Category Archives: Cover Art

Here to Make Friends

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I'll never read all these books.Well, I have listened to the five songs for the first record on the office stereo, the kitchen CD player, the fancy Tivoli in the living room, the iPod, and in the car.  I’ve tweaked the mix and applied compression sparingly and judiciously.  For comparison, I listened to my last CD, and in some ways, i think this one sounds better.  By “some ways,” I guess I mean vocally.  I’ve gone all-in with the doubling of vocals — four out of five songs have it.  It thickens what I sometimes think of as a thin voice.

What’s more, I really think this collection of songs is solid.  I’m especially excited about the side two opener, “Get On With It.”  It’s an extremely simple song (even for me), but the way the bass drum came out was a surprise, very surging and deep.  I am also very thankful that I got that tambourine last weekend; since then, it’s sounded better with each listen.  Lastly, one of the songs has a sample in it.  It’s kinda silly.  For the sake of variety-in-updates, I’ll share the video I used; maybe you’ve seen it?

Oh, and I’ve pretty much locked down the cover, and I’ve included it in here somewhere…

Next, I have to do my research on RPM, and what exactly the pressing place needs from me.  You see, the two sides of the record are about 4:10 and 4:48 in length, respectively.  That’s just about the upper limit of what they recommend for a 45 RPM seven-inch.  Anything past that, and the quality of audio starts to suffer.  I could go to a 33-1/3 seven-inch record, but I’m kind of assuming that is, in and of itself, a notch down in audio quality.  I have to confirm whether or not this is the case, and place the order accordingly.  So yeah, it’s probably going to be 45, and I’d like to make that a constant across the records.  But I make no promises…

Record Club Update #4: First Five + Artwork Preview

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What're You Reading?

I dipped into the hard drive this morning to pick out songs for the February record.  I could tell right away that two of them needed something extra: Bass on one, echo-y guitar on another.  Halfway through cutting the bass part, the ol’ 2004 iBook froze up and spit a ridiculously loud fax-like noise into my headphones.  So it would seem that the era of iBook recording is over.  After moving a more sturdy table from the attic down to the basement, I set up my iMac and got back into it.

I really should have done that months ago.  Not only was the screen way more comfortable, the incessant buzz I used to get from directly recorded instruments was gone.  And no revolving beach balls popping up on the screen with every other click.  So yeah.  After the technical difficulties, I had a good afternoon of recording.

As for the artwork, I’ll be recycling an image from a year-old gig poster.  I don’t plan on doing that every time, but for this first one I wanted to take it easy on myself.  And in truth, there’s something about a white wall of books that strikes me as both wintery AND appropriate for an E.P. called (something like) “People vs. Buildings.”  I’m going with (something like) that title because the five songs will be bookended by two linked pieces called “Come for the People, Stay for the Buildings” and “Come for the Buildings, Stay for the People.”  I don’t know about you, but I eat that kinda stuff up…

Tomorrow I have to start mixing the songs and making sure they string together as well as I’m imagining.  Wish me luck!