Brent, Dustin, and I managed to get a lot done in the five short days he was here. Along with remixing some songs that he had tracked elsewhere, we recorded five new tunes.

Here’s a semi-final version of Growin’ Old by The Awful Truth.

Players

• Brent Colbert: Acoustic Guitar and Vocals (it’s his song, he wrote it.)
• Ross Brown: Drums, Bass, Electric Piano
• Brent Colbert, Dustin Gamble, Alexandria Fortenbery, Ross Brown: Background vocals

Mics

• Acoustic Guitar: Mid-side stereo with AKG C414—Side (thanks to Ryan and The Punch at Premier Studios) and MXL 991—Mid.
• Vocals: MXL 992 through Pro VLA
• Bass: DI through Pro VLA

Drums

• Snare: SM57
• Kick: EV RE20
• Overheads: AKG C 460B (with the CK-1 capsule), or maybe they are the 452 EB, I’ll have to check.
• Low Tom: Sennheiser 421—this track wasn’t even used. I never played it.
• High Tom: Some Nady mic that comes with their cheapest drum mic kit.

Misc

The Pro VLA was used mainly for tonal purposes. Yes, the MXLs are cheap mics, but they have a certain sound that was good for these recordings. I was very pleased with the 992 on Brent’s voice—very concentrated. We tried the C414 but is was too dark, or, if you’d rather, “neutral” for Brent.

The song was tracked in Ableton Live and mixed in Logic Pro. It was all overdubs with pretty much one take on everything.

I’ll probably post more songs from this session. It turned out sounding pretty darn good, I think. I’ll be working a bit more on editing before the whole thing is finished.

“Rent”

This will probably get remixed, but here’s what I’ve go so far. Let me know what you think.
The idea, mostly: electronic instruments on the left, real instruments on the right. It sort of happened.