Mix, mix, mix

Recording is pretty much done and now it's time to mix. This cathartic and underestimated investment of time is beginning to look like a finished product.

Why the Giraffe Never Shows up to Anything

Stupid quicksand.

Underground Love Lyrics

Falling under. Underground love. Underground love. x2

The blindsiding wildfire that crept through the fog
Ended our dreams and ended us all
A new temptation followed thereafter
A desire to move, to move on faster

Ask me again in 500 years
If death on my doorstep tingled my fears
If pleas for clean shadows had any chance at all
If underground love got lost, lost in that fog.

And I'm falling under. Underground love. Underground love.
I'm falling under. Underground love. Underground love.

Can you please forgive me for my sins
Cause I'll love you forever when our new life begins
Be it underground or on top of the world
I'll shred the blank pages if you'll save those old words.

Babe I'm falling under. Underground love. Underground love.
I'm falling under. Underground love. Underground love.

Ask me again in 500 years
If death on my doorstep tingled my fears
If our pleas for clean shadows had any chance at all
If underground love got lost, lost in that fog.

Metronomes

Fuckin metronomes.

D&B for "Still"

No, we didn't decide to turn our sound into a club-thumping drum and bass sound. Instead, our friends Malcolm Martin and Robert Edmondson came over the other day to help us out with some drum tracking and bass parts. While we had an idea of what we wanted and we tried to relay it onto them with a neanderthal like, "Uh, you know...like....a groove man. We want it to groove," Josh and I were blown away by what they came up with. The song has really taken shape with the addition of their parts and is much better than I think either of us thought the song could go. We're sure they'll be back over a lot more to help us in the future. We've got a saxophone or bass clarinet part in our heads for the bridge of the song, and Rob may be back over later this week, weekend, or early next week to put it to track.

Also, while I was browsing through a thrift store in Jacksonville, I came across this beautiful doll. I'm not sure what the original owner charged for such a gem, but it must have been a small fortune for the thrift store to pick it up in hopes of reselling it.

-Nick, ATG
June 8/2011

Work on Still

Today was a pretty productive day at the And the Giraffe recording camp. We didn't make much headway in terms of recording progress, as many parts still have to be redone towards the end of our song "Still," but with the main frame of the song together, we can finally start working on more than just scratch tracks and laying the final parts for each instrument.

We started work around 2 this afternoon once Nick was done with work for the day. It started off with Josh working on recording a vocal scratch track over the top of the acoustic guitar and organ parts we laid over the weekend. We'd been using a condenser microphone for most of the vocals we'd done so far for other songs, but decided to give out Nick's Electro Voice N/D 767a a shot to see how it sounded.

The main reason we decided to lay a vocal scratch track instead of actual vocals for the entire song was to play around with a stereo delay idea that's been needed in the song since we first started writing. With 3 vocal tracks recorded and layered over the course of the song so far along with a stereo delay trailing for a few seconds off of each vocal line, we're pretty confident with how we want the final vocal takes to be once we lay them sometime next week. The layers sound luscious and smooth, and the stereo delay adds an eeriness that the song has been yearning for.

For fear of burning out, we took a late lunch to start back up around 5 to try and lay some electric explosions for the chorus that happens at the end of "Still." 2 hours and a dozen or so takes later, we still couldn't find a guitar tone we were happy with and with the takes getting worse and worse, it was time to call it a day. Tuesday and Wednesday won't see any activity for recording because of personal matters, but hopefully Thursday will be back to full swing and we can work on finishing the electric explosion that the song is screaming for.