making a record
aka, the last good thing
A quick top note to say that you can (and should! if you’re able) still donate to the GoFundMe I set up to help with costs associated with making this big gorgeous record. If you can’t donate or have already, please share: Help Half Gringa Make a Record
Hello!!!
I come to you from the other side of a great chasm - the chasm of Making a Record. Well, mostly. My teammate in this relay, Brian Deck, continues on through the mixing process. But the recording process for this batch of songs is done, and I think he got what he needed from me and my coconspirators to make something fun. For those of you without extensive knowledge of the process, here’s basically how it goes:
I write songs. I make demos (aka recordings in my house) with varying levels of instrumentation, arrangement, and approach. I think of it like an audio collage that ultimately depicts what I hear in my brain. I also worked with Viv, a.k.a. V.V. Lightbody, a friend and self-described “album doula” on sifting through like 18 demos and identifying some patterns and potential energies/instrumentations. I did this back in 2022 and it really helped me come up with a blueprint for what I wanted to do stylistically.
I write chord/lyric charts and rehearse a band I have assembled. In this case, Quin Kirchner, Victoria Park, Brenden Cabrera, Sam Cantor, and I started to rehearse these songs together in September. They patiently learn and work through everything with me and suggest stylistic approaches and chord tweaks to ensure everything sounds copacetic.
We play a show. We did this at Schubas! Other bands may do a whole tour to work out a set but I had neither time nor money for this, so one show had to suffice.
Photo by Samantha J We go to the studio. This part of the process varies wildly - in the past I have done a weekend here, a weekend there, and a lot of additional home recording to add backing vocals and extra parts. This time, I wanted to try and do it in one sitting. I took time off from work to try this full-immersion approach and I have to say, I loved it. I am tired, but it’s a good tired, like finishing a hard run or beating the big boss in a video game. I felt 100% present with the work. I felt like I didn’t have to settle on any takes because we recorded to a click track, I didn’t make any big concessions that I didn’t feel good about, and it was fun. Shocking.
me fixing charts that are wrong lmao, listening back to a take, the view of the live room from my spot in the control room, chilling and discussing After we finish the main full-band tracking, we do overdubs. This is for instruments that benefit from sound isolation, like trumpet, strings, and backing vocals, as well as extra tasty riffs of keyboard, guitar, and percussion. When I say I brought in an all-star cast of musicians for this session, it’s not hyperbole. Ivan Pyzow and Lucy Little, two of my regular collaborators, came in and added trumpet and violin parts (and Lucy wrote some amazing string arrangements and cleaned up the parts for the ones I wrote, bless). Lia Kohl, my old touring buddy and neighbor, came in to add cello. Daniel Villarreal, who made my favorite record of 2022, added congas and aux percussion. Things are sounding downright magical at this point.
This next part is new to me. Brian Deck has made some of my favorite records of all time. They soundtracked a lot of my earlier musical experiences and defined a lot of my musical tastes. A thing he literally said to me during this session is “Distortion is my religion” which in context was, I think, a joke, but also, king behavior. So after we finished the main session, he went back to the studio and did something called “reamping.” Basically, the shorthand is that you take a track and reprocess it using an amplifier in a room. He set up some guitar amps in the room that we tracked in and played, for example, only the vocal track of a song through one of the amps. The amp changes the quality of the sound and he records it, as well as the sound of the room around it to give it some dimension. He did this for a few different instruments and the effect is really cool!!! I am earnestly really delighted by this and it was neat to observe and learn about. It gives him more of a palette to work with when mixing the record.
So what happens now? I’m taking a minute. A breather, a nap. A slight pause before Brian sends me the first mixes and I have to start thinking about them. I have been working at my day job and then just… lying down. It’s great. This weekend I may attempt to cook some things, see a show, and clean my office. Or just think about how good it felt to be making something with people I admire. I want to keep this time preserved in my memory so that when I am trying to shop this record to a label, or adding to the endless scroll of social media, or casting my line into the abyss of the music industry in various manners, I can have it as a constant reminder that I made something I am very proud of on my terms. And that the day will come when I can embark on that life-giving journey again.
With love,
HG
P.S. - One more time, thank you again if you have donated to my record GoFundMe. Your support means so much and pays all the wonderful people working on this. If you haven’t yet donated or want to help get the word out, you can do that here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-half-gringa-make-her-next-record
Thanks for such a full and clear description of the process and the band and technicians input. Loved the photos and the memes.