Let's Cross: Scenes in the Studio It felt like we had enough songs to record a new album now, but who the hell is counting right? So I started jotting the titles of our new material down into my dog-eared manila brown exercise book and realized we have some 18 new hits.
For some reason, there arose a strong compulsion to get the show on the road and I immediately called Aaron to discuss recording. Right after that I called Jeremy and drove that same night over to Jeremy's place in Bedok, where the famous bak chor mee is, to plot the recording out. We sat together and mulled over recording schedule and costs. By midnight, we were ready to call Ah Boy to make block bookings.
With the finesse that Jeremy brings and our unanimous opinion that this batch of songs were something pretty special, we wanted to make this recording as perfect as possible.
In previous recordings, mistakes could be punched in but an experienced soundman such as Ah Boy would probably be able to hear punched-in bits of a recording as there would be a small difference at that point. We decided that we'll have a zero punch-in policy.
We almost succeeded except I screwed up on the ending of one the the songs where I slid my last note too quickly before the climatic end. I wasn't sure I wanted to record over a perfectly laid bass track except this one last note. That's the only bit we punched in for the entire album.
To get the right feel, Jeremy even brought in a grand-looking acoustic guitar for a better sound recording on the clear chorus-y parts of some songs.
For some reason, there arose a strong compulsion to get the show on the road and I immediately called Aaron to discuss recording. Right after that I called Jeremy and drove that same night over to Jeremy's place in Bedok, where the famous bak chor mee is, to plot the recording out. We sat together and mulled over recording schedule and costs. By midnight, we were ready to call Ah Boy to make block bookings.
With the finesse that Jeremy brings and our unanimous opinion that this batch of songs were something pretty special, we wanted to make this recording as perfect as possible.
In previous recordings, mistakes could be punched in but an experienced soundman such as Ah Boy would probably be able to hear punched-in bits of a recording as there would be a small difference at that point. We decided that we'll have a zero punch-in policy.
We almost succeeded except I screwed up on the ending of one the the songs where I slid my last note too quickly before the climatic end. I wasn't sure I wanted to record over a perfectly laid bass track except this one last note. That's the only bit we punched in for the entire album.
To get the right feel, Jeremy even brought in a grand-looking acoustic guitar for a better sound recording on the clear chorus-y parts of some songs.
And harmonizing. We spent many evenings under the cover of darkness at Padang, where we huddled together and used my tape recorder to play just the music we recorded from home. And we practised harmonizing to it under the stars. For a moment, we became a semi a capella thing.
It was funny the first time we tried it. We hadn't thought of bringing a tape recorder and kept losing the tempo as there was no music to guide us. We resorted to banging a rudimentary beat on our laps with our fists just so we can get our harmonizing timing right.
Having become rather experienced at recording by now, most of the sessions flowed smoothly and we managed to lay the tracks including vocals on all the songs. Unfortunately, aside from some basic mixing done by Ah-Boy so that we could get copies and hear them at home for review, all the tracks were never fully mixed to satisfaction or mastered.
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