Week 9, Solace

The ninth song is called Solace. YouTube link for iPhone

Officially the longest song so far – it also has the fewest lyrics coming in at three lines.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Seam lately, and though this song probably sounds a little bit more like a Bedhead or The New Year song, I would attribute it to my recent Seam obsession. If you’re not already a fan of Seam, Bedhead, or The New Year, then I would recommend checking them out. Seam and Bedhead have been defunct for a good while, but The New Year is still alive, well, and cutting records.

Speaking of Seam, I have a couple degrees of separation from Seam’s last drummer, Chris Manfrin. Chris is my wife’s second cousin, and happens to be the current drummer in Bottomless Pit. Bottomless Pit is the completely amazing band of former Silkworm frontmen Andy Cohen and Tim Midgett. Chris and I have crossed paths as Bottomless Pit and the Karl Hedricks Trio have played several shows together here in Pittsburgh and on the road. The reason I bring it up is because the Trio will be playing a show with Bottomless Pit in Chicago in a couple of weeks at the Hideout on November 14. We’ll also be playing in Bloomington, IN on the 13th, Columbus, OH on the 12th, and right here in Pittsburgh this Thursday. The Kyle Sowashes, another fantastic band, are kind enough to play all of these shows with us (and book them, thanks Kyle). I hope to catch up with some of my Pittsburgh friends at Howler’s for this week’s show, and would love to see anyone else who is in reasonable proximity to the other shows.

Enough about that stuff, here’s the deal with the song:

It gets pretty huge-sounding thanks to seven guitar tracks. The vocal tracks and the three main guitar tracks were recorded into the iPhone using the Blue Mikey. I really wanted to capture the clean tone of my Fender Twin – you can hear that the Mikey captured the Twin + Telecaster sound pretty well as illustrated in the first section of the song. I added a couple more guitar tracks using my Rode NTK tube condenser straight into the laptop since I already had everything set up to record the drums. The next day I added a couple more guitar tracks and the bass track using the custom break-out cable (from Week 2) to mic my Orange practice amp. I wanted a nice full drum sound for this song, so I went back to the four mic arrangement from weeks 4 through 7 but with the Rode NTK out in front of the drum set. I like how they ended up sounding, and for once I’m not miserable about my performance (I don’t fancy myself a drummer). I also managed to work in another DopplerPad track. I created a 16-beat loop which I wanted to sit lightly in the mix and then imported it into Reaper. The loop plays throughout the song, but you can only really hear it during the first and last sections. DopplerPad is really a great iPhone app. I’m looking forward to what they have planned for the next update. I used the fantastic MultiTrack iPhone app again to record everything with the exception of the drums and a couple guitar tracks.

Anyway, that’s about it for this week. Don’t forget to come out and see Bottomless Pit, The Kyle Sowashes, and The Karl Hendricks Trio on our tiny whirlwind tour (which is about the right size for us dudes with kids).

Tags: Bedhead, Blue Mikey, Bottomless Pit, Chris Manfrin, Cockos, Corey Layman, developer, DopplerPad, FourTrack, Harmonicdog, hovland, indie, indie rock, iPhone, Karl Hendricks Trio, lo-fi, MultiTrack, Pittsburgh, Reaper, Recording, Retronyms, RocketDog, Seam, Silkworm, The Kyle Sowashes, The New Year