Making a Record in 2025

February 17, 2025

Old Recordings

I love recording music. I don't know a whole lot about the technical elements behind "engineering" (I know recording and mixing music isn't actually engineering, but bear with me), but I do know a lot about composing, arranging, and performing. So when I record myself I either wing it or pay somebody competent to handle that part of the job for me. I haven't recorded much since doing the self-titled dad album a couple years ago.

Unfortunately I'm stuck in limbo for a while. I am in the middle of a garage renovation project which will turn my detached garage into a four-hundred-plus square foot recording room. I currently have two out of three municipal permits I need to begin construction, and I'm hopeful that before the end of 2025 I'll have a functional recording and rehearsing space. But in the meantime I can't really record much at home. Basically anything requiring a microphone is more trouble than it's worth...tracking vocals in my basement requires turning off the furnace or air conditioning to do a take and I don't even want to think about attempting to track drums. I do have an e-kit but it's been a big disappointment in both the playability and sound departments. Recording guitars and basses through direct injection and/or a modeller works well enough, so I've limited myself to that.

At the same time, I've tried a new approach with releasing music. Streaming seems to be a complete waste for independent artists (and let's be real, for most signed artists as well) so I've got our dad-rock EP up for sale on Bandcamp and Ampwall, which are pay-to-download music websites. Amazingly since releasing our record we've had four sales, three on Bandcamp and one this past month on Ampwall. I'm especially happy about the Ampwall sale, it's a very new service intended to compete with and potentially supplant Bandcamp should BC get run into the ground by a venture capital firm (whole other blog post there). By virtue of being brand new I put essentially zero effort into our Ampwall page and kind of forgot about it, but nevertheless somebody found our tunes and liked them enough to make a purchase!

So I've eager to get more music out to the world. Up until Covid shut down the world I would self-fund at least one recording date per year, paying the cost of the studio, engineer, and any musicians I needed to hire. My only goal was recording, I never had a release strategy so the sessions just sat on my hard drive. I'm determined to get more music out in the world, so I have been going through my archives to see if there's anything release-worthy. There's some interesting stuff buried in my digital vault: a bunch of covers which are unfortunately unreleasable due to licensing issues, an extremely well done indie rock EP that will most likely never see the light of day due to a rather acrimonious band breakup (I have titled the record "The Forbidden Songs"), but I came across a 2015 jazz fusion session I played bass on.

I had pulled together a group consisting of my second cousin Ted on keys, my old college roommate Matt on drums, and my rock and roll friend Greg on guitar. I played the bass. The tunes were tracked into Pro Tools by Nathan Moore, and being unwilling to pay for a Pro Tools subscription I bought Reaper (only $65!) and rebuilt the session on my computer. The guys played pretty well and Nathan did an exceptional job on the recording (the drum sound is INCREDIBLE), but as a long-time guitarist I was pretty new to playing the bass guitar and didn't do a great job. When I listen back I can hear myself rushing the feel a lot and generally playing too "safe", and not having the chops to follow the energy of the other musicians. As it stands my performance is not what I would consider to be releasable, but fortunately all the instruments were tracked in isolation from one another. My recollection is that although we played live the drums were tracked in the main room, the guitar amp was in an isolation booth, with Ted's keys and my bass tracked direct while we all monitored via headphones. So that means I can just delete my old basslines and re-record new ones.

The session wasn't done to a click. I usually like to record pop and rock with a click, but this was a jazz date. Overdubbing with no click is a little more challenging (and I can definitely hear the groove being pushed and pulled) but the other guys played strong enough time that I think it's workable, so I've started practicing along with the tracks and generating new ideas for basslines. The tunes will need to be mixed and mastered, so I'll have to look up Nathan and see if he's still doing that kind of work, and I'll check in with the other guys to see if they're comfortable with a release. There are three songs that I had written that I think are going to be fit for a release, and a fourth one by Matt that needs an upright bass as opposed to a bass guitar, so I may have a four-song EP if I can get my upright chops back in working order.

Tunes I'm Into

A huge component of being a musician is just listening. The thing I love about a website like Bandcamp is the amount of lower-profile artists who would never otherwise be accessible in the old record store days. I enjoy a lot of more mainstream pop music too, but here's the more "underground" stuff I'm into lately:

The Soviettes

I just discovered The Soviettes this month and have been making my way through their discography. Currently I'm listening to LP II. Short shouty punk songs but poppy enough to have strong hooks and melodies. According to my music player I've listened to the first track "Ten" almost fifty times this week. In fact, I'm listening to it as I type this! It's a pretty loud record, but it's punk so I'll let it slide.

The Embarrassment

A band from the late seventies into the early eighties, I discovered The Embarrassment on the label Almost Ready Records. Although classified as punk I think their self appointed descriptor "blister pop" is more accurate. My favourite tunes are "Celebrity Art Party" and "Elizabeth Montgomery's Face". "Wellsville" is pretty good too.

Wimps

I read about Wimps on one of Bandcamp's discover column last year. I bought all their records and was able to convince the dad band to indulge me and cover "Old Guy". It's simple straighforward punk music, but it works really well and the lyrics are often irreverently hilarious without being stupid.

The Toms

I found the Toms on the same label that has The Soviettes, Dead Broke Rekerds. I'd call these guys modern power pop ("bubblegrunge"). I have a feeling The Toms only ever made this initial three-song EP. They sound to me a lot like blue album-era Weezer, which is very good because I love blue album-era Weezer! I enjoy all three tunes in equal measure, "Lee Jones", "Hanks", and "From Myspace" (get it?). I also unironically love the intro theme song which as far as I can tell is just one of the Toms screwing around on a piano.

Other Stuff on My Listening List

I've got the bands Susan from LA, Slush from Melbourne, and Tango Alpha Tango queued up for listening but I'm not there yet.

As always, thanks for reading!