Earlier this week I decided that it was time to officially designate time that is specific to the band, and last night was the first day that I started. I am a “sucker” for structure and some would say I don’t accept change very well. I’ve come to realize that change is a very good thing. So last night Xipetotec and I headed into the studio for about three hours to work on “Early Earthlings.” The main reason for that is Alyce has been listening to the “current” version a lot. I figured I’d do the work up front to transition it off the original patching to the new board layout. It didn’t take much to do so, and we got down to working with the parts fairly quickly. I do need to sit down over the weekend and move the drums into their own individual tracks. Right now they are all on their own, which limits the amount of flexibility with note velocities.
It was the first track I worked on after completely ditching the “all in the box” mentality of production. It’s seen itself morph about three or four times since it’s original conception. I’ll likely end up revisting some of the previous structures around the drums as they do sound very electronic presently. Given that when we start performing I’ll be on a midi drum kit at times, there needs to be more “human” in the studio versions.
I think initially it was a “slowly but surely” kind of progress with the material, and there were times when it was only once or twice a week that we would make it into the studio. At this point without putting the schedule in place, it’s being held back. I’ve no desire to stop progress, so there is now 16 hours set aside every week for it. Even that is going to increase as we work our way into winter. Hopefully on Monday morning there will be new versions of a lot of tracks, albeit marked “in progress.” It’s all really in progress though and the version that gets played live is going to end up with variations each time. So really they end up being “snapshots” of a particular time.