Recording

Seeing as I just finished recording a song with my band this evening, now seems to be a golden opportunity to show off how incredibly cool I am. Jon and Zach went to the studio directly from my place so they could start setting up the equipment while Toast and I made a stop at Cactus Taqueria en route. For those of you who don't know Cactus, you should. It's one of those fantastic hole-in-the-wall burrito stands that somehow serves the best Mexican food to be had in LA. Toast must've smoked four cigarettes between when we left my place and when we arrived at the studio. When I asked him what the green band around his cigarettes meant, he said that he smoked menthols. I guess I made a face at that, because he then went on to explain that he didn't used to like them, but his friends all did blah blah blah. I guess you're wondering who this mysterious "Toast" person is. His real name is Artisan Toast Bourgeoisie, and he's Agni's bassist. Here's a picture of him as a baby:

Anyway, we got there, and Toast started helping Jon and Zach set up. I sat down in the hallway and started eating my burrito; drummer's gotta eat, you know? Soon enough, I convinced Toast to join me, so we sat there, in the hallway, eating burritos. We were kind of in the way, but you aren't allowed to eat inside the studios, so whatever. After we ate, I helped Jon set up the drums, then the drum mics, then set levels, and then two hours had passed. That's the thing about recording; we had the studio for four hours to record a three minute song, and we still ended up going over time.

For a drummer, setting levels is rather tedious. The studio tech has you hit one drum on your kit "as loud as you'll play it" until he's got the decibel level for that drum just right. Then it's on to the next one. You usually end up feeling like they've forgotten about you, so you stop playing, but soon enough, you hear, "No, no, keep playing." Also, "as loud as you'll play it" is pretty damn loud, and that can be tiring for your arms. Half an hour later, the mic levels are perfect, your arms feel like they're gonna fall off, and you haven't even done the first take yet. Maybe it was all the heavy burrito meat diverting blood to my stomach, but I struggled initially, this session.

When you do start recording, it can be pretty disorienting, if you're used to playing in the same room as your band. I guess the crummy isolation headphones played a part in that, too. I could barely make out my bandmates' instruments over the roar of my crash cymbals. In the end, I had Zach, who was doubling as our studio tech, crank up the click track all the way, and I let the other instruments come through as background noise. I entered a sort of trance-like state. The click track was my life line. Even turned all the way up, I could only hear the beep boop boop boop as faint pops in my ears, but that was enough. After I got over my initial discomfort and sense of alienation from my bandmates (who were in another room, in case that wasn't clear) the session began to flow pretty smoothly. We got 10-15 takes. My hip joint burned from pumping the high hat so much, but my sense of satisfaction was palpable. You could palpate it. Seriously.

We made quick work of striking all the equipment while we joked around and made fun of each other, saying things like, "Hey dude, have you ever put Bengay on your balls? You should try it, man," or, "I broke my pinky when I saved a burning baby from a building and then fought a bear, all while rollerblading. Er, I mean, a baby from a burning building." Toast said the second one. He has a crooked pinky.

Then it came time to leave. We bid each other our farewells and headed to our respective homes. All in all, it was a long but rewarding day. I was gonna upload a video I took of us sitting around while Zach made some last-minute adjustments before we started recording, but the file's corrupted or something. Oh well. I guess you'll have to wait a bit before you can see our pretty faces.

Also, wow, so much for not writing about the band in this blog.