Piano Hands

Bess recording her song Starling Blackbird

1/20/07

We're almost done with our new collection of songs, Tim and Bess came over yesterday and laid down tracks.

A few more vocal things need to be done, then we need to sit down and mix the damn thing, although half of that's done already.

It's much easier when you only have two tracks to record with at a time, and you do a lot of things live in the dining room.

I first recorded with my old band at a real studio in 1987, a little place in Ripon, WI that did a fine job using a used reel to reel tape on a 16 track machine.

Our little band knocked off eight songs in four hours.

We were ready for it, having played the songs out a lot.

But here at home, our three good mics, recording input device and laptop computer can do almost as much as that whole studio, and cost us under 2000 bucks, including the laptop computer.

Amazing how far things have come, how much more freedom to create with programs like Sony Vegas, Sound Forge and Adobe Photoshop.

Add in the ability to upload music to websites, burn your own cd's and print your own covers and discs, and you've taken the whole front end of the music industry out of it, and still have a kick ass quality to your recording.

No wonder record companies are shitting bricks. And three little music geeks like us would never, ever in a million years get a record contract.

Some things are better than ever, and the old methods were expensive, snooty and awkward. And now the smelly and scary sound person running things is me. I like that a lot.