CD is DONE

So finally, after much ado...

the disc is done. The above is a set of pictures from the show we played, thrown together in neato style in photoshop. The photos were taken and filtered by Salina Jaffer, who is basically the band photographer. She does good work if you're ever looking for anything to get done.

We sold a solid number of CD's at a well-attended release show, and have heard good comments since that point. I'm glad that the proces is over, and I learned a whole ton about how to get a disc done when both time and money are supplied BELOW demand.

For the discs themselves, we ended up burning them ourselves in a computer lab at school. Ordinarily, I would have liked to get CD's with a printed set of words on them denoting teh name of the band, but as we were running TIGHT with time, we ended up sticking labels on them. They were supposed to be clear, however when you stick a clear label onto a shiny CD, the glue on the label reflects on the CD and the label looks white, and thus, ghetto. SO in future, I'd make extra sure to find somewhere to get blank CD's printed on. Apparently there's a special inkjet printer that does it. Which means I'm sure there's some people that own one that charge for its use somewhere.

The covers, we ended up going with a jewel case design. I'm not a huge fan of jewel cases, as they get lost in a pile easily. But as I said, we were short on time. In future, I'd most likely give up on trying to find cardboard packs with spines that you can print a label onto (ideal for radio stations where cd's are stacked so that the spine is all you can see...if you can't see the name, the cd will never get played). Instead, I would get something like this and stick that inside a piece of cardboard that you can get printed on and scored (cut so that they're easy to fold) at any office supply store.

Other than that, go nuts. Make a CD. Spend some money. I'll be quick to recommend the guys at Napier Park to make sure you guys get something good together. They don't have a website together yet, but it should be up shortly. If you want contact information, don't hesitate to call Steve Foster at 905.628.8258 or Napierparkstudio@cogeco.ca

They helped us get a good disc together, and made us feel like rock stars in the process. If you want a copy of the CD, email me at kris.somers@gmail.com. We're selling them for $7, and still have a few left.

Until next time...Whitey is signing out. Click here to go to our official website, which is very slowly being built. New stuff all the time!!!

Status Update

Here we are, April 11th. Exactly 11 days before our CD Release show, which I'd booked at the Phoenix. No, not the Phoenix in Toronto, but our very own GSA Campus Pub here at McMaster. And with no CD in sight. The boys at Napier Park ran out of hard drive space, so we had to buy a new one. $120 bucks and a trip to Office Depot later, I had a Maxtor 40GB 7200rpm ATA drive. Dropped it off at Duke's, and they were good to start the mixing. Duke says that the mixing will be done by the end of the week, which fits in nicely with our timelines.

Whilst at Office Depot, I also picked up a whole whack of CD jewel cases. 200 of them to be precise, and this cost me $80. So that adds a fixed cost of $0.40 to the cost of each CD produced. Our plan is to get together on the night of April 18th and burn all the CD's in about 3 hours.

Thanks to Christina Santiago, we have a spanking new design for our CD cover. Can't show it to you yet because that'd ruin the surprise. Plus, it's not done. But it does kick ass which will ensure that we sell lots of copies, makes lots of money and get lots of chicks. Both of which are primary drivers for being in a band in the first place.

Except for Dionne and Shelly.

They're not interested in the money.

More news soon...

Groovin' like black chicks

Finally I got my girls in!

I dropped Shel and Dee off at around 11:00 in the morning. I stuck around to hear them do the first track, and from what I heard they were smokin'. The two of them were placed into a different room from where I recorded (affectionately known as the 'vocal booth'), and shared a microphone between the two of them. Relative volume was taken care of by positioning the two of them closer or further away from the mic. I sat in the production room with the Foster boys from Napier Park. Here's Shel's, then Dee's impressions of the day:

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so what happens when two black chicks of varying heights get into a recording studio?? one of them has to stand on wooden blocks... that's what. After we were all fixed up height wise, we started singing something fierce... which for me means in a volume that's actually audible. That was probably the hardest part... having to find out what i ACTUALLY sound like. I'll let you know if that was a good thing or a bad thing once i hear the final mix. Anyways being in the studio itself was ridiculously cool... i totally felt my inner diva come alive while i had the head phones on...however, i was quickly brought back to reality as i stumbled off my make shift step ladder. that's right... my reality is that of a vertically challenged individual. but its ok. good things come in small pacakages.... i think. anyway it was all good in the hood... i could totally make a living off of this one day.... anyone looking for a jazz singer?????

p.s - kris bought us flowers to start the day. he's the greatest !!! ladies, definatley grab him before i decide i want him back !!

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Studio Session virginity is an interesting concept. We were both virgins to this experience, but it went fairly smoothly considering, I'm not gonna lie I was a litte nervous. The session started with some warm ups, Shelly with her extensive choir knowledge warmed up on scales, and myself with extensive sister act knowledge, a warm up based on la's. Next up, Riley the dog humped my leg, just to soften the mood, and before we knew it, iit was time to step into the vocal space. At first take it became apparently clear that Shelly is a midget, so they brought her some blocks to stand on...AHAHAHAHA. So when she was finally brought up to "my level" we balanced fairly well on the one mic. It was also unfortunatly apparent that I have way too BIG of a MOUTH, and so I stepped back to balance the vocals a little more for recording. Once all these logistics came together the real recording began.

As we did take after take I grew to realize how sereal the experience was. There we were, true divas, singing into the mic, while holding on to headphones; one ear on, and one ear off to maximize the quality and sound of your own voice. We also took advantage of getting into the groove by crazy dancing just to lighten the mood, good times! It was really great to hear what we were doing, and feel out differences that we could make to the songs. It also made me a lot more aware of things that I tend to mess up, or change on each take on myself, I certainly don't work like clockwork, but I'm sure there are worse things. In the end, Shelly and I were proud of a 3 hour run at 6 songs, about 3 takes on each, and a new knowledge that will help for future recordings...cuz you know this is just the beginning for WATC, lol, neways, the experience was wicked, can't wait to do it again...Peace out.

Ashley has some Sax

Ash went in and recorded his saxophone parts. Here's his account of the day:

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5 solid hours later, the cd took casual steps closer toward a finished product. When we first fired up the tunes - Promise You - even the producers were impressed as to how good the product sounded before mixing.
some stats for ya:
- early mornings: 1 too many (started recording at 11)
- bruised lips due to excessive saxophonism: 1 slightly used set
- songs soldiered through: 7
- hours of song creation: 4.67
- quasi-friendly dogs that howled like a lovesick wolf every time the sax was played: 1
- incredible epics/experiences: 1+

The thing about recording is that you really don't know that you're "in the moment" until you really take a step back and realize that your performance may be listened to by more people than the producers that are in the room with you. It's a really uplifting, motivational, mind-blowing and surreal experience that makes you feel like you're contributing to something that, in some small way, is that much bigger than something you'd be doing on your own. This was my first time (kinda) recording and I've enjoyed it so much that I'm almost willing to do it again.

Droppin' Nollij

What's up

Yesterday, it was finally time for me to go in and lay down some kickin' lead vocal tracks. Stumbles to avoid include:

-Don't go out late the night before and come in with even the slightest of hangovers
-Make sure that you bring coffee in the morning
-Eat more than 3 Boston Cream donuts over the course of the day
-Make sure you actually have words WRITTEN for the songs that you're going to sing that day

The day started off with Craig doing some feedback. Not like the constructive type that we learn about in school, but the type that angers parents and scares responsible citizens. That's right, he was cranking the distortion on his amp and overdubbing some serious guitar wails in some of our tracks. Groovy, rock and roll baby. Yeah.

After a few tries, Craig was finally able to get the wail that he was looking for. I think the fact that he brought a groupie, in the form of his friend Jess (shown below) must have helped.



Jess has nothing to do with this story. I just posted this to show you that yes, girls do hang out with us on occasion.



That's Dan from the Rayburns and Napier Park Studios working hard on the 1's and 2's. Napier is in the basement of a house in Dundas, and is where we are recording the melody parts of our tunes.



Rock and roll isn't all about standing up and showing how angstful you can be. Sometimes you get to sit down and be thoughtful. For the 5 hours I was in the studio yesterday, I spent around 2 hour's worth of that actually singing. the rest of the time was spent sitting in that foldup chair. Most of the songs went off fine and without any kind of a hitch, but some of them took longer because I normally just make up the words to them as I'm singing them. What? My dad's from Africa. I was FREESTYLIN y'all!!! But when you have to double tracks (record two different versions, then track them over top of each other to add body and depth), the words have to be the same in both cuts otherwise you end up with a whole lotta mumbly Joe.



Eventually, I was rockin' out so hard that the microphone I was using fell apart. Enter the Napier Park boys, who luckily had some blue masking tape on hand to hold the thing together. I figure that having taped up gear gives me an extra 6 Indie cred points (a scoring system that gives you more points of credibility as an independent musician based on how ghetto your setup is). As we all pointed out, most of Hamilton's music scene is held together by tape and glue. But that's what makes it Hamilton, right?

All in all, a good day's recording. The tracks sound like ass as is, but that's pre-mixing so hopefully the black magic of the Mighty Macintosh will sort all that out. If I smoked anything, I'd smoke it to celebrate a job well done. But I don't smoke, so I just watched startup.com instead, which isn't a bad movie if you're in the mood for a documentary. Just don't rent it for a date.

Timmy drops some MORE tunes..

Here's Timmy's thoughts from his second day of recording.
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well karma is at it again. In response to yesterday's mess, today ruled. They found a new guitar which I was playing around on, it was ok, but didnt sound nearly as good as my own. Luckily, after some emergency repair on my baby (which was royally messed), one of the techs got it prim and proper. Shes never sounded better, plus I ruled that studio today. We did all 7 songs in under 5 hours, which is incredible if youve ever done any recording. Practice payed off huge, as I was able to wail out three takes for each song almost right after another. We spent some time adding recording tricks and beefing up the sound by overdubbing on some tunes. So far Ive been really impressed with the dudes at Catharine North and Napier Park studios. they know what theyre doing, and they add some really nice ideas to the tunes. Nothing crazy, but just enough snazz to make your eyes bulge when you hear it. We also did a a couple acoustic takes, which was fun, I always prefer playing my acoustic. and from what i heard, it sounded pretty nice. So in recap today totally made up for yesterday's garbage. the songs are shaping up beautifully, and we even have just over half the band on the tracks. Im super pumped for the final product.

Rock out

Timmy drops some Tunes

Tim went in to do some lead guitar overdubs the other day. Here's what he thought of his experience:

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Well, it was my first experience in the studio and it was a rather frustrating and unproductive one. Although I flew through the first track, which is the hardest that I'll be laying down, my gear sounded off. like real off. luckily the two guys engineering the recordings are both guitar techs (one's for Biilly Talent right now, I hope he knows what hes doing) so they were all over it. first checking intonation, and seeing that one of my strings was way off (for those of you who arent following, just replace the last sentence with "Something that makes any guitarist sound like shit") they were not getting what they wanted from this guitar of mine, so they called up people they knew trying to get information and/or a sweet lefty that I could se for the sessions instead. There were no lefty guitarists handy (how many do you know?) and it took a couple hours of me watching them turn knobs and plugging into tuners for them to find the real problem and remedy it. In the meantime, I layed down tracks for 2 others but it still sounded bad. Before I knew it, it was time to go. I was rather disapointed with how thigns go, but I definitely learned how to check gear. on the bright side, I got a professional course on guitar repair and maitenence. Im going in tomorrow with a repaired guitar or a beauty waiting for me. Regardless, I'm pumped for the fun day of recording tomorrow. Its a really intense but great process.