Hella Stella

Aaaaah. I am done (for now) with the studio, 6 songs finished and four more almost done. I'll need to book an evening here or there to finish up completely, but it feels good to be so far along.

Amazingly, I woke up this morning with a sore throat, and I'm currently wrapped in a blanket because I can't seem to get warm enough. If I have indeed come down with a cold, I am incredibly thankful that it waited to attack until I was done singing into a mic.

Reflecting on my recording experience this time around, it's pretty clear that I've learned a shit-ton in a short amount of time.

As I think I mentioned in an earlier post, my last album took a year to make. All the tracks except one were heavily edited and multitracked, and we let ourselves get obsessed with the details. I don't regret that at all, but it is what it is.

This album was basically recorded in three weekends. All except two of the songs were recorded live of the floor (me singing and playing at the same time) and those tracks were all meant to be scratch takes. After listening back, we decided they were actually good enough to keep.

I realize my tone of "voice" may not translate through my writing, but if I were telling you this in person, I'd sound amazed. I can't believe how quickly this album has come together. If you had told me a year ago that I'd be using live scratch tracks as the base for an entire CD, I'd have laughed you into next week. A lot of things I did this time around were techniques I had abandoned years ago, or simply ignored. Yes, it's not as polished as Sleeper was, but it's got an energy that Sleeper didn't have. I'm really proud of it.

We're still months away from having physical copies in our hot little hands, but I'll let you all know how it's going as we inch towards the goal.

I'm off to bed with the hopes of avoiding a full-blown illness.... More soon!