All My Favorite Songs

Our Song "All My Favorite Songs Were Written By Men In Women's Pants" Is coming along quite nicely!

I finished tracking the rest of the instruments just now...
and it is ready for some singing!

and
that's exciting

and
that's all I have

I am your Master

Did some more house cleaning editing today for some songs.

Then,
I went back and started fine tuning those already mixed 5 songs even more.

Did I tell you that we are no longer sending out our songs to get professionally mastered? Well, we aren't. I'm gonna do it. It may not sound quite as good as if someone with a whole lot of experience did it...but i'm pretty confident I can fake it enough to make it sound pretty awesome...I mean...I didn't REALLY know how to record and mix music and I must say...it sounds good for a first attempt.

So, I started farting around with the mastering process tonight...and will be teaching myself how to do it in the coming weeks.

Did I tell you that I need something to eat? Well, I do.

So, now I'm heading home.

Checking In

Hey all,

Let me first say, Martin acts like he described below all the time, so don't let him get your sympathy . . .

Second, last night I took my lovely girlfriend to Chicago where we took in a delightful show. It was Empires, Paper Rival, Person L, and Steel Train.

Empires is some new Chicago band I guess, and they were quite good. Person L was also good, but Paper Rival stole the show. They are really really fantastic, and if you haven't already I would suggest you pick up their EP - they have a full length coming out in May (I am told).

I am working on 2 of the last few songs for the album as we speak, and hopefully I will be able to give you more info soon. The one I have almost entirely finished is yet to be titled, which is really irritating, so I will probably take care of that soon. The other is called BACK WITH YOUR SHIELD OR ON IT. It seems like it will be awesome.

Peaches (I saw this salutation on MySpace),

Patches Jaicomo

No blankets to hold all the stars...No pillows to pin up as clouds

I bought a new distortion pedal

and used it to track the guitar for a song tonight (girl pants)

it took so long

I rewrote some parts
and had to relearn how to play others


after a while
sitting in a studio
all alone
makes me crazy

not like
haha i'm feeling a little weird

more like
I start talking to myself
and screaming randomly
and wimpering when i mess up playing a guitar part
among other things

scary stuff

being in such a small little room
with almost no conection to the real world
with a million little blinking lights
it feels like i've been sent into space in a my own personal ship
and will spend the rest of eternity floating around in solitude

BUT
the songs sounds GREAT
really great
and i'll probably track the bass for it on monday
and perhaps the vox on tuesday

time to sleep this off

So Much Time Spent, So Little Done

Editing takes an incredible about of time. I spent 4 hours in the studio tonight and all I accomplished was editing the drums,vox, and guitar for a song...and that's just editing out noise, consolidating tracks, cutting toms, etc. (house cleaning) No compressing or EQing has been started yet. I'm going to count how many hours it takes to do one song start to finish. Off the top of my head I'm guessing 72 solid hours per song. and that's probably on the low side. That's not a gripe...I like doing it... anyway I'm in a poetry class. I needed some extra credit hours...and I thought maybe it would help me write lyrics. Today he called out random words and we had 2 minutes to write a poem about what that word made us think of.

Here is my poem for the word ORANGE:

They all taste like aspirin.
Every dimpled,waxy one of them.

They're good for a headache if you want one, that is.
The off-white jug blows them a kiss
"We'll get in his stomach and consume him instead"

How about that? Yeah, not very good, but it sure is fun to do.
Here's the one for the word CHAIR.

Always for sitting
and never for fun
Isn't there something I could be eating?
yes
during the night my sheep are bleating
and keep me awake
so I count:
one, two, chair, four
I sit up
but my bed's not for sitting
so I roll off the bed and lay on the floor

ewww That's even worse than the first.

Did I mention my poetry teacher has a book called Hitler's Mustache?
It's a book of poems all about Hitler's Mustache. buy it

So
I guess the point of all that was to say that I'm going to try to do writing exercises like that one every day so it doesn't take me 6 months to write the lyrics for 1 song.

and that's all for now

A New Beginning

Hello All,

We are still deciding how exactly to approach our new website idea, so I figured this could be a nice staging point. We will keep updating purevolume, but this blog site should allow us to do a few extra things.

Anyhow, Martin and I just got out of our most productive recording session ever, and I believe we have 10 tracks at least started. Here is a brief rundown of the status of potential "The Dog and the Wolf" tracks:

- What Happened to you, Man? You Used to Be Beautiful., FULLY RECORDED AND MIXED
- Heroes Don't Call Themselves Heroes, FULLY RECORDED AND MIXED
- Do You Have Any Idea What Tomatoes Do To Us?, FULLY RECORDED AND MIXED
- In the Grand Scheme of Things, Such as Geology, Ten Years Is Not So Very Long, FULLY RECORDED AND MIXED
-Tin Cans and String, FULLY RECORDED AND MIXED
- I Am Not Paul Avery (formerly Slippery Slope), FULLY RECORDED
- Frantic Man, DRUMS AND BASS RECORDED
- The Jumping Off Place, VOCALS, DRUMS, and GUITAR RECORDED
- All My Favorite Songs Were Written By Men in Women's Jeans, DRUMS RECORDED
- Gunfire/Do Not Go Gently Into That Good Night (working titles), DRUMS AND SOME VOCALS RECORDED

I will keep you up on all the tasty new details as they occur. Post any questions you want answered and any other comments you may have. We hope to be hearing from you.

I will see if I can dig up some new pictures or videos or something.