Saturday, April 16, 2005

New CPG Song.

"Lucky" is one of the songs that will be on the new CPG album. Keep in mind this is only a rough track with almost no mixing or engineering. To those not familiar with music record techniques, this means that what you hear on this song is about the way it sounded when it was recorded. It hasn't been altered much at all. For example, when you hear a song on the radio, or play one from a CD, many of the sounds and / or instruments you hear on the recording has been modified in some way or another to get the music to sound a particular way. When you turn up the treble or bass controls on you stereo to get the music to sound better, you're mixing the song to get it to sound better (to your ears). Except in the studio we have a lot, and I mean A LOT more dials and knobs and things we can use to make a guitar or bass or vocals sound different. You may ask "Why bother. Doesn't it sound good enough already"? All you have to do is think back to the first time you heard your own voice played back on a tape recorder. You probably said something like "God, Do I really sound like that"?! And musicians are really anal about the way things sound, so this is one of the reasons that it takes a year or more to record an album.

Another reason albums take a long time to record is because the master recordings get destroyed due to a PEBKAC error, or as the Mate says, divine intervention (God is trying to tell you "YOU'RE BAND SUCKS!!!"). The hard drive our master tracks were stored on died. We lost three songs. Another band lost a whole album. Nothing could be recovered. This version of "Lucky" was one of these songs that got erased. When we record a song, each instrument and voice is recorded on its own track, keeping each part separate from the other. This is called Multitrack Recording. You do this so that you can change or alter the sound of one instrument or vocal (by using the dials and knobs mentioned above), or if you don't like the performance, you can re-record this track with out having to re-record everyone else's parts. The more instrument and / or vocals you have on a song, the more tracks you will have. We mixed all those tracks into two channels, left and right, and burned them to a CD. When you do that, you lost the ability to manipulate the recording because the separate tracks are on longer there. Remember when you were kids and had "Play-Doh" sets with four colors. And when you played with it, and made things, and then mashed all the colors together because it was fun. But then you couldn't make anything else 'cause you mixed all the colors and can't unmix them and get them back again? This is what this version of "Lucky" is --- mashed up "Play-Doh". We were going to do more work on the individual track to make the song sound better, but since the tracks are lost, this is what we have for you. So enjoy.

P.S. For Linux users, here is a more direct approach to get Lucky!

2 comments:

sleepybomb said...

i've been using 4-track recording since the mid-80's. starting with a tascam porta-1,(which is kinda-still-running). i have a new tascam mark II, but i do more thru the pc than on the four track. it's great for getting the drums down and then flipping it into acid to mix. i have boxes of cassettes containing all the hits and misses.
oh yeah, the song is cool. i love the rock and roll sensibilities ya'll have. i was in a band years ago that you guys remind me a lot of. even the influences . . . sweet.
keep 'em flying!

Anonymous said...

As many links as you want!