up on Thursday and then edit on Monday the 16th. Hopefully, I'll be sending stuff to Disc Makers the middle of next week. I'm still trying to iron out what I want on the cover. And I also have to pick the order of the songs. january 5, 2006 ... Sort of an unproductive session tonight. My voice wasn't 100 percent, so we just recorded main vocals for "Falling In Love" and then did some mixing with "Those Who Dwell" (blended the string parts with the piano part). Heading back to Gurnee on Sunday for a power session (all vocals!). december 28, 2005 ... Went back over to Steve's this evening from about 6:30 to 8:30 to record bass for "Carry On" and some percussion for "Those Who Dwell" with Mike Przygoda. Paddy also came by to lay down some guitar tracks for "Glory". Steve also got his new curtains in his studio. They look great and should come in handy when we record vocals next week. december 27, 2005 ... We had a power session tonight. I was at Steve's from 5:30 to 10:30. During that time, we recorded a horn part for "Thanks For Saying Hi" (played by Andrew Mays), vocals for "See Them" (Beth Wessel), a trumpet part for "All The People Say" (played by my brother, Ben Wessel) and guitar parts for "Falling In Love" (played by one of Steve's other "clients", Paddy). Everything sounded superb. I can't wait to mix it all. Near the end of the session, we figured out that "Glory" would sound good with some acoustic guitar (which we usually add when we play it live), so we're going to try and record that tomorrow. Once tomorrow's session is over, I think I'll have finished everything except vocals and a few keyboard pads that I need to play. We're almost there!! Here's a final track list (well, almost final - there's one song I may remove) (and this is just in alphabetical order): All The People Say Carry On Excelsior Falling Falling In Love Glory Hail, Mary Happy Are We Kate’s Song See Them Thanks For Saying Hi Those Who Dwell … and an instrumental song I’ve yet to title december 13, 2005 ... Kelly and I went back down to Gurnee tonight to record "Falling" and "See Them". It was a great session. We layered a bunch of parts for "Falling" and I'll decide how much of it to actually use later on in the editing stage. But for now, it's good to have a lot of tracks to work with. For "See Them", there's a part where Kelly plucks the violin and we were able to use a different mic for that, which allowed us to enhance that otherwise hard-to-hear sound. It turned out very well. Things are moving along great. I'll probably record trumpet and horn next week, possibly some electric guitar, and then tackle vocals the week after Christmas. december 10, 2005 ... Molly (flute), Kelly (violin) and I went down to Steve's today to record parts to "Glory", "Kate's Song" and "Hail, Mary". It was a looong day. I was at work at 7:30 getting ready for tonight's Bucks game. When we have Saturday games, I usually work in the morning and then have the afternoon off (from about noon until 4:30). So today I used that to drive us down to Gurnee, record and come right back. The session went very, very well. We got great takes of all of the songs, especially "Kate's Song". Steve's basement naturally has a "dead" sound to it, like many studios do, but he's going to add some reverb to everything to make it sound a little more "live". Molly's commitment to the album is now over. Kelly will come back down in a few days to finish her stuff. december 5, 2005 ... Wow. I can't believe it's been over a month since the last session. As many of you know, I was getting somewhat overwhelmed with the project, in addition to working full-time and the like. So I took a "break" to rest my mind, but also to spend some time listening to the songs and figure out what I wanted to add to them. About a week ago, I started to get the itch to record again. Tonight I met with nine members of the Marquette Liturgical Choir and we recorded "Those Who Dwell", "Happy Are We" and "Glory". They sounded incredible. The church was very cold (we recorded at St. Hedwig's in Milwaukee and it's really, really big -- in other words, hard to heat) and we were in there for a good two hours, so I hope no one got sick. But I think it was worth it! Steve ended up having us record everything twice and then he doubled it, so it actually sounds like there's an 18-person choir! All three songs went very well. The choir did an "ooh" and "aah" thing for "Glory" ... they sang just the refrain in unison on "Happy Are We" ... and they sang the entire song for "Those Who Dwell". A nice variety. I can't wait for people to hear them. These kids are very, very talented and were easy to work with. In fact, much of the music that I had written out was either out-dated (meaning I had changed it since I wrote it) or just plan wrong or in the wrong order ... but they did a great job of going with the flow and hearing their parts. october 30, 2005 ... Kelly C., Molly, Emily, Lexi and Kelly P. came to Gurnee tonight to record "Those Who Dwell". Many of you may remember hearing a string quartet on the song at the 2005 Gurnee CFL. The parts turned out really well and these girls played them so beautifully that I wanted to have them professionally recorded for the album. We laid down about four takes before deciding we had enough to work with. Larry headed up this session. It was great to have him join the effort. He's such a comforting presence for me (after all, he was with me 6 years ago when all of this started). I was standing in front of the strings and flute as they played, directing with my eyes closed. I don't think they needed me up there waving my arms around, but it was neat to close my eyes and pretend that they were following me. I just hope the album can accurately capture how well they played. They're a very talented bunch and I'm blessed to have them on this album. Molly and Kelly especially, since they're a constant presence at my shows. Afterwards, Molly and Kelly jammed to a couple of other songs. We laid down a take of "Kate's Song", but will probably end up giving it a "live" effort with my playing along with them, rather than having them play to a pre-recorded piano track. october 23, 2005 ... We laid down some bass tracks tonight. Mike Przygoda and I met at my house in Gurnee at 6:00 and practiced four songs in 45 minutes. Then we drove over to Steve's and laid down the bass tracks to those four songs. They turned out really well! There's two more songs I know we'll need bass on, but I'm not in a huge rush to finish those up. The songs we tackled tonight were "Falling", "Falling In Love", "Glory" and "All The People Say". Mike and Chris were also giving me a bunch of great ideas on things that I can add to the songs. I'm starting to get a little worn down with the recording process. In my efforts to get it done as quickly as possible, I've been spending every spare second I can writing parts or in Gurnee laying down tracks. Part of me wants to just take a break for a little while - see friends, relax, sleep in once in a while, etc. The goal was to have this done by Christmas, but now I'm not so sure. I can definitely get it done by then, but I'm not sure if I want to. Something to sleep on and ponder over the next few days. october 14, 2005 ... Well, after a loooong day at work, I made the drive back to Gurnee for one last session with Chris. We started recording at about 8:00 p.m. and were done by 10:30 p.m. or so. It was a late night, but we got some good takes. It's such a relief to have percussion done. Now we turn to the bass. Once that's done, it's all downhill from there! october 6, 2005 ... Steve drove up to Milwaukee tonight for ONE LAST (I promise) session on the piano at St. Hedwig's. I wanted to re-record the beginning to "Carry On", as well as lay down two instrumental tracks: "Kate's Song" and a song that has yet to be named. I'm recording "Kate's Song" again because I wanted a recording with the flute and violin parts that Molly and Kelly wrote. (And, yes, I've decided to go with two instrumentals for this album. I can't get away from them. I love writing and playing them. I'm still planning on doing an all-instrumental album next, but I wanted to put a couple of them on this disc.) I also recorded the piano for "Happy Are We" and a new song that I haven't even written lyrics to yet (but the melody is in my head!) I even laid down piano to "Those Who Dwell" because I think we're going to record it with the string quartet and a choir. So ALL OF THE PIANO IS NOW DONE! Seriously. Soon I'll be posting a full list of all of the songs from the album. october 4, 2005 ... Had a great session tonight. We got the drums tracks laid down for "Falling", "See Them", "Glory" and "Falling In Love". They all sounded awesome ... especially "Falling In Love". Chris was on the set for this session. He's a great drummer and has a knack for a) picking things up quickly and b) knowing what sound I'm looking for. Jason, the other phenomenal drummer that I work with, injured his finger the other day and is "on the shelf" for a couple of weeks. I'm not sure how that will affect recording, as I'm trying to get everything done sooner than later, but we'll play it by ear. Jason has been playing with my for years, and I really wanted him to be on the album. But the important thing for him now is to get better ... Steve was able to bring a lot of his equipment to St. Paul's in order to record there so we could use their set and space. And Larry met us at the church to meet Steve and see how the project is coming along. As some of you know, this is my first time working with Steve, but Larry is still going to play a part in the album. He'll be helping out with some instrumental parts to some of the songs and a lot of the choir work. I showed up at the church at 6:00 and left with Steve about 10:30. We spent from 7:00 to 10:00 doing actual recording. So it was a good three-hour session. We'll be back at it on Thursday night, although I'm not sure exactly what we'll be doing yet. Either way, I'm encouraged with tonight's session and how things have been going so far! september 30, 2005 ... Nothing major today. Just laid down some scratch vocals for other musicians to reference when recording. Steve and I met for about an hour or so. I also practice with Chris for a while late this evening to hammer out some drum parts for the album. He and Jason are going to be sharing the load when it comes to percussion. I think we may be recording with the two of them pretty soon. Getting kind of overwhelmed with how much is left to do for this disc, but I'm still aiming to have it recorded within a month! september 20, 2005 ... Dan Meyer joined me in the studio tonight. We spent two hours laying down the guitar tracks to "See Them" and "Falling". While there will most likely be a few more songs that Dan plays on, these were the big two. We had some issues at first with the "click track" style of recording. Dan wasn't too used to the method (but who is?) so it took us a while to get takes where the guitar was perfectly matched up with the piano. But in the end, we have two great takes for both songs. We did have some techinical difficulties tonight. Dan laid down an excellent take of the first part of "Falling" only to have it erased from Steve's digital system. We're not sure exactly how if happened, but the only thing we could do was redo the take. And it turned out fine. It was nice to get back in the swing of things. Look for more updates soon! august 16, 2005 ... Steve and I finished editing the songs we laid down tonight. Now we're ready to start recording drums, bass and guitar. I still need to record the piano parts to "Those Who Dwell" and "Happy Are We", but I'm not quite ready to do those songs ... After the session, I went by my mom's house in Gurnee and ate some dinner and played video games with Ben. He beat me. august 14, 2005 ... This afternoon I swung by Steve's house in Gurnee to edit some of the piano tracks we laid down. Since I'm doing this piece by piece, I wanted to make sure the piano was exactly the way I wanted it before we add any other instruments. So if a song needs to be shortened or tweaked, now's the time to do it. We were fairly productive in the two hours we worked. We got seven songs edited. For the most part, it's simply me listening to it and saying, "Yeah, that sounds good." It's just nice to hear everything before we move on. august 10, 2005 ... Okay, so this recording thing is going at a slower rate than I had initially hoped. People at work tell me it's the busiest off-season they've seen in a long time - perhaps ever. It seems as if things are happening daily and I've had a hard time finalizing songs for the album. Because of that, I haven't yet been ready to lay piano tracks down to all of the songs. But Steve and I did have another session tonight (Wednesday, August 10). We met at St. Hedwig's again. Steve sent me some samples of the songs from our first session there and I was really happy with the quality. Tonight, we layed down piano tracks to seven songs: "Falling In Love" (not to be confused with "Falling") "Excelsior" "Taking Time" "All The People Say" "See Them" "Would It Be Okay?" "If You Were There" (Note: none of those titles are set in stone!) We did "See Them" and "All The People Say" at our first session, but I wanted to have them recorded on St. Hedwig's piano. I wasn't too happy with the takes for "Taking Time" (which may not even make the album) or "Would It Be Okay?". So I'm probably going to re-do those. And "Excelsior" may have to be shortened quite a bit. I'm finding that my songs are really long. I know I talked about "Thanks For Saying Hi" being almost 6:30. But other songs seem to go over that 5:00 range, which I really don't like. So I'm going to have to do some cutting! The street traffic wasn't too bad tonight. Steve and I didn't have to start any of the songs over due to buses or motocycles. And it wasn't as hot as our last session either! Praise the Lord! I've finally named the album, too, but I'm going to keep that a secret for now. It'll give me something to surprise everybody with as the project nears an end. When that will be, I have no idea. But the good news is that we can now edit my piano parts and move onto the drums! Larry Pajakowski and I are also talking about setting up a night to do "Those Who Dwell" for the new disc. Fun stuff! Thanks for reading... I'll post more soon! july 25, 2005 ... Another Monday, another recording session. I realized last week that the piano I really wanted on the new album was the piano I play on three or four times a week - the piano at St. Hedwig's Church in Milwaukee. It's a gorgeous, bright Yamaha grand piano that's up in the front of the church. The church itself is large with a very high ceiling and a quite a bit of space from front to back. It allows for quite a bit of natural reverb. So I asked Steve if he would be willing to bring his recording equipment up to St. Hedwigs for a session. He was happy to oblige. After a brief scare with my blowing a fuse in the church (which I have since reset, so no worries) and instilling in both steve and myself a fear that we would have no power, we got things underway at about 7:30 p.m. We started with a simple and melodic piece called "Hail, Mary". While using St. Hedwigs allowed for total privacy and no time limit as to when we needed to be done by, it had one major drawback - it's right on a busy city street. When recording "Hail, Mary", there were a few times that a passing bus or motorcycle made its way onto the track. So we made do by re-recording certain parts. I think we have enough takes to put together a good piano track. Time will tell. I also laid down tracks to "Carry On" and "Glory". Then we re-recorded takes to "Thanks For Saying Hi" and "Falling" because I wanted to have tracks with this piano. One thing I realized is that "Thanks For Saying Hi" is rather long - about 6:30. So what I might do is put two versions on the album - one that's 6:30 or so and one that's about 4:30. Still playing around with that idea. We were wrapped up by about 9:30 and out of there by 10:00. Hopefully we'll get another piano session in on Friday or Sunday. july 18, 2005 ... Well, Steve and I started recording tonight. I left a meeting in downtown Milwaukee early and made it to the Jack Benney Performing Arts Center at 6:30 p.m. Steve was already on site with most of the equipment set up and ready to go. After a few tweaks here and there, we were ready to roll. With it being well over two years since I have recorded an album, I felt a little out of place at first. It didn't help that I'm using a click-track on this disc. Essentially, that means I'm using a metronome (and in some cases a synthetic drum beat) to help me keep perfect time while recording. I'm doing that because the drums are being added later and I don't want Jason and Chris to have to play to a non-metered song. But as the night went on, I realized that I wasn't very comfortable with the click-track. So I think we've decided to always do one take with the beats and one without. That way, I can choose which I like best in the end. I started out with "Falling" and we recorded four takes before I felt we had enough good takes to move on. Again, the click-track played a part in that. I like to speed up just slightly at the bridge and then carry the tempo change through the end of the song. I think we'll record this song one more time in a future session. I also laid down the tracks to "See Them", "Thanks For Saying Hi" and "All The People Say". We were done recording by 8:30 and out of the place by 9:00. Our next recording session is scheduled for next Monday. The goal is to record all of the piano tracks first, and then edit them into their final form. Once that's done, we can start adding other instruments. Larry Pajakowski will be helping me add vocals and solo instruments once Steve and I are through with the piano, drums, bass and guitar. All in all, tonight felt good. I still have a lot of prep work to do on this album, but it was good to get things rolling. I can't wait to dive even deeper into this project. Stay tuned for updates! |