The first day in the studio is always as much frightening as it is exciting. I always feel, for the briefest of moments, that I’m about to embark upon a hapless crusade of mediocrity in which I’m doomed to be disappointed and live out my days with another underachieving final result.

And then we get to work.

The most important aspect of recording drums are the microphones. Too little and you lose definition. Too many and it sounds like mush. Then everything needs to be placed at the right distance for clarity. The one thing we didn’t have to worry about was the quality issue because Chris has quite the cache of awesome audio equipment.

In our pre-production meetings, Chris and I agreed that we wanted a full but uncluttered drum sound which involved strategic and purposeful microphone placement. When we found a sound we were happy with we started experimenting with different drum sounds for our first track, Story of Now. After a few hours of trial and error, we found something we were pretty happy with; the crowning achievement being a crackling piccolo snare brought down from the rock heavens.

Jimmy gave the original (recorded in 2000 with god complex) a few listens to refresh his memory and then we started rolling with him playing along with me as I played the rhythm guitar parts live in the control room. The first take was a near perfect recreation of the original. We gave it a listen and then threw around ideas on how to make it better. One of the truly genius ideas that Chris has was to bring the drums in the verse way down, switching to a subtle side-stick beat so that the vocals on the verse could take the spotlight.

Take two involved testing out our new ideas, all of which worked extremely well. We listened back, compared some notes and then burned through a third take of pure perfection. All credit really must be given to Jimmy - he has metronome-like timing and just doesn’t make any mistakes.

Next up was Anything/Everything, the longest (clocking in at over 6 minutes) and most dynamically diverse of all the tracks on the album. As with Story, our first take was a near copy of the demo version. During playback, I shared some of my ideas for the song and gave some of the back story of how this track is the climax of the project and builds to a big choral ending.

We tried some new things for the second take which brought out more of the emotion taking place. Jimmy turned his snare off for the the first half and flipped it back on for the big buildup at the end which gave it alot more strength. After some tweaking we settled in for the third take and, you guessed it - perfection.

We had some time left so we moved on to Four Days of Steady Rain, a song which Jimmy was, for the most part, unfamiliar with. We threw up a mic in the control room so I could sing along and give some audio cues for part changes and gave it a roll. We only did one take and it came out much more aggressive and passionate than the original demo version. Not bad at all.

It was a great start to a long haul of a project. Overall, I couldn’t be happier with our first few steps.

EB

Popularity: 57% [?]

Almost every recording project I’ve ever done has had a rush deadline so most of my studio experiences have been models of speed and shortcuts. Not this time, though.

I’m extremely lucky in that I get to work on this project with several good friends, all of whom are extremely talented and one (Chris Deveroux) who is lucky enough to have his own studio. I met Chris through my work with Frailty. He’s an amazing guy with a great ear and some serious skills on bass (which he’ll also be lending to Anything/Everything).

Chris was the first guy I approached about this project. After a week of copious emailing I realized that Chris really understood what this project was about and we both had similar goals in mind. We were also committed to taking the time to do it right which meant no deadlines. (While I still anticipate a winter release, I have no problem pushing it back if it means a better creation.)

The next piece to fall into place was drummer extraordinaire Jimmy Schultz. Jimmy played with my brother-in-law Brian in the highly underrated and now defunct Frame 313 UK . He also played drums with Frailty and currently plays for Cheva and New Eden. He’s an absolute machine. There’s few people in world nicer than Jimmy and he’s always ready to hit the studio. I couldn’t ask for anyone better to hold everything down.

I certainly can’t leave out my partner-in-crime, the aforementioned brother-in-law, Brian. Brian and I have known each other for over a decade, going back to the days when I was in god complex and he was the guitarist in Darkling Thrush. His lust for me was so strong that he married my Bride’s sister and became family. We’ve collaborated on several projects throughout the years and this one is no exception. He’s an amazing lead guitarist and I couldn’t imagine doing this without him - it just wouldn’t be as much fun.

With the core band set, there’s only one place to go from here…

(Coming Up - The Studio: Day 1)

EB

Popularity: 57% [?]

Picked up a new phone yesterday. Behold the LG Voyager:

Gotta love touch screen technology. Very cool…

EB

Popularity: 68% [?]

Rejoice, for Hilary Clinton is through!

Had she won, it would have been four years of listening to people like this:

EB

Popularity: 69% [?]

So…I may have gone out and bought something a wee bit extravagant:

Yep, a Dodge Charger R/T complete with a 5.7 liter Hemi and 20 inch pimp wheels.

Special kudos to my Bride for putting up with me

EB

Popularity: 72% [?]

It’s now real - we’ve officially started recording Anything/Everything, my first studio recording since 2000 and my first full length release since 1996. This project used to have a working title of Pellentesque Convallis and started with me asking some friends over at C6M for some song titles, basically a cheap attempt to combat some writer’s block.

Now, Anything/Everything (that name may still change) has become an eleven song concept album and contains some of my strongest material to date.

Here’s the tentative track listing thus far:

01 | The Giant Tire on Outer Dr.
02 | Peeking at Bathsheba
03 | Story of Now
04 | At Least We Tried
05 | Four Days of Steady Rain
06 | Twenty After, Twenty Of
07 | Beautiful Distraction
08 | Aspirin & Razorblades
09 | 3rd Street (Promenade)
10 | Anything/Everything
11 | Denouement

Coming soon - Inside the studio: Day 1

EB

Popularity: 75% [?]

Two demos have left my fortress of solitude and are now ready for public consumption. The first is this new version of erickbieger.com. It’s been totally redone and is much more music friendly now.

The whole music part goes hand in hand with the second batch of demos, namely six of the songs we’re going to be recording for the new album. If you want to hear them, they’re the first six songs on the site’s new music player located to your right under “Music.” Two of them (Beautiful Distraction and Story Of Now) are older songs that we’re re-recording but 3rd Street (Promenade), Anything/Everything, At Least We Tried and Four Days Of Steady Rain are brand spanking new and have never been heard before.

Enjoy - and leave a comment letting me know what you think!

EB

Popularity: 100% [?]

Just because…

EB

Popularity: 96% [?]

Finally - a real title sequence for Lost:

EB

Popularity: 97% [?]

Today was a productive day. I nailed down the album’s opener and I worked three of my older songs (Story of Now, Beautiful Distraction, and Denouement) into the project as well.

It all starts with this, The Giant Tire on Outer Drive:

hey there, i haven’t seen you walk this way before
to be fair, i would have noticed if you had

swing, swing, swing, swing

EB

Popularity: 96% [?]