Harbinger of art and movies!

Oh, its been a weekend!

Friday we had our final tracking session with Harbinger. Because the guys were not satisfied with their original performance of “Celtic Jig” and “Odyssey” they decided to re-record. This time, all live, with only solos and bass overdubbed. Learning from my last session I used an SM57 on the top of the snare, running through my OSA MP1-C, the API knock-off. And I also used an Audix on the bottom of the snare. Aside form this I miced the kit according to our first session.

Because we were recording everything live I had to deal with isolating the guitars, from each other and most especially from the drums. We are in a 10x30 construction trailer, so there isn’t much to work with. I placed Jacob in the control room with me and Victor in the hall way next to the mic closet. After some tweaking I was rather pleased to hear that the leakage was minimal and would not be a problem. I then miced their amps both with 57s.

We did about 3 takes of the long epic “Odyssey” ultimately choosing the last take, although take 2 was very good, and could have passed as well. There were a few minor edits that had to be made, but over all their playing was precise and accurate. This time the pressure was on all 3 of them as we were not planning to do overdubs and as expected they proved their skills once again and managed to tackle a very difficult song with ease and grace. It went about the same with “Celtic Jig” although there was a bit of a comic scene concerning a coveted apple and much fumbling with the opening riff. It was rather amusing. Perhaps Nathaniel will tell the story. After a couple of takes they had their final and we began working on Bass.

A most unfortunate event occurred as we were tracking the bass; my amp blew a fuse, or some other related problem and we could not record using the amp. Hopefully it is just a fuse and I’ll be able to fix it, although I am a bit concerned that it might be more. The amp got very hot before it shut off and I don’t know if this heat caused any damage. I took the bass in direct for the recording, using the LA-610. It sounds different than the other songs but it’ll serve it purpose. Victor did each part in under 3 takes and only a few over dubs.

Solos were a bit time consuming. I let them each work out their parts, placing Pro Tools in loop so they could practice and write. “Celtic Jig” was a cinch, but this process took much longer on “Odyssey” because they had not firmly written their parts, they had only done improvisation the times that they’ve played the song live. But they seceded in tracking their solos, and that concluded our tracking sessions.

There was only art on Saturday, well, art and a bottle of wine. Some talk of saltpeter and backward glances in Adams Morgan. Parking nightmare on T street, turning round and round and the slow meandering of wayward footfalls. Docile Material Trails leading to old books and bedtime stories, one thing is for certain you can’t sleep with contact lenses lodged in the socket.

Yesterday I finalized the mixes for “Revolution” and “Rain of Fire” and got a start on “Celtic Jig” and “Odyssey.” But I because of a meeting I was not able to finish.

In the meeting we learned that Delog is now available on iTunes. This is very exciting. And I found out today it is also available on Amazon.com.

Tonight, as part of our promotion efforts, Tara and I will be attempting to present ROC and Delog to Neten Chokling the director of the movie “Milarepa” now showing in theatres. The director seems to have a keen insight into the use of media as a tool for engendering compassion, much like Jetsunma’s vision with Blinded By View. So we hope to make a connection. Rumors have it that Sogyal Rinpoche will also be at the movie tonight, so we are hoping to make that connect as well.