On Saturday, April 4, we were back at my studio to finish recording Hands Up. The plan was to record the vocals and some acoustic guitar, but things took a different turn. Even though we had been recording and performing the song the way we recorded it, James wasn’t exactly happy with the overall “feel” of the song; that the guitars were a little to loose. So we ended up revisiting the guitar parts and came up with a much more slamming version of the song. The new part we came up with locks in tighter with the drums and bass, instead of wandering around, and adds a lot more thump and crunch. But, this meant re-recording all the guitar parts we did the week before. No big deal, just an hour or so wasn’t too much time to get something we were much happier with. After that, it was on to the vocals.

We had been recording demo vocals for all the songs, so it was just a matter of James rehearsing his part during the week, finding the perfect mic, and recording the performances. I dug out a bunch of mics and we did a mic shootout to pick the best one for James voice and hit it. After we were done we took a few listens and decided to ditch the acoustic and go with the heavier version of the song. The next week I’ll be cleaning up the tracks and getting the song ready for mixing and mastering.

For the techies: We used the same guitar setup as last time. The vocals were recorded using a Carvin CM-87S condenser mic through a Focusrite TwinTrack Pro with a touch of compression. Everything is recorded into Logic 8 Pro using a Mackie Onyx 1620 and MOTU 896HD.

With the demo sessions for “Hands Up” in the can, this week we moved on to recording the final version of the song. On Friday morning drummer Rob Kelly recorded the drums. Rob has been living and working in South Korea as a drum professor, so he recorded his drums remotely at the school. We did a Skype call before his session to go over some notes, and make sure he got all the stems imported, and he got to it. Rob ended up having some fun and sent us 7 different versions of the drums parts to choose from.

Today we recorded all the final guitar and bass tracks for the song. The session started with us reviewing the demo version and deciding what we liked and what needed to be fixed, and what would work best with the new drum parts. We decided that we would keep this one pretty simple and go for 2 guitar tracks to lay the foundation. The guitar in the verses is pretty rhythmic and percussive, so the 3rd guitar helps accent and reenforce the choruses. With all the guitars in place we decided to keep things pretty close to the demo for the bass - nice and simple. Since the guitar is fairly rhythmic, the bass plays a simple thumping ostinato in the verses and does a variation on the guitar part in the chorus. After listening back we thought the verse and the intro might need acoustic guitar. So, next week it’s vocals and try out the acoustic. While we’re wrapping this up, I’ll be prepping the stems for the next song, “Perfect Day.”

For the techies: On this song James is playing his Black Les Paul Custom through his Marshall amp and Mesa Boogie 4×12 cabinet. We mic’d the cabinet with an SM57 towards the edge of the bottom right speaker, and an SM57 towards the center of the top left speaker to capture the full range of his sound. Each mic on its own didn’t give us the depth we wanted. I’m playing my Ibanez SB1200 bass through my Mesa Boogie 4×10 cab with MarkBass bass amp. We mic’d the bass cabinet using a Heil PR-40.

- Sebastian

Even since before we released our first album, See Me Comin’ in 2007, we’ve been hard at work writing new songs for a new… well, a new something. In October we started going through all the songs we’ve written since then, and even went further back to revisit songs that didn’t make the first album, and started recording demos of them.

You can join us each week, usually Saturday or Sunday afternoons, while we’re in studio recording at our channel at http://mogulus.com/atomicbrother, and comment on the songs as they are being worked on and join us in chat sessions. Maybe even catch a live set once in a while. When we’re not in studio you can stop by the channel and watch replays of that week’s session, sessions from the previous weeks and episodes of our podcast. It’s been real fun seeing who stops by, chatting and hearing what everyone has to say. Stop by and say hello!

-Sebastian