The Mystery Of Mastering

I'm sitting in the mastering room at Engine Room Studios and having to come to terms with the fact that I don't know a damn thing about mastering. It makes it louder, right? It makes everything cohesive? But what exactly is happening? Christian, our mastering engineer, calls mastering "the black art." That sounds like something I could get on board with.

We just finished listening to Autolux's album Future Perfect as a reference point for our album. That got me excited, as the Autolux record is one of my favorite sounding records of the last decade. Now we're listening to our opening track, "This Would Be The Time" and Christian is playing the last minute and half over and over while tweaking all sorts of compression and EQ knobs. First he makes the record sound like we're listening to it through a line of string and a tin can. More knobs twist. Now the record sounds like it's underwater, with huge bass swoons and swells. Then he cuts the bass all together and the mids shine through like glaring sunlight through clouds on a hangover morning.

A rapid succession of clicks as if he is trying 15 different channels ensues, a slight pop like a needle skipping separating each one. A quick check on our reference. Silence. He switches some more knobs. He says he's having trouble matching the kick in our recording to the level of that in the Autolux. Perhaps Autolux is not the best reference?

We listen to Built To Spill. Still no match. Christian is of the opinion that we need to bring the kick up in the mixes. It's a sobering statement, one whose implication could throw a serious monkey wrench in this whole business. Going backwards to the mixing stage is the last thing in the world I want to do, but listening to other recordings, Christian has a valid point. In order to make the record sound as big as possible, the man needs more kick.

Oh, the mysteries of mastering, if only you'd remained as such.

Summer Darling CA Mini Tour Diary Day 4: Vanaprasta, By Sunlight, & Shiloe.

We were very honored last night to be able to play with 3 bands who we respect as musicians and as people (with the possible exception of a certain female Rush-loving shit talking bassist) and end our 4 days of rock and roll with a joyous celebration.

Vanaprasta was the first band on the bill and one of the things I immediately respected about them was the amount of hard promotional work they must have done to get a great crowd out early. There seems to be an unwritten understanding of excusable malaise if you are either the midnight or nine o'clock slot in LA. This is not always the case, as bands like Vanaprasta and Shiloe reminded everyone last night, but this unspoken attitude says that if you're not the headliner, you don't have to promote as hard. I'm sure we've been guilty of that in the past, so last night's kick in the pants will not be soon forgotten.

Besides owning the show crowd-wise, let's take a minute to recognize how good a band Vanaprasta is. Vanaprasta is stoney without being boring, enigmatic without being preachy, and rock and roll without the pretension. I see them raising the bar of the local scene this year.

By Sunlight is from Seattle and what I like about them is they seem to be doing something similar to what we're doing: borrowing from 90s indie rock and reinterpreting it for today. I love their meter changes and the way their set is one continuous jam. I've always been impressed by their work ethic and professionalism. Somebody sign this band, for Chrissake.

Long time readers of this blog need no introduction to one of my favorite bands, Shiloe. They are the loudest fucking band in Silver Lake, which makes me very very jealous. Last night was no exception as they tore through their set in blazing fashion. Melissa, you need to buy a 2 x 15 cab. It rumbled my soul in a good way. Dan is a freight train of a drummer and Ken's guitar playing seems to expand and contract at the same time creating an effect that is at once ethereal and precise. I imagine them as the perfect link between shoegaze and no wave.

Did you miss us? Here's a video of questionable quality:

Our thanks to the bands we played with over the last few days and the venues that welcomed us. Most importantly we sincerely appreciate all of you who came out to see us play. A special shout out goes to our Long Beach friends who surprised us by coming out last night. Thank you all very much. Love, SD

Summer Darling CA Mini Tour Diary Day 2 & 3

Sunday was one of those long days, a day where each section seemed elongated and stretched out like silly putty. It gets thinner and thinner and holes begin to form and the light shines through and then finally when just a few strands remain connected, time gets wadded back up into a ball only to be pulled apart again. The morning seemed to take forever, waiting on us all to get our shit together and packed into our Volvo 240 wagon. We were blessed enough to be borrowing gear from Highway Patrol allowing us to all go in one car.

The drive seemed to take forever, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. The grapevine was covered in sunshine and snow, the hills refracting light like gigantic prisms. People were lined up on the empty frontage roads, parking wherever their cars would fit and flocking out into the white fields with makeshift cardboard sleds and thermoses of Campbell's and coffee. From the mountains the 5 empties out into a wide flat valley emerald in color from our weeks of rain. When we stopped for gas we received scary news: Josh, the lead singer and guitarist for Highway Patrol, was sick with a high fever and they were on the verge of regrettably canceling their performance.

Now Josh is a subject of a whole other blog that I'm planning for February as part of my Heywood musical history month series, but the long and short of it is he's my best friend and I've never had the pleasure of playing with his band and for a while I was very saddened by this news. However, it all worked out and judging by the below photo, he seemed well enough to rock the hell out of Hotel Utah.

I guess that's the funny thing about playing shows, especially when you're on the road. The whole day revolves around 1 hour of activity and no matter what you do, the day feels long but the show is over before you know it. Hotel Utah was no exception. My parents and Aunt and Uncle were there as well as my best high school and college buddies, so add that to roaring, incendiary sets by us, Highway Patrol, and Reduced To Ruin and you have a show that is over in a blink of an eye or a swig of warm rider beer.

The evening continued with an after party at Josh's home across the bay, and we stayed up way way way way past our bedtime discussing sordid stories from our past love lives and drinking ourselves blind.

Monday was another road day in order to get back in town to finish the recording of our 826LA song, "Mexican Food." Unbeknownst to them, we crashed Matt and JQs pad and did the vocals in their little studio since S Foye was house sitting. We'll owe them some mexican food when they return from South Africa. The vocal recording went smoothly, if not a little crankity. Todd and Heather really fleshed out my main line, adding a lushness the previous versions lacked, so for that I am excited. The song reminds me a bit of early Helmet and Sonic Youth mixed with a really over the top chorus sung in rounds. I can't wait to share it with everyone.

Tonight we finish our adventure at Spaceland, so please come hang out with us and celebrate the conclusion of 96 hours of Summer Darling.

Summer Darling CA Mini Tour Diary Day 1

Saturday Jan 23rd, 2010.

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. With a full day of recording ahead of us, we chose Nick’s on North Spring Street. Todd, S Foye and I go over the incidentals of the upcoming session as well as the surprising fact that Florida is chalk full of bald eagles and jaguars.

After we head over to Bedrock Studios in Echo Park where KamranV, who runs Spaceland Recordings, has just opened a brand new recording space and Summer Darling is to be the inaugural session. The best part: it’s all for charity! Bedrock has donated the room and their gear to us for the day so that we can track “Mexican Food,” our song for the upcoming 826LA Benefit Compilation, proving that we too, are not above some charity from time to time.

The room is spacious with a Moroccan flair, reminding us of NRG in the valley. All sorts of toys are ours to use and abuse along with very expensive mics and pres and an HD Pro Tools rig. Todd picks out a DW drumkit while I fool around with my new distortion pedal, the Holy Fire by Creation Audio Labs. It takes a while to debug the system, but Kamran, S Foye, and Tim, the assistant engineer, take it all in stride. The biggest challenge stems from the fact that there stands a gi-normous radio tower pumping Echo Park and Silver Lake with Christian Mexican Radio across the street from Bedrock. So occasionally the amps, guitars, pedals, or mics pick up the signal, proliferating some Dios y Jesus all over the track.

Once we sort through these types of issues, Todd is ready to track. We had done the scratch vocals and guitar to a click track the day before. Upon hearing it in his headphones and playing along, Todd felt the first half of the song was too slow. We bumped the section up about 15BPM and left the back section at the original tempo. Because of the song’s structure, the ploy works remarkably well. With a few minor overdubs, Todd finishes and I head in to do my part. Playing out of my own rig (63 Fender Bandmaster, Wren And Cuff Fuck Off Boost Pedal, and the Holy Fire pedal), the recording goes smoothly enough, and the torch is passed to Dan.

Dan plays through a 15 watt Gibson Les Paul Junior, but soon discards it as the tone isn’t what he was looking for. He fools around with a solid state Fender Twin before ultimately deciding on a Fender Tone Master head and a 4 X 10 Marshal cabinet. Meanwhile Heather has been fooling around with an Ampeg flip top tube bass amp. Originally we think the tone sounds like garbage because of the amp, before realizing, nope, it’s our janky ass bass guitar that was shitting out sour tone. Kamran raids the vaults of his studio and returns with a Gibson Thunderbird bass, which we throw straight through S Foye’s tube preamp. Both Dan and Heather’s parts combine to give the song serious balls. We ran out of time to do vocals, since we had to get to our show in Long Beach at the Basement.

The Basement is real cool club. We’d never played there, but it has a decent sound system headed up by Brian Smith, the ubiquitous Long Beach sound man. Swear to god, this guys has done sound at nearly every one of our recent Long Beach shows no matter where we’ve played. The gig went swimmingly, we were surrounded by friends and well-wishers, the DJ was actually playing awesome music in between songs, and there was plenty of laughter. Heather and I spent our three am drive home from the show reflecting on how much we love our life. The feeling after a good show is one of triumphant euphoria and easily outweighs the feeling after a bad show. The trick is to remember that fact when you’ve just played a bad show, but it’s a trick I’m starting to get better at!

Credit Where Credit's Due

Today I'm working on the credits to the Summer Darling record and noticing that while some things are easily annotated--for example the record was produced by S Foye--other things aren't so obvious. So I'm going to take a brief moment to credit the vagueries that were instrumental in the making of this record.

Matthew Beighley and Jacqueline Santillan get credit for allowing us to invade their house, tune their piano, and bang away on it until we frightened their cat and disrupted their neighbors.

Kenn Shane gets credit for filling in on drums for us while Todd was in Portland. If our live set throughout the first half of 2009 was awesome, it was because of him.

Loop Haro gets credit for being around during the four years it took us to write some of these jams, and for being there during all the aborted recordings of them. He also gets credit for giving me coffee and tums on an empty stomach the morning of one such recording that caused me to shit myself then puke in the alley behind the restaurant at which we were breakfasting. It was a hangover, dude, not heartburn.

Dave Colvin gets credit for tracking a bunch of stuff that didn't get used. I still fear Black Jesus FBI.

If our guitars sound shit-kickingly bad ass on this recording, while due in part to S Foye's magical production, we must also recognize Matthew Holl who runs Wren And Cuff Pedals. His kind donation of prototypes over the past couple of years is our sound, not to mention the custom telecaster I play, which he made.

Ryan Callis gets credit for creating a lot of art that inspired the aesthetic vision of Summer Darling. Even though his designs were not used in the final version of our new record, his work is invaluable to what we do.

Nico Stai gets credit for letting us borrow his amp whenever we wanted to without really asking in order to record blazing guitar parts. He also gets credit for being the first person in Los Angeles to think we were a real band. He also recorded a version of a song that didn't make the record. Sorry, mate, I sound too damn happy on it.

Coors Light gets credit for being so easily drinkable. It can loosen one up without turning all your playing to shit. At least, we hope so.

Remember these fine folks when you read the "official" credits of the record, for their vision and support helped us out a bundle. Thanks everyone!

Th Pressure Of A Full Plate

I must admit to feeling a bit overwhelmed at the moment. Heather and I were in Madison, WI until last monday night and then her mom came to visit Wednesday and left yesterday. Today we begin a whirlwind weekend of amazing Summer Darling activities. We have rehearsal and pre-production for the 826LA benefit recording tonight. The recording begins Saturday. Saturday night we play Long Beach. Sunday night finds us in San Francisco. Monday night we're back in the studio. Tuesday night we're at Spaceland. And then Kissing Cousins play Wednesday night at Echo Curio. Finally, on Thursday the 28th, we head into the studio to master the new record! And all the while we'll be working shifts at our day jobs whenever we can squeeze them in!

I suppose there's no real point to this post other than to say I'm excited to be so active playing music, but I could also use a day off. We hope to see you all at one or more of these events in the next couple of days. Be well!

The Power of Personality: Light FM

So much goes into being a successful band. One important thing I've learned that contributes to success and all around bad-assery, I learned from people like Josiah from Light FM. I've seen Light FM a handful of times. They have the hard-to-come-by ability to combine massive guitars and hooky melodies. But I probably would not have seen them the amount of times I have if not for Josiah.

Josiah is a gracious, humble, and generous human being who I respect. I've seen his enigmatic charm put smiles on nearly every face he runs into at a show, and that is an invaluable gift. People want Light FM to be successful because they want Josiah and the other lovely members of his band to be successful. And that is something all of us in bands should take to heart. Here's to not being giant dicks in 2010.

You can help Light FM conquer the masses this year by voting for them as the best emerging band in Los Angeles at Deli Magazine here.

You can catch them live:

Feb 4th @ Tokyo Garden in Fresno

Feb 8th @ Spaceland