Re:Creation

day 6: 12.29.2002
today was a day of revision. revision is something i hate. i never revise papers. occasionally i’ll revise a blog entry if what is up pisses me off enough to change it. but yeah, back to papers for a moment – on all the papers i wrote this last quarter (4 to be exact), the process was this: (1) briefly outline [note: the outline for each paper was the same. it consisted of I. introduction II. arguments and II. conclusion]. (2) write the paper straight through, stopping only for snacks or to crack my nose (an odd-sounding bad habit which i’ve acquired mostly from writing papers). and that’s it. no going back, no changing anything.

but i’m getting a little far afield here–the point was just that revision is not something i relish, as it is, i think, for certain friends of mine, like this guy.

today we re-recorded tracks on ‘hear this’ and ‘escapism is fantasy’. we even added some backup vocals (bgv) on ‘escapism’, sung by the beautiful and talented rachel lipps. after my previously-recorded vocal inconsistencies were smoothed over with today’s replacements, and the songs roughly re-mixed, i’m in a much happier state regarding the tunes. at least, i would say that now, more than any time before, they are done, if done they will ever truly be.

to celebrate a successful session of what i now term ‘catch-up recording’, myself, dave, mixerboy, the aforementioned guy, and one other random person, had a ’session’ in the hot tub. you see, i am trying to see how many times in one week i can sit in the hot tub. so far i’m at 4 times, which is a personal best, if not a world record.

i think all the heat and steam is actually making me lose quite a few pounds, so don’t be surprised if i waste away into nothing in the next few days.

days 4 and 5: thurs and fri
in the last two days, we’ve been recording quite a bit, and have completed (or so we think), 4 songs: ‘escapism is fantasy’, ’small are the words’, ‘regarding present fears’ (formerly called ‘hope’), and ‘rainfall’. these have not been easy, but i think they’ve turned out very well. anyway, that brings the total up to 7 songs done, leaving 6 to be completed (or, 7, if we record a secret track of some kind).

we have, i think, got the process down to a kind of science now. the time it takes to transition between recording different instruments has become steadily less, and the process of mixing a song steadily more natural. with the help of mixerboy, equipment and levels are set in a flash.

luckily, (or perhaps unluckily for you), there has been no real drama to speak of. things are going very well, and tomorrow we are planning on recording ‘a veiled hope’.

in other news, i’ve been spending most of my time trying to get a new wireless network hub we bought to work in the house. it seems they didn’t intend for you to use it if you wanted to retain an already-existing dsl router and wired network. but 3 hours on the phone with technical support today seems to have done the trick, and i’m writing and posting (or could be) from a hammock out on the patio.

but now it is time for my mom’s birthday dinner, and focaccia bread with olive oil and vinegar calls my name!

i transport myself two millenia back in time and thousands of miles in an arbitrary space direction.

i enter a dwelling of sorts, and it blurs between wood and stone, thatched and open-air. the scene flickers like three-dimensional images on glass, and sometimes the dwelling is in the middle of a smallish town, sometimes it feels more on the outskirts.

like continually-molded gel humanoid figures gather at the edge of my vision. i say the edge, because only one thing occupies my attention. like a flattened vortex seen head-on my sight is focused inexorably on something that stands out from the rest in virtue of being real. more real, even, than my thoughts as i look–they, too, are only shifting flits of particles in comparison.

as i gaze in wonder and self-abandonment at the beauty crystallized before me, looking the more far away for its size, i unbiddenly echo the amazement of boromir as the weight of the ring grew full upon his mind. or, perhaps his utterance is really the inverse shadow of mine–his a reaction to an unspeakable horror and mine to unbounded joy.

strange that the fate of the world should rest on so small a thing.

day 3: monday 12.23.2002
dave and i woke up around noon today and got to practicing and recording a few hours later. today we attempted a song many of you probably know, ‘a pixelated life’. i’ve had an old recording of that up on the internet for about a year now, but i wanted it on the new CD so we had to re-record it for quality’s sake. we spent about an hour or two practicing the song, and then got to recording. i laid down the guitar track in two takes, so we switched the mics to vocals, and i was able to get a good take on the second try for that as well.

the drums, however, proved to be something of a difficulty. apparently the song is such that dave has a hard time thinking of a really cool drum part to go with certain sections of it. so we did take after take that david wasn’t happy with, either because he messed up, or the drum part just didn’t sound cool enough. eventually we all (chris was over again helping out) got a little burned out and frustrated and we weren’t making progress. so, we decided to call it a day and made some digiorno’s pizza for dinner (it was 6:30 by this time).

there was no more recording today, as there was a christmas party we went to at 8 at our friend kelly’s house, and then we came home from that late and watched the royal tenenbaums. i think we’ve also decided not to record on christmas eve or christmas, because that’s more a time for family, egg nog, wrapping presents, playing sports, and, most importantly, reflecting on the significance of the entering-into-the-world of the christ child.

day 2: sunday 12.22.2002
you might wonder what happened to saturday–well, my family went down to west palm beach for part of the weekend to spend some time with my grandma and aunt and uncle, who live down there. we got back at 2pm today, and dave and i redid the drums on ’so talk about it’, since we decided we weren’t happy with them. hopefully third time’s the charm! but i think we have a finished or near-finished product, anyway. then duty called and we had to go to a christmas party until 7. once all the weekend’s obligations were over with, we began to practice and record ‘hear this’, a song i wrote this summer, but haven’t played at any shows this year, since it’s rather long, and hard to nail the vocals on.

compared to ’so talk about it’, the process went very smoothly. we were done mixing and mastering the song by 1am. of course, we did have the artistic and technical help of one chris nyffeler, who was kind enough to come hang out during the entire session.

we also came up with a tentative title for the forthcoming album, but i of course can’t divulge that information until everything is finalized.

well, i guess not a whole lot particularly interesting happened during the session–and i wont bother going into as much detail as day 1, since all the mic placements and what have you were the same. tomorrow we’re slated to try for 2 songs, though, so maybe there will be some exciting news soon!

today, my brother david and i started recording songs for our new CD. i picked him up from gainesville on wednesday, and after a brief stop for some rock climbing action at a local gym, we came home and set up the studio. in our house there is one second-story room, which we call the bonus room. we cleaned this room out of every unnecessary object, and quickly set up drums, guitars, an amp, a PA, mic stands, a gigantic mixer (that can probably fly, it looks so sleek), our computer, etc… by the end of wednesday night we had what for all purposes looked to be a bona fide home recording studio.

yesterday, thursday, was Day 0. Day 0 was spent practicing all of the songs (most of which dave and i had not played together and so he needed to write the drum parts). it was a long day. also on Day 0 i decided that it would be cool to keep a recording session journal of sorts–comment on each day’s progress, what we are working on, that sort of thing. possibly, some of you will find this interesting. so, here we go!

day 1: friday 12.20.2002
i woke up early today (11am) since i had to take my dad to work. i did some christmas shopping while i was out and came back at noon. i woke david up and we started working. for about 2 hours we practiced ’so talk about it’, a song i’ve played at shows recently, and probably my most poppy song. the song is easy enough to play, but has some parts where i play around with the time signature a bit, making it tough for a drummer to follow. dave, of course, had no problems at all, and came up with super-groovy lines for the different parts of the song. probably around 2 or 3pm, we decided we were ready to start recording. we got a click-track going, and i layed down the guitar lines for the song in 2 takes, after setting up two oktava mk-319 condenser mics in an x-pattern in front of the sound hole of my guitar. satisfied, and glad that all the practicing we’d done had meant i knew the song perfectly, we moved on to vocals. for these we used just one of the mk-319s. i did a couple takes, and thought i was happy with the most recent, but decided that all my upper range notes were on the flat side. i recorded again and fixed this as well as it was going to be fixed. shifting the mics to drums (we used the 2 mk-319s for overheads, an audio technica pro 25 for kick, and a shure sm-57 for snare) took a little while, since we had to find decent equalization and compression settings. eventually dave started tracking, and somewhere between 5 and 10 takes later we had drums.

at this point dave suggested that we add some electric guitar to the song, to give it a little more powerful edge at the crucial parts of the song. i was skeptical, not wanting to clutter the song, but decided that we should try anyway. we miked the guitar amp with the sm-57 and i searched for the warm, fuzzy sort of distortion that i liked and thought would help out the song. we did some sound checking, and then i laid down a few lines with the electric. i was happy with the first take, so everything was super.

deciding that all the parts were right on, i started the mixing process. by this time it must have been 6pm. i mixed for about half an hour, doing volume and pan evolutions, bringing out this and quieting that…mixing is a subtle art which i would very much like to be good at, but for which i have neither proper training nor proper tools. still, i did my best, and around 7pm, dave and i had a Song. a Finished Song [close enough anyway]. i was excited to listen to it and hear all the parts work together to create just the kind of feel i wanted the song to have — catchy, yet technical, fun, yet sarcastic and a little edgy. i burned the song to a CD and played it in our home stereo–it sounded great!

then duty called and dave and i went out shopping for christmas presents. in the meantime, we listened to the song some in the car, and dave decided he needed to redo the drums. so when we got home, we miked up the drums again, tried for a little different sound, and recorded dave. he had decided that he wanted to play a slightly less-complicated, more-groovy sort of beat, that wouldn’t take away from the rest of the parts as much as he decided it had. we practiced the new version some, and he made 5 or 6 takes until he was happy. that was all well and good, but then i decided i needed to re-record the electric guitar. something about it just sounded like i was playing out of a cardboard box and not the nice, big, amp i was borrowing. i switched the sm-57 to the mk-319 and tried for a different sound. eventually i fiddled with the EQ settings enough to get something that i thought was halfway decent. with no hope of getting it any better with the equipment we had, i layed down the electric guitar track in one take.

this is probably 10 or 11pm now, and i finally start mixing the re-recorded tracks into the rest of the song. still, it didn’t take me too long, and soon i was mastering the song and trying to up the levels so it would be as loud as a song from any commercially-produced CD. at midnight, all our toil was done, and i burned the new version onto a CD, and also made an mp3. i’ve listened to it quite a few times now, and despite a minor mixing change or two, i think it’s as good as it could possibly sound with our gear and our understanding of recording techniques. so, i am a tired, yet happy, man, and it feels great to be able to listen for the first time to a song of mine with drums played by an excellent musician, and with some electric guitar punch to augment my usual acoustic sound.

i’ve decided, unfortunately, not to post any mp3s of new songs to the blog until the whole CD is done and finished. too many changes could be made any day to the songs that there’s really no point in putting anything but the finished product up here.

still, if you’re really interested, stop by the house and hang out while dave and i record. or, talk to me on IM and i’d be happy to let you in on a listen to whatever’s currently done.

and with that, i’m off to bed.

virtual song on spin: so talk about it | jonathan lipps

…and as it turns out, real blankets have been the order of the most recent days. due to the cold (sub-50-degree…just a hair from freezing) temperatures and the fact that our heater likes to trip its circuit breaker without reason or warning at the onset of darkness, i’ve been spending most of my hours under the comfortable enfolding grace of my bed.

now let’s make my writer’s craft(y/ &) intent transparent and force that into an analogy for what i really want to say: i wish with all my might that i was under a different kind of blanket right now–the kind that means the end is at hand, or in sight. a blanket that helpers throw over the shoulders of a disaster survivor to let him know he is safe and on the way home, for example. here’s another: the one that is worn like a cape around the skinny frame of the victor of a 26-mile battle. or, lastly: the linen wrapping (yes, christ’s shroud no less) that is the tape binding two souls for the first time as they begin their life’s journey thenceforth as one.

right now, i am in the middle of the air crash (please pull me out); in the first mile of the race (and fading fast); and wondering with all the rest of the world if and when i will ever be full enough of love to give it to someone else.

…and after two days of intense relaxation, i’m off. tomorrow i brave the ‘winter storm’ conditions and pray that my planes all go where and when they are supposed to. lord willing, i will be, fair weather or foul, beneath the blanket of floridian humidity in 18 hours.

to all those not yet done with school, good luck.

one more thing left, and i am done. two finals under my belt, and one horrendous logic take-home exam with them, but still remains the hardest of all–my ontology paper. die, paper, die.

still, in a matter of hours, whether done successfully or done having failed, done will i be. and then, it’s party time.

the thing that’s been keeping me going this week is the thought of recording a CD this christmas–that’s right, i’m recording a CD with super-awesomex drummer david lipps. i’ve got about 12 or 13 songs written since i put out the Effortless ep, and it’s time those got recorded. no more shoddy dorm-room work, though–dav and i went all out and got a ton of top-notch recording gear. if all goes well and god is with us, we will be spending 8 hours a day playing and recording (and of course working out to remain the buff studs that we are), and emerge sometime in january with a set of professionally-done songs. that is exciting.

if you want to be notified when all that is done and songs are available for download or to buy on CD, head over to jonathanlipps.com/list.html and sign up on the mailing list.

in other news, i need to get back to work on my paper. out.

i am back in california for a week of final papers and final exams. i should be working on them right now, but my cursed laziness and procrastination prevents me. ah well. i recorded a song today. i could, theoretically, have recorded any as-of-yet unreleased jonathan lipps gem (and they are all gems, mind you), but i re-recorded ‘escapism is fantasy’, which, if you are a regular blog reader, you will recognize from the 17th of last month. maybe it’s because the lyrics were heavy on my mind today. in any case, some of you i’m sure missed out on the song the last time i posted it, for one reason or another, or perhaps because my linking to it was not as helpful as possible. this time, then, i’ll try to make myself completely clear. the line after this sentence is a link to the song!

this is a link to the song. click it now.

the previous line was a link, in case the bold font completely flew by you. there, that should do it. cheers, everyone.