We did another round of dialing in what is left to complete the album.  We are close now.  Just some drum parts, vocals, and acoustic guitars and we are mixing this thing.  Stay tuned.

Two great sessions back to back today.  First with Travis, we cut final vocals and acoustic guitar on “Swallow My Smile” for the first completed track of the album.  It has been a long road, but all the pieces are finally coming together.

Directly following that session, Jonas Cabrera came in to track his new ballad “Love Is Gone”.  He had me play the acoustic guitar part and then I cut a light shaker part.  He did a couple vocal takes and some harmonies.  With only a few elements, the track is already very big.  We have one more session to finish up, but this song is one that will be heard for sure.  Great tune, great vocals, great session.

Check out Jonas and The Skeletones at http://skeletonesmusic.com/

Travis was back in for some fun bits to make some of the bridge sections sound a bit more interesting.  We did some weird and fun things with reamping.  To get a cool stereo effect with the vocals, we took an amp and hung it from the ceiling.  Then we stereo mic’ed it and swung the amp around.  This was inspired by the Paul Ward interview at The Home Recording Show (show #82).  Here is a picture to illustrate the point.

We are finally on to vocals on the now over a year project.  We are going to start tracking 2 to 3 songs per 4 hour session and get this project put to bed.  We are so close now.  It is exciting to finish out a project where countless hours were spent and the focus has never been lost.  I look forward to the final product.

I asked Dave to come in to track some guitars for a demo that I cut.  I have not worked on one of my own songs in I do not even know how long.  It was fun to have him in and he laid down some amazing guitar work on the spot.  I like when he does not get the chance to plan things out… I just throw things at him and like to work that way sometimes.  Also joining us for vocals is Travis Jay.

We are just about to wrap up the album.  We put some of the final instrumentation for the project.  We are so close to doing the vocals and move on to the mix portion of the project.  The new mandolin and guitar tracks finished in the wee hours this morning are some of the most interesting things that we have done so far.  Fitting that it happened exactly one full year from the original session.

We got through 16 songs with bass edits, new tracks on 4 or 5 tunes, and reamped every single one.  It was an amazing amount of work that we somehow crammed into one session.  I have never felt the Pilotone at the temperature that it got up to by the end of the night.  We even managed to retool a few drum tracks and record a new high hat track.  Very productive day.  We are close to putting this album to bed.

There is a good chance after tomorrow’s session, we will be done with basic tracking and will enter into final instrumentation, final vocals, and then off to mix.  There are a few tracks that will need some edits, and two that need bass.  After that, we are off and running to the next stage of the project.  The songs have really taken their final shape and feel already.  It is exciting to see it all come together.

This morning Maurice Moore came in the studio to do some voice over work with an actor to be used on an upcoming short film.  The session went smoothly and we got everything that we needed from the session.  I look forward to seeing the finished project.

Later this evening, Travis Jay will be coming by to finish the editing from the last session that we had the full band in here working on the album.  We have a lot of work to do, but the project is coming together and we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  When you start a 16 track project, you can never quite estimate how much work it will take to see it through.

In a marathon session, Heavywater tracked bass, drums, and guitar on 6 tracks.  Brandon then went and tracked another 3 songs.  There were only 4 songs on the album that were not touched.  Not bad for a day’s work!   Thanks to everyone, great session all around.