Martin Guitars and Girl Vocals

The band's been busily at work. At Bird in Box Studio, Cortnie and I have been laying down her backing vocal tracks. We built a vox booth in our office closet using blankets, clothes, towels, yoga mats, and whatever other dampening devices we could find to deaden the acoustics of the space. We draped a thick down comforter over the doorway of the closet and presto, a do-it-yourself vocal booth.

We've managed to survive tense moments and a few fights (with the help of good food and lots of breaks) in order to produce some truly fine cute girl backing tracks. So far, we've got C's vox down on "Something's Going On" (aka "Mice in the Pantry"), "Me and Thomas Hardy" (aka "MATH"), "Trona," "Nightbird," and "Love Your Regardless." I've also written and hummed out some more horn ideas for "MATH."

Today with Aaron at Royal Dutch Company in Fresno, I layed down acoustic guitar tracks. We scored Roger Wall's beautiful Martin guitar and put fresh strings on it for a brilliant tone. Aaron set me up in the vocal booth--I sat on a drummer's stool and propped up my feet on an old amp head and started in. We used a skinny condensor mic to produce a very nice and bright sound. A bright tone in the highs with less mids and low ends was preferable to something more full-bodied in some of the songs so that the acoustic guitar would find its own pocket seperate from the thick bass tones we've got going on. After some experimentation with different condensor mics and placements, we ended up with what seemed perfect for the tunes.

We managed to track the acoustic for two songs, "Me and Thomas Hardy" and "Something's Going On" before another band down the hall started rocking all of Studio 9 with excessive volume. It's impossible to track an acoustic instrument when the BOOM BOOM BOOM of a techno band is seeping through the walls. But that's two songs down. We'll pick up the recording again on Friday.

So The Distant Fairs continues growing and developing. More soon.