Feb 13
Carol of the Bells
I’m not sure why I didn’t write this sooner.
So, in the spirit of the holidays, we decided to record a Christmas song. And not just write a strange one about mopping up blood beneath the Christmas tree.
We got together and recorded Carol of the Bells. Adam recorded a simple guitar track in one night. The next night we did all the vocals and piano. The night after that, I did all the drum production. We got together once more and finished the mixing. It came together super fast, mostly because we abondoned all of our normal recording instincts. If something sounded pretty good, we just pressed on.
It was actually pretty encouraging to work so quickly without triple-thinking every element of the song. And so, the All Strings & Joints version of ‘Carol of the Bells’ is now on our MySpace:
http://myspace.com/allstrings
1 commentNov 15
Following a Golden Thread
So, the new website is finally up and working smoothly.
It seems that everyone in San Francisco works on different and strange schedules. Usually the only time you can meet up with someone is when it’s sunny in Dolores Park. So, coding a website can be a little difficult. But, finally it’s working and we think it looks pretty cool. There are, obviously, more pictures to add. But you can buy the EP and listen to songs and maybe even the video will play.
We’ve been working on a strange instrumental piece recently without any set name. The working title is ‘Something New,’ which doesn’t indicate too much. We started with a 5 second loop from a recorded jam session and started building on it. Harmonica, a drum sample from a parade, and some ambient sounds. Adam then wrote an intentional series of vocal harmonies and sang them all together. There’s also some light guitar work. After a little more arrangement, it should be listenable and maybe we’ll post a working version for a minute.
Also on our plate now is the ’studio’ version of Glass Eyes. A simple acoustic version showed up on the Long EP. We tried many, many times to record a broken-down version that we were happy with. We were prepared to distribute a recording with mistakes, just so long as it had character and represented the song well. There were tons of recordings that had some spark. One even ended with a serendipitous police siren streaming through an open window. However, it wasn’t until we drove out to our friend Luke’s place in Clayton that we got a version that we liked. We set up our mics in his little art studio set inside California’s desolate rolling hills and nailed the recording in one take.
That’s how it goes, I guess.
