It takes a long time to make a record. Well, for me anyway. The first lorelei album took two years or so to coalesce. The last LU record took two weeks to get the basic tracks and then six months for me to put it all together. Grappa turned into a bit of an experiment with technology replacing band mates.

The challenge is in where to begin. Traditionally I have created some guitar parts and then brought them to my band mates where we can play ideas off one another and develop the track. Unfortunately, machines have not yet learned to be so interactive. For Grappa I tried a mix of approaches: write the entire song on guitar first, start with no guitar parts at all and head straight to the drum programming or take a guitar or bass part and then try to sync up some drums quickly.

Either way the actual recording process stars with drum tracks in Reason As an aside, I just saw the Reason 3.0 trailer and I was giggling away with crazed anticipation. By far my favorite piece of software. It is a joy to use and I cannot wait for the new version. Anyway, I ride the train to and from work for a little under two hours each weekday. This gives me some time to work in Reason. It is easy to get lost in Reason because it is so flexible.

I actually track more than just drums in Reason, for example, the piano in "Bent, Unbent". I like sequencing all kinds of percussion instruments in Reason because I can approach the track like a piece of electronic dance music, subtly changing the patterns without necessarily making a part a, b, and c. Unfortunately, I tend to whip right through all of the patterns without giving them enough time to take hold. That's an area for improvement in the future. "Great plains" is the most Reason-based track and probably could have been a LU track (i.e. instrumental).

I usually dump the Reason bits out to aiff files and then import them into Pro Tools to start on the accompanying tracks. However, now that Reason can be used as a Rewire plug-in to Pro Tools I try to hold off on settling on the drum parts. Unfortunately, I often get lazy and freeze the drums too soon. So if the drum programming is tedious and boring to you I apologize. Another area for improvement.

Once inside Pro Tools I quickly lay down some guide guitar tracks or occasionally bass. If I have written the song on guitar I now find that the drum tempo is slightly too fast or slow. This was definitely the case with "Shortness of breath" and I'm not doing myself any favors by pointing out the rocky start to that track. In fact, because I was struggling with the tempo the drum machine wanted and how I wanted to play it I decided to just let that ride. I find it adds tension to the track and lends an unsettling feeling that hopefully strengthens the lyric. Or it's just hopelessly out of sync. You be the judge!

I play a Guild Starfire six string hollow body guitar that I've played on everything I've done. I removed the pick guard and Davis moved the pick-up to the front after I stupidly smashed it on the ground and split the wood during a lorelei performance. Amy L. borrowed it for the Aislers Set's "The Last March" record so it has even made guest appearances. The low end tone on this guitar is fantastic and I hope I have it for a long time.

I use an open tuning (E-A-E-A-G-E) which allows me to play very simple but solid chords with a minimal amount of dissonance. Or at least I know how to control the dissonance precisely because I've been using this tuning for over ten years. I don't see the point in going back to a standard tuning. I also played some prepared guitar on "Bent, Unbent". Prepared guitar in my case means laying the guitar on my lap and sticking lots of strips of metal between various strings at various points along the fret-board and then banging on the metal, strings, neck, head stock, and body with more metal bits.

I play a girl's bass guitar. Specifically, I play Kieca's Fender Musicmaster bass. It is a small scale bass so I can move swiftly over the frets. It has a decent tone but I do need to upgrade to a full scale. I also have an acoustic guitar and an arsenal of "toy" instruments including a xylophone from Ikea and a Tonette flute which makes an appearance somewhere in "Happiness is the desired result".

I play the guitar and bass through the Really Nice Compressor and the Really Nice Preamp which I adore. I use a Boss SX-700 multi-effects processor and an army of plug-ins including the Pluggo collection from Cycling '74. The Pluggo collection is definitely worth the price of admission. I especially enjoy a filtered delay plug-in which I put on the vocals of several tracks. You get a vast amount of control over the delay time and the frequency. It ends up sounding like layers of vocal tracks.

UPDATE: I left out some key components. I use an Audio Technica 4033 microphone (as can be seen in the picture at the start of this post). I also have a Nord Lead 2 and Access Virus keyboard. Those make more of an appearance on the LU recordings but the Nord came in very handy on the Grappa CD.

That's the equipment round up. Future installments will include discussions of the decision to release a duplicated (CDr) rather than replicated CD, the packaging (from jewelboxing), and distribution both physical and digital. If the reaction to this (if there is any) is not entirely negative I will write more about the actual process of recording the tracks and perhaps step through a particular track.