I knew I was in a good place when I saw the stuffed unicorn. There were giant amusement-park type stuffed animals all over the room where we set up our equipment, as a decorative way to absorb excess sound. The walls outside the sound room were lined with LPs, CDs, and cassettes that had been recorded there. Some, like Minor Threat, Fugazi, The Suspects, and Dag Nasty, I recognized.
Paintings were everywhere, some looking like an art student’s masterpiece and others more resembling the collaborative efforts of a kindergarten class. A definite peach-goldfish theme reigned. As a final touch and a play on the studio’s name, they’d taken two pages out of Gray’s Anatomy about the inner ear and framed them.
In twenty years, Don, the proprietor and owner of inner ear Recordings, learned a lot about musicians. There was a cheerful break room with three sofas, a kitchenette that had three different coffee makers, and enough ramen to make it through a nuclear winter. The room where the recordings were mixed and mastered had all sorts of toys and puzzles. I asked Don, and they were there, as I’d guessed, to keep band members from killing each other. He also had every single New Yorker since 1985. (For those who don’t know, recording is one of the most stressful times for a band. Many bands have come to blows and even broken up in the studio.)
The sound room itself was exactly as we’d wanted. There weren’t any booths to separate us. We were all in the same room, separated only by distance, so we could hear each other. This was, for the most part, being recorded live. Don kept the different sounds from bleeding into each other by not only using distance, but also creatively aiming the different cabinets in various directions so the sound wouldn’t collide where the microphones were.
The recording itself? That went far better than I expected. Don actually cared how our recording came out, and gave his full effort to helping us get the best sound quality from our equipment. This was a full 180 from the last time we were in the studio, making our ill-fated EP.
We almost managed to get through each song in one take; the only hitch being that since we were recording without vocals and we’d insisted on leaving off the headphones, we had to time it by playing each riff a certain number of times. Since I was told that Aaron’s song, “I Can’t Mosh,” needed the verse riff played 8 times during the second verse (as opposed to four), that’s what I did. However, they’d lied to me, and our first attempt was broken off amidst much glaring at me from Dirk and Aaron. We redid the song, but not before Dirk said, snottily, “It’s 8 times, okay?” I almost punched him.
In fact, the riff was only supposed to be played 6 times. I made sure to point that out to Dirk.
I was amazed by how slow the other song, “Stillborn Wishes,” sounded on the recording. Honestly, it sounded much faster when we were playing it.
Then it was time to overdub the vocals. There were only two vocal tracks for Stillborn Wishes, but five for I Can’t Mosh. Dirk and Aaron cajoled Joe and me into doing a vocal track, then Aaron had the utter gall to complain that we’d messed up the bridge. I had to be dragged into the sound room to record the vocals, so I thought he was way out of line to complain. My voice seems to be a bit louder than everyone else’s in the final copy, possibly because a) I was yelling, and b) I have the highest voice.
The final product was great and well worth the expense. We were together, Joe’s drumming was almost preternaturally perfect for each song, and the overall quality was excellent.
Don even had a free handout detailing how to make MP3’s out of our recordings. I should have one done for I Can’t Mosh in a couple days so you guys can hear it.
I think we’re going to be doing all our recording there, as soon as we can get the money.
