recording sesson 1

the recording went well on thursday. like most recordings it took a while to warmup and get used to the room. i was pretty worried that we were going to run out of time and complete only half of the session. between 10pm-midnight we made it through most of acts 3 and 4 only needing two takes for each section.

the last couple of hours the playing was going great, although you could see the strain on everbody. we were close to the point when mentally and physically nobody could play anymore, but you never stop when its going great.

everybody had their moments to shine. in a tough passage at the end of act 4, kyoko had to play triplets one hand and mute the keys with her other one because the mic was picking up extraneous noise in that register. scott worked his dayjob all day, skipped dinner and played mistake free bass clarinet for 6 hours. the engineers (moises estrada and marlon luna) couldn't remember a time when a wind player played that long without complaining or his mouth falling off. eric was in the pocket all night long and found a few mistakes i had missed in his and kyoko's parts. matt played his rock solid bass as usual and stayed behind with me to play our parts for chopping tool. all of it couldn't have happend without my two recording engineers. the three of us started the day at 11am testing all the rented equipment at my house, so we wouldn't be stuck in fullerton with a bad mic or cables. marlon figured out how to make digital performer sing like protools, and moises took notes on each take all evening.

since then i have been editing together the good takes for the upcoming string and vocal sessions. i'm really happy we had such a great start, although keeping up this pace is starting to take a toll. tomorrow we will finish recording chopping tool i have an interview with the oc weekly. monday it's back to work.