studio diary

this is the studio diary which Thomas and Udo kept during the recording of our album divorced land and which was posted nearly daily to the scythe mailing list. have a look at some pictures taken during the recording, too. enjoy!

one week to go, thomas' entry:

you see? we haven t even started yet and already it s time for the first part of the studio news!

udo is right now doing the preparatory keyboard work. this includes such things as guide tracks (for those who do not know: when you record things in a studio, it is common practice to record each instrument on a separate track and mix them afterwards - it is just like playing 24 cds at once and adjusting the volume of every single one in such a manner that you like the overall sound. now the first one to do his recording would be very much left alone only doing is feeble little guitar part or whatever to just some "click - click - click"-noise in the background; it would be pretty much impossible to add any such thing as feeling to one s playing then. in order to prevent this, you record a guide track that contains a rough outline of the respective song thus everybody can get into their parts more easily), but also the main keyboard tracks that are going to be used on DIVORCED LAND. i envy him for having the opportunity to do all this at home whenever he likes to whereas the rest of us will have to adjust our moods to the rather short period of time given for the respective intrumental tracks - or, even worse, vocal tracks.

i am rehearsing the more demanding parts of the tracks very hard at the moment; all those of you who are singers themselves or have tried to do the middle section of "Am I Really Here?" may know what i am thinking of... anyway, we seem to have managed to get a really professional tube pre-amp (wish us all the luck you can!!! this is important!!!) for the voices (a mindprint en-voice, if that rings a bell) that might help to avoid the bathroom-vocals-feeling of the EACH OTHER-stuff (this is a quote from wolfgang "wolgi" schroeder, our long-time mixing engineer, co-producer, mobile phone-specialist, sound friend and summa-cum-laude- person-to-be-annoyed- whenever-we-need-something-more-professional- than-we-can-do-ourselves); i think that after the concededly correct criticism of the vocals' sound on EACH OTHER, DL will be examined very closely on this behalf and we intend to achieve an adequate sound this time. however, this and the drum sound will be the crucial as well as the difficult bits...

4 days to go, udo's entry

After a flurry of final phone calls - Udo calling Wolfgang (our recording engineer), Thomas calling Udo, Thomas calling Wolfgang, Wolfgang calling Udo - and eMails, the preparations for the recording of our first regular album are underway.

As Thomas already told you: in the moment I'm in the process of preparing the keyboard tracks and some guide tracks in my home studio in Heidelberg. Perhaps the musicians among you can relate to the following statement: there is no lonelier, more miserable person than a musician who is alone in a room together with some recording device and a click track (the metronome that dictates the time and rhythm of the recording). I'm not certain if it is possible to communicate the sheer terrors of the unrelenting "click-click-click-click- click-click-click-click-click...". How is one supposed to play with passion and feeling in the face of such a desperate situation...? And if you finally have played the perfect take of one of the most difficult parts, you look at your computer screen just to notice that you forgot to push the "rec"-button. Oh well...

Ok, I know I should stop to whine. Perhaps I should tell you something about the joy of having completed a track. It's a great moment when one has finally recorded the last keyboard overdub, the playback of the track is playing and a first idea of how the final track will sound can be heard. This is why recording your own music is still fun and not only despair.

In the last five days, I have completed the keyboards tracks of all but one song. The newest song, "Denied", which none of you knows as we haven't performed it yet, still needs some arranging and some polishing, but the other tracks are fine by now (at least for me; we'll see what the other's think of them after they have heard the cassette I send to them today...). Thomas always said, "The Weight Of The Wind", which will probably close the first side of the album, sounded very retro to his ears. Well, then, I thought, let's make it retro: I've added some mellotron flourishes (strings and choir) to different parts. I think it is really a nice, rocking, pushing little song (well, if one would call a 9 minute sond "little"...). I also made some additions to the arrangement of "Discussed" (which some of you might remember from "each other"), but we're not shure if they should stay on the final mix, so I won't say more about that at the moment. Then there is a (very) short new piece, a sort of prelude to "Denied", which with its dark, "washing" mellotron passages sounds very "swedish" (a little bit like Änglagard, maybe?) to my ears.

I believe there is some great stuff waiting to happen in the next two weeks, and hopefully sometime in mid-year you'll be able to hear if this was so. We'll see.

1 day to go, udo's entry

One day to go until the first recordings.... Hopefully, we will be able to set up our gear and start recording a first track tomorrow. We will be meeting early (10 a.m., that is...), but I honestly don't know if this will be enough time as, as you all know, small details and little problems noboby thought of will most certainly take more time than planned.

Yesterday, I finally completed the keyboard tracks for "Denied". Uff, what a piece of work that was. "Denied" clocks in at more than 16 Minutes and there are lots of different passages in different moods which at the same time require different and original orchestrations but have to flow well, too, so that the internal logic of the development of the piece is not obscured. I'm really curious as to how well my keyboard arrangements will work with the rest of the guys joining in. Only part of the keyboard tracks will resemble the live arrangement, which we have been rehearsing: if I have the possibility to use up 16 keyboard tracks you won't have to ask me twice to use them...

This will be a beast to record, especially as it is our newest song and not as well routined like the older stuff. On top of this, this piece heavily relies on the vocal parts, and the recording of the vocals is one of the most difficult parts. On tape you'll hear every single flat note much more clearly than in a live situation. Well, in three hours time I'll be heading to the station to catch my train to Koblenz. The next log entry will be from home, hopefully reporting on our progress in the studio.

1 day to go, thomas' entry

just a brief note to let you know that although we have not started recording yet, the first victim of the inexplicable, but omnipresent studio disease is... INGO!!! who just called me to tell me he was terribly sick and puking and so on and could not join us during the first few days. this is nothing really bad - we only have to re-schedule the whole thing. good night everyone and keep your fingers crossed

day 1, thomas' entry

alright, the first day has passed and although martin AND ingo are sick now, we have managed to record the complete outro (except the bass track of course, as ingo could not manage to leave the toilet for long enough...) and the guitar track of Weight of the Wind. the strange thing is that this guitar track was really difficult to record AND that it really sounds tube-y... 70ties-y... fripp-on-starless-y at times although i used a transistor amp and forgot to switch on the tube preamp i programmed for that occasion. thats digital recording for you... sounds retro...

udo spent the day engineering the virtual tapes and tracks and did a great job. the guitar player seemed a bit nervous at the beginning ;-), but in the end we succeeded and drove off into the sunset; well, almost, as we left the studio at 11.30 pm.

i am off again now to fix some problems with the guitar sounds and then record "naivity", a guitar-only track, until the others arrive at 10 am.

day 2, thomas' entry

ingo and martin are back in the world of the living! the drum tracks for Weight of the Wind, Outro, Am I Really Here and the bass track for Am I Really Here are ready, and so are two short tracks ("access" and "naivity". Today there is going to be a whole bunch of bass recording (weight, outro, probably discussed) today, but we are going to start with the guitar tracks for Am I Really Here. That s where I am going right now (well, after showering and breakfasting), so i leave the rest to udo who wanted to give you an account of the last day - just one thing he does not know yet: ingo, martin and me finished AIRH at 11.30 pm. sounds familiar, doesn t it?

day 2, udo's entry

Ok, ok, it's true, I whimped out 9:30 p.m. yesterday... Well, Thomas has told you most about our progress yesterday, so I will only add that it took quite some time to find a really good and punching bass sound, which means that now that we have found and programmed the sound, we will hopefully be able to record still some more parts than yesterday.

Now for some technical details (if you're not interested in these, you might want to skip the rest of this log entry...):

Last time, during the recording of the "each other" demo, we used an 8-track digital tape to record, finally mixing over a Behringer mixing desk. This time, we have been able (thanks to Wolgi!) to upgrade a bit... Recording will be completely digital; we're recording directly to hard disk, using a Power PC Macintosh Computer with the Pro Tools recording software. The mix will be done completely via Pro Tools, too, using various effect plug-ins. This system enables us to record and playback up to 24 tracks of audio data simultaneously. Effectively, we will use on some of the songs up to 40 tracks, which we will have to mix down a bit to 24 tracks before the final master mix.

As most hard disks (including the one in our Macintosh...) are way too small to keep such amounts of data, at the end of each major recording step we create a CD-Rom which contains the audio files and Pro Tools session data of the previous recording. This enables us to clear the hard disk for the next recording, while at the same time we may reload some earlier stuff and work with it as needed. We have been recording only for 1 1/2 days (the first day was mostly setting up), but we have already recorded ca. 2 Gigabyte of audio data with most of the tracks still unfinished... Yeez, Thomas bought 30 CD-Rs last week, but it looks like we will have to buy some more...

OK, enough of this. Hopefully, Ingo will pick me up soon on his way to the studio. I'm quite curious to listen to what the others recorded yesterday when I had whimped out...

some bass sound setting notes

day 3, thomas' entry

the studio disease has found its next victim: udo's flu sounded reeeaaally bad today, but still he managed to help martin through recording a good deal of drumming today (OSF and Run, the latter of which i am pleased to say contains guitar tracks as well). we had major problems with OSF because it is so long and martin does not really stop often enough to punch in - thus the drum track has to be played almost in one go... all of you who have ever been present at studio work should know that this is musical suicide. but still, clockwork martin did it and i hope - for him at least - the worst is past him.

i took a break this afternoon and got myself my voice preamp from a music shop nearby: a mindprint en-voice, and GOD! this is a hell of a thingy!!! all you singers out there: GET IT! i m not a friend of h&k-equipment in general, i hate their guitar amps etc, but this thing is incredible. i hope we manage to transport this sound to tape! and i did not even take time to create sound with it, just plugged it in, said "peep" and it became "pooooooooaaaaaap", if you know what i mean... so i am very much looking forward to recording vocal tracks tomorrow night. keep your fingers crossed that i can manage to avoid udo's flu! a propos tomorrow: it is subject to change, but on schedule are guitar tracks for OSF, bass tracks for OSF, vocals for OSF and, if possible, bass tracks for run or faded.

the envoice settings

day 5, thomas' entry

a rather lonely and unnerving day in the studio has seen udo and me arranging the guitar textures for OSF and discussed. afterwards, we tried to find the right voice sound for tomorrow when - hopefully! - there will be time to try the first few vocal parts. wolgi came around to help us, but the result has not really made me happy, so i will try and work on it a little more; of course the "real" sound of my voice will be composed in the mixing process, but i cannot sing like this because i feel "too clinical" or "too straight". we might find some compromise between a linear sound that wolgi can work on best and my taste of how i want to sound anyway.

tomorrow... there will also be recordings of the discussed - drum track and bass tracks of OSF and - maybe! - run. i would like to focus on the vocals a little, but i am not sure the others will let me...

day 6, thomas' entry

just came home for a few hours after (tatatataaaaa!) finishing One Step Further (Vocals and Backing Vocals) so that our first long track is complete!!! yeah!!! i hope the mixing keeps what the recording promises... i really, really like it. at the moment, udo and ingo are working on bass tracks for "run", but that should not take them too long for the lines are not that difficult and the hd recording system permits very good punch-in takes; so, i guess that in about 2 or 3 hours i am going to do the "run"-vocal tracks which would mean (fingers crossed as always) that this was also ready... well, almost... we ll see, i don t want to spoil a surprise here. tomorrow, ingo's funk finger driven music man 5string bass for "discussed" and martin's drums for "denied" will be recorded - i guess this will take the whole day.

day 7, udo's entry

What a day yesterday! As Thomas already told you: we were able to finish the first of the vocal tracks! One Step Further sounds fine; in the final section, the five part vocal harmonies even sound a bit yessish to me.... But then.... Recall Thomas' log entry, when he went home for a break after recording the vocals:

Begin quote "at the moment, udo and ingo are working on bass tracks for "run", but that should not take them too long for the lines are not that difficult and the hd recording system permits very good punch-in takes; so, i guess that in about 2 or 3 hours i am going to do the "run"-vocal tracks" end quote

Well, in the beginning everything went smoothly enough. Ingo was in good form, we were able to catch a lengthy section in a first take attempt, the next section took a little longer, but was no problem, too. Then Thomas rejoined after his short break, we began to record some small bass parts between other sections of the song, and suddenly while playing back one of the takes, the computer crashes. OK, no problem, the Mac had crashed in previous sessions, too, (don't anybody ever dare to tell me again that Apple computes never crash and run much more stable then Microsoft PCs!!!!), but after restarting the system, we had been able to work again. But not this time: restarting the system: ok. Opening our last recorded Pro Tools session: oops! Stuck again, crash boom bang, reset. Starting system, starting Pro Tools without opening a session: Stuck again, crash boom bang, reset. Ohoh. This looks like a major problem, doesn't it? After fooling around for some more minutes and restarting and crashing the computer some more times, we finally realize: WE NEED HELP! None of us has been working with an Apple Macintosh before and we just don't know the system well enough to attempt a deeper problem analysis. Now for the next problem: yesterday was Good Friday, a nationwide holiday in Germany, and we were not shure if we were able to talk to Wolfgang, really the one and only person who could have helped us, as it is his system we are recording on. And even if we would have reached him: if something seriously had been wrong with the system, we would have had only a few hours to try the solve the problem (maybe buying a new hard disk or something like that). The crash occured at 8 p.m. friday and on saturdays shops in Germany are allowed to open only until 4 p.m. plus sunday and monday are national holidays (easter), too...

But we were lucky: Wolfgang was home, and after a first phone call already had an idea what could have happened. But we needed to speak to him while working on the computer.... Hm, there is no phone in our studio room, Ingo's cellphone battery is empty... Ok, borrowing Thomas' father's cellphone, we run back to the studio just to find out that the phone doesn't get any connection inside the room... Ok, Thomas opens the window, speaking to Wolfgang from the lawn outside with me sitting at the computer some meters away in the room, shouting screen readings to Thomas outside, who gives them to Wolfgang, Wolfgang giving commands, Thomas shouting them back to me, me typing. Very professional setup, isn't it?

The good news: Wolfgang (thank you! thank you! thank you!) was able to cure the problem very quick. The first crash hade destroyed a memory preferences setting for Pro Tools and a related audio protocol, which we had to recreate. Otherwise, Pro Tools would not get enough RAM to start properly.

This crash cost us another two hours, and although it was 10:00 p.m. and Ingo had promised to be home at 7 p.m. we decided to at least complete the bass tracks for "Run", which we did, leaving the studio at about 0 a.m.... And "Run" sounds really fine, too.... It really has turned out nicely, much more colourful the the live version, but at least as energetic. I like it!

So, after a few hours off this morning, I'm on my way to the studio where I'm nearly certain that new surprises are waiting for me. After we lost so much time yesterday, we could not complete the vocals for "Run", which we will try to do later today. Hopefully, Thomas and Ingo were able to finish the bass track for "Discussed" this morning.

day 8, udo's entry

Today, Ingo and me have a day off, while Thomas and Martin will be working on the drum tracks for Denied and maybe do some vocal tracks (Run) afterwards.

Yesterday was a fine day. We recorded the Funk Fingers (these are a bass playing device and Tony Levins invention, more info on his webpages: http://www.papabear.com) Bass for Discussed in the morning und taking the rest of the day to carefully record the vocals for Discussed. We are very pleased with the result; I think it's a really fine performance by Thomas.

Recording Thomas was fun, and although it was rather late, we decided to try if the vocal chords of the keyboard player of the band might be strained a bit in adding some backing vocals. Oh, I already wish I hadn't even mentioned it....

My admiration for Thomas' vocal achievements has grown considerably since yesterday, standing behind the microphone, desperately trying to croak a line in 15/8 for a thousand (ok, only ca. 40) times... We did get some lines recorded, but I'm not sure if I will like them to stay on tape, especially considering how my parts would sound right beneath Thomas' trained voice... We will see in the mixing process. In any case that means that Discussed is complete, too. Hooray!

day 8, thomas' entry

we finished the drum tracks of "denied" today in all their complicatedness and (tatatataaa again) almost, well almost finished the vocal tracks of the same (16.17 min) track. there are only two passages which we did not quite get into tonight, but then the rest is really alright already. tomorrow udo and ingo are going to record the bass tracks for "denied" and i am going to finish the vocals (the backing vocal tracks are also almost ready... three voices!), then (hopefully) skip on to "weight of the wind".

a correction of udo's gobbledigook: the backing vocals he recorded are alright, quite good actually. i do have difficulties in singing a backing track that s below the lead vocal part - udo has not. so, mr gerhards, stop complaining, we ll get out the singer within you eventually ;-O

day 11, thomas' entry

sorry bout the delay, but i was not too well during the last 48 hours... the triple stress of being singer, guitar player and the-one-who-lives-closest-to-the-premises- and-is-supposed-to-be-present-anyway- because-some-others-would-have-to-travel-about-60-miles has really got me down and not really close to, but right into the direction of a nervous breakdown. you know - singers are always very sensitive, and i suppose i am that way anyway, so double it, mix it, stir it... however, the recording sessions are FINISHED. well. almost, that is. the guitar tracks of "weight of the wind" do not sound too convincing to udo and me, so we might as well try a different, more heavy sound for the riffing parts (those who own the bootleg might know what i am talking about) on friday. tomorrow will be our day off, well, almost - again - as i have to copy and clear up the voice tracks of AIRH. this brings me to an account of what we did during the last 2 days: mainly, we recorded vocal tracks for "Run", "Am I Really Here?" and "Weight", bass tracks for "Denied", the drums for "faded", a certain non-band-member-track featuring a certain instrument for a certain number of this certain record, the guitar tracks for "denied" and some additional guitar stuff for AIRH?...

enough? yes, i have enough, frankly speaking. but this might change tomorrow at about 9 am... at the moment we are reconsidering our choice of the album title; although everybody seems to think that we are very dark and depressive musically, the album sounds rather light... albeit "divorced land" is a very good headline for what the songs deal with, it does not really mirror the tension between our sometimes ironic, sometimes pathetic, sometimes playful, sometimes melancholy, sometimes funny parts. so dont be surprised if the new scythe album is called differently in the end. we ll let you know (in case you cannot find it in the shelves ;-) ).

that s it basically - a first overview of the new stuff? the most obvious things to say would be that 1 martin is even more into polyrhythmic structures 2 ingo's bass sound has improved considerably... well, this is pre-mixing talk, but i dont think we can go THAT wrong after all from the sound we recorded 3 udo has finally gone REALLY crazy. yep. no doubt. have you ever tried to sing an (non-chord-included) "A" while all the other notes in the scale are played by the one or other keyboard sound? 4 the singer (that s me) has no more excuses for bad singing because the equipment was alright (not brilliant, but ok) 5 the guitar tracks need some more polishing. 6 we are all still friends! 2 weeks together in a room and no victims so far! 7 my personal opinion: although we still could not afford to record under professional circumstances, the album is going to be great. there is one more part of one song (apart from the gaps in the keyboard arrangement we are going to fill on friday) i am still not genuinely happy with, but we are talking about 12 seconds, and i promise you i will get them re-recorded one way or the other...

day 12, thomas' entry: difficulties involved

difficulties... well, so far we did not have real difficulties such as hard disk crashes, broken backup cds, lost guitar tracks of 16 minutes... i don t want them, so i d better shut up here... knock, knock, knock...

tomorrow, we will clear up some arrangement stuff in "weight", which does not sound as Convincing as the others yet. i think it is because there is too little keyboard work involved, whereas udo wants more guitar tracks. well, in case you forgot, I AM the guitar player and UDO IS the keyboard player, so it should be vice versa... as long as it is this way round, we should not worry about things as egomania too much.

finally, there is going to be a good deal of listening to what we have done. saturday is our spare day for corrections and stuff, but personally i do not think we will need it. i am happy with what i have done, well, almost, but you never really are until months later, and even then you think that this very quiet guitar "pling" on the right is a microsecond too late and yes, you can hear it quite clearly, shit, the whole thing down the drain, nervous breakdown, freak out, paranoia, psychopath, mass murder, jail, electrocution.

oops, got carried away.

by the way, we got such good weather down here that - excuse me - i need to go outside now and enjoy the sun as long as it lasts; tomorrow sees udo and me in the cold, unheated recording room while all other people run around in t-shirts in the sun. don t become a musician, whatever you do ;-)

day 15, thomas' entry

it s all finished. the cost is clear. the falcon has landed. we ve left the building. all s well that ends well. ends..? the mixing is now the important factor; as wolgi is going to do the major part of work on this, we all feel a little uncomfortable with the status quo of a rough-mixed, but (i think) well recorded album. i am used to being in control of all these creative and musical things, so this is not an experience i know... but wolgi is a far better mixing engineer than any of us four, so this is only the logical decision. this does not mean, however, that we won t show up about at least once a week to check what he is doing with our baby. the only problem is that he lives in cologne, which means that udo has to travel about 350 km to get there, for me it s 200 km and for ingo quite impossible. only martin lives in a city nearby (50 km away i suppose), but if you know anything about drummers, you know that they do not know the most basic things about music ;-)

i am sure we are going to be fine in the end - and now i am looking forward to my visit to the cure's strasbourg performance tonight!!!