Shake, ring, click, etc...

Tonight we all met at the studio to work on some of the odds and ends we need to put on the record. Toby got their first, and did some weird/crazy sounding bass swells with his stand up bass. He's been telling us how he could do these crazy swells if he bowed his stand up bass, and man, was he right. That thing is a monsterous instrument, capable of so much. I thought my 26" kick drum moved some air...yikes.

When I arrived, we talked about all of the guitar tracks that Mike had completed. After a short debate regarding some of the tones on "In Multiples" we agreed it was best to let Mike work all that out on his own, and move on to laying down some percussion.

I hadn't had that much time to "prepare" what I wanted to do like I usually try to. But I thought I'd give it a go since I felt like these songs didn't require too much in the way of percussive highlights, aside from the initial drum tracks which I'm quite proud of.

Mike and I agreed to just rock through each song one at a time laying down the tambourine, since that's the first thing I thought was necessary. I think there are about 5-6 tunes that I actually played something that we'll keep/use.

The other elements of "honey" we put down was some cool sleighbells on "The Departure" and "Among The Quiet People Of The Frost".

I also threw some maracas on "Among The Quiet People..." and "The Departure" for some chick-chick effect. We thought the tambourine just wasn't right for those songs.

I finally got the chance to finally lay down that elusive clave part I've always wanted to do on "Among The Quiet People..." which actually sound pretty sweet.

I'm very anxious to hear how Mike mixes all the cool stuff we've contributed. This record is interesting. We've spent more time than ever before writing/arranging each song as a group. So we each had a very good idea of what needed to be done prior to actually recording, so that process has been quite quick & efficient. It's all the "bells & whistles" that we add on top of the basic tracks that take time editing/mixing down.

Should be killer when it's all said and done.

Thanks.