Thursday, March 21, 2013

Brand New Recording. Brand New Rules.

You may have heard our new demo up on the splash page of our web site; and while we're proud of ourselves for learning how to record demos and use our studio gear, it seems the forces from the musical heavens are telling us to focus on playing with our toys (guitars/drums/keyboards, etc).  We're not sound engineers, but it is fun messing with recording gear in the P&B home studio.  In the last few months, we've written so many songs, we don't even know what to do with them.  There are at least 19 new ideas as of now and I doubt we are going to be stopping there.  These tunes are so new, we don't have titles for them.  We'd never actually call a song 'Taco Bell Song' or 'Legend of Zelda Song' (#13 and #18 in the pic).  Right as we were scratching our heads trying to figure out what to do with all these new ideas, our friend Julio, who happens to be a very talented sound engineer/producer/musician, expressed an interest in recording our new material.  While we had no intention of recording official new material anytime soon, it sounded like a fun time and we didn't see any harm in being spontaneous and trying this out.

  
So, last Saturday night, we dove right in.  This will be our first official recording in over a year and a half and there are at least 5 reasons we can think of why this is an exciting experience:

1)  It's all brand new.  Everything.  Our songwriting process, the recording process, and even the music we're creating doesn't resemble the Pinto and the Bean we remember.  As you know, we took a good six month break from making music, and the band almost fell apart; but somehow, that break really helped us bond in a new way as songwriters, band mates, and friends; it's all a new dynamic now, and a brand new journey as a band.

2)  It's just plain fun to be recording a brand new song; it's so new, we don't even have finalized lyrics or a title for it yet.  To give you an idea, it's got some badass drumming and weird guitar tricks we haven't used before as well as new keyboard sounds we've been experimenting with; we played this tune at our recent Empty Bottle gig and saw a bunch of people shakin' their booties, so that's a good sign.  

3)  We're recording this song with a sound engineer/producer we've never worked with before, which will ultimately alter the overall outcome/sound/vibe of our music.  Paul has recorded a catalog of solo music with Nick (the producer/engineer of our album 'The Waiting Place' and director of 3 of our music videos) for several years; while a lot of great recordings came from our experiences with him, it's wonderful to move on and experience the recording process in a brand new way with a different perspective on things; it's a whole new direction we haven't gone in before.

4)  We're already halfway done with the recording of our new tune, which is pretty amazing.  This process is going by at record speed, which is not something we're used to.  Not to say that getting things done so quickly is right or wrong, but different is always a good thing.

5)  We'll let you know as soon as it's done of course.  Make sure you're signed up to our mailing list for that and you'll be hearing from us soon.

Julio, engineer/producer or our new song, in the P&B living room doing some mad mixing.





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