The Studio is Officially Open

This past weekend marked the first "serious" use of Casa Del Jefe Studios, where The Girlfriend came over to start working on recording a simple demo for herself, which she's never done before. She's been pretty nervous about the whole thing, but she did really well. Still plenty of work to do, but we'll get it done. She's coming over again tonight for a few more takes.

The Groove Tubes GT67 mic is just as excellent as I expected, transparent and warm and wonderfully sensitive, and set on the super-cardioid pattern, it really just rejects any sounds that are not made right in front of the capsule. Of course, when I first set it up, I forgot that the front of the capsule is on the side of the mic with the GT logo, so on the first run through for sound, I wondered why I was getting some delay on her voice... it was because the mic was turned around the wrong way, and it was only picking up the bounce off the far wall. It still sounded great, though! I turned the mic around, and that took care of that.

She sang and played her guitar live, no click, just the mic and with her acoustic pickup plugged in on another track. There's just enough live ring from the acoustic thru the mic to give the plugged in sound the proper metallic overtones that acoustic pickups usually leave out, so this arrangement is making it totally easy to make the whole thing sound great. I'm really happy that my room, as weird as it is in "acoustic shape," is working so well with the live mic.

This weekend is my "Me Weekend" for January, where I get the weekend to myself for creative time and headspace, so I will start officially recording the songs for the Anniversary CD. I remembered yesterday that I once was playing around with a version of "Only In Your Mind" that used the same exact structure, but was in A minor instead of A major, so all the rest of the chords were different and the melody was slightly altered. Much sadder. Since I still have the MIDI of the original demo drum track, I can bring that into Digital Performer and just record the song with the different chords very quickly - I should be able to get a decent rough version with all instruments and vocals down within a single day, just like I used to when I did my 4-tracks.

I'll see what I can do about uploading the original 4-track of "OIYM" in the next few days, and after the weekend I'll put up an MP3 of whatever progress I make.

Here's a nice review from one of The Girlfriend's friends, to whom she sent a burn copy of the Steele CD:

"The Steele CD is fantastic -- far above average for the genre. It reminds me a fair bit of Lynch Mob... and I really dig me some Lynch Mob."

That made me smile! I dig me some Lynch Mob too, that's a very nice compliment. Hmm, I don't have any Lynch Mob on CD... I bet my neighbor has it. George Lynch is a badass guitarist, although, well... I think he's still trying to be a little too badass. Ah well. Doesn't change the fact he rocks!

At some point here I'll start offering CD-R copies of "Steele" for a low price, maybe $3?