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The Week in Recording - Week 7 (by Matt)


By soulexistence, 2009-02-13

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<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>Monday - Feb. 2<sup>nd</sup> through Saturday &ndash; Feb. 8<sup>th</sup></strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>On Monday Luke and I decided to get started on &ldquo;The Shallows&rdquo;. After setting up and talking about what we want to get accomplished for the day, we eventually got started at about </span><span>2 PM</span><span>. I have to do all the camera work whenever Jam isn&rsquo;t around. Fun times, man. Jam and Billy ended up getting to Luke&rsquo;s at about </span><span>3:30</span><span> to help me out and just be there to support whoever is doing their tracks. That&rsquo;s something we never used to do when we recorded and I think it&rsquo;s made a difference in everyone&rsquo;s performance so far. I know I loved the experience. By time </span><span>7 PM</span><span> had rolled around, Luke had gotten through about half the song.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>&nbsp;</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span><span>&nbsp;</span>Wednesday was here before I knew it and I found myself at &ldquo;Studio D&rdquo; once again recording &ldquo;The Shallows&rdquo; with fuckin Luke. It was a good day to say the least. It was probably our most productive day, so far, in my opinion. <span>&nbsp;</span>We got &ldquo;The Shallows&rdquo; finished in about an hour and we decided to start on &ldquo;Successfully Buried in Bison&rdquo;. We ended up finishing the song right at 7 PM. The next two days I spent editing bass tracks and getting a much needed break from &ldquo;do it again&rdquo;. Those of you who have recorded know exactly what I&rsquo;m talking about. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>&nbsp;</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Saturday was a little bit of a rushed day. Jam couldn&rsquo;t find his keys till about </span><span>2 PM</span><span> when he called me to tell me that he couldn&rsquo;t find them. I asked him if he checked his car and he said no. I&rsquo;ll give you one guess where it was. Once we got there, we decided to start &ldquo;My Only Obsession&rdquo;. Luke had to go to work at 5, so we didn&rsquo;t have much time to do tracks. We ended up getting about 2 minutes into the song. We&rsquo;ll get much more done on Monday since we won&rsquo;t be rushed. </span></p>

The Week in Recording - Weeks 5 & 6 (by Matt)


By soulexistence, 2009-02-13
The Week in Recording - Weeks 5 & 6 (by Matt)

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<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>Monday - Jan. 19<sup>th</sup> through Saturday - Jan. 31<sup>st</sup> &nbsp;</strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Luke and I got to &ldquo;Studio D&rdquo; at about </span><span>12:30 PM</span><span> on Monday. Luckily I didn&rsquo;t have too much set up to do. Luke decided to use his little practice amp rather than the one he uses when we rehearse as a band. We figured it&rsquo;d be better than 30 year old speakers. Luke changed his strings, we got the bass sound we wanted for the song, and then we got started with &ldquo;Fragrant Disregard&rdquo;. We didn&rsquo;t get the song finished till a couple days later because Luke had to work Tuesday. We ended up finishing up Fragrant on Wednesday. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>&nbsp;</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>With a few days off from recording, because Luke had to work, I was able to get the rest of the drum editing done so it would be off my mind, finally. Saturday rolls around and we decided to start doing takes of &ldquo;A Word for Pain &amp; Suffering&rdquo;. When Jam and I did the click tracks we did them to a different practice version than Luke had been use to listening to. The structure on the one that Luke was used to was actually played wrong so we decided to record it again and that was the one we used. So needless to say Luke was having trouble with the structure, so because of that, we decided to start something else till we decided what we were going to do about the structure. We ended up starting &ldquo;Another Day in Paradox&rdquo;. We got about half way through the beginning before we had to stop for the night. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>&nbsp;</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>On Monday we commenced on &ldquo;Paradox&rdquo; and got about half way through the song which is about </span><span>6:30</span><span> minutes into it. We hammered out the rest of Paradox on Tuesday.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>&nbsp;</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Wednesday we decided to start &ldquo;Exit the Excoriated ****&rdquo;. Luke was able to get half way through the song before had to stop for the night. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>&nbsp;</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Saturday was a very productive day as well as the rest. We got Excoriated **** done and we&rsquo;re planning on doing &ldquo;The Shallows on Monday. Thanks for checking in once again. We&rsquo;re working our asses off trying to get this done for all of you as quickly as possible. Please let us know what you think of Pat&rsquo;s vocals on &ldquo;Infinite Blue&rdquo;. We&rsquo;re very interested to see what the fans have to say. </span></p>

The Week in Recording - Week 4 (by Jam)


By soulexistence, 2009-02-13
The Week in Recording - Week 4 (by Jam)

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<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>Saturday - Jan. 10<sup>th</sup> through Saturday - Jan. 17<sup>th</sup> &nbsp;&ldquo;Tracking Down Matt&rdquo;</strong><br /> <br /> With drums finished and well into the editing process, it was Matt&rsquo;s turn to lay down his main rhythm tracks. He will be doing all the leads for the CD after all the rest of the music is finished. <br /> <br /> After making it into &ldquo;Solo Studios&rdquo; on Saturday the 10th, the band started setting up and soundproofing the guitar room. After everything was done, and the camera was set up, Matt was anxious to get started on his tracks. He decided to start with &ldquo;The Shallows&rdquo;. He got that one done in two takes and decided to start tracking &ldquo;Exit the Excoriated ****&rdquo;. He finished that one in similar fashion. By time he was done it was exactly time to stop for the night. We took a breather on Sunday so Matt could keep editing drums and so we all could just chill for a day before we got into the weeklong grind of recording everyday. <br /> <br /> Coming back into &ldquo;Solo Studios&rdquo; on Monday, Matt said &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to finish three songs today&rdquo; and did just that. He was able to finish &ldquo;A Word for Pain &amp; Suffering&rdquo;, &ldquo;My Only Obsession&rdquo;, and &ldquo;Flagrant Disregard&rdquo;. Yes, that&rsquo;s five songs in two days. <br /> <br /> We came back the next day and Matt finished &ldquo;Another Day in Paradox&rdquo;. The next day he came in and finished &ldquo;Helpless Evidence&rdquo;. Thursday came around and Matt realized that he had caught up with the amount of songs he had been able to completely edit on the drums. So he had to record to the raw drum tracks for the next three songs. Luckily Matt had them put together so we were able to record the songs with no worries. He got &ldquo;Successfully Buried in Bison&rdquo; done that day. Friday he finished &ldquo;Red Puddles&rdquo;.<br /> <br /> Saturday came along and Matt was already 90% done his rhythm tracks. Just one song to go, &ldquo;Through a Maggots Eye&rdquo;. Matt finished his rhythm tracks on Saturday the 17th. Luke is next and he will be starting his bass tracks on Monday at &ldquo;Studio D&rdquo;. Matt will be writing the next blog about Luke&rsquo;s week of recording. Thanks for checking out what&rsquo;s been going on with us. We will continue to keep you posted on everything.<br /> <br /> Also our website is finally going to be functional again within the next few days. We&rsquo;ve been waiting on all the info we needed and the pics we needed to actually be able to re-build the site. Now that we finally have that stuff, Jessicat, our webmistress is on the job making it happen for us. Thank you so much Jess, sorry it took so long to get it all together. Check out the site, once it&rsquo;s up, for more updates as we get them. Thanks, soul eXistence.</p>

The Week in Recording - Weeks 2 & 3 (by Jam)


By soulexistence, 2009-02-13

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<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>Saturday - Dec. 27<sup>th</sup></strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Well after a weeks break, we were more than ready to get back in the studio. Even still feeling the after affects of being sick, Billy was happy to be back behind his drums. As planned, we showed up at The &ldquo;B House&rdquo; at about 3:30 PM. We decided to take on &ldquo;The Shallows&rdquo;. Billy got through the song in minimal takes, and we were soon starting &ldquo;A Word for Pain &amp; Suffering&rdquo;. But once again, our friendly metronome was a little off for the main part of the song. So again we go to Matt for corrections and will be back on Monday to continue on with the song.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>Monday &ndash; Dec. 29<sup>th</sup></strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We started the day off tracking &ldquo;A Word for Pain &amp; Suffering&rdquo;, and with no trouble at all, Billy was finished with the song. Since we got the song done so quickly, we decided to start on &ldquo;Red Puddles&rdquo;. As we started getting rolling on this one, we once again ran into a tempo that wasn&rsquo;t entirely perfect. Since we didn&rsquo;t have very much time left, and the stuff we needed to correct the problem was at another location, we decided to continue on the next day.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>Tuesday &ndash; Dec. 30<sup>th - &ldquo;</sup>Successfully Buried in Bison&rdquo;.</strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Well knowing our luck with the metronome, we weren&rsquo;t surprised to have another click track not exactly how we wanted it. Matt found out he had to redo the whole click track for &ldquo;Successfully Buried in Bison&rdquo; after we left the studio for the night. Something Matt&rsquo;s starting to get used to, unfortunately. We found out the song was too slow, but that&rsquo;s alright. After our attempt at &ldquo;Red Puddles&rdquo; yesterday, we were hoping to prove that the day wasn&rsquo;t going to be a waste. Billy was able to get about a quarter of the way through &ldquo;Red Puddles&rdquo; before we had more metronome issues with the same part. So once again Matt had to make the part a little slower to make sure it was the right tempo for the part.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>Wednesday Dec. 31<sup>st</sup> &amp; Thursday Jan. 1<sup>st</sup> &ndash; Happy New Year! (Sorry it&rsquo;s so late)</strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&ldquo;Red Puddles&rdquo; was quite the little problem for us. Billy had no trouble playing the parts. It was just that the tempos weren&rsquo;t how we thought they were when we did the click tracks and it was getting quite frustrating. So after a few days of Matt doing the click track over and over again to make sure it was perfect, we were finally set to finish the song. Since we were kind of burnt out on that song because of the problems we had, we decided to start &ldquo;Helpless Evidence&rdquo; on the 1<sup>st</sup>. Billy got about 95% of the song done that day. We ran out of time so we had to finish the song the next day. We felt it was a pretty good day of drum tracks. We left really looking forward to the next day of tracking.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>Friday - Jan. 2<sup>nd</sup></strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><sup>&nbsp;</sup></strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">With a full day in front of us, we were hoping to finish &ldquo;Helpless Evidence&rdquo; &amp; &ldquo;Red Puddles&rdquo;. It was nice to start to see our hard work starting to pay off by hearing music we&rsquo;ve been creating and rehearsing three times a week, every week, for the past year, and some for the past 4 years. Once we got started, Billy got each part we needed for both songs done with almost ease. It was quite impressive considering the amount of difficulty each part consisted of. There was a lot of double bass during today&rsquo;s adventure in the studio, trust me. Billy had finished 8 songs by this time and his snare head was about shot. It was a one-ply head, so we kind of knew it wasn&rsquo;t going to last. We were surprised it got as far as it did. So we decided to go get some food and pick up a snare head. We got back to the studio at about 7 PM. Billy quickly got his snare head on and begun tuning it. We ran into a problem getting the snare to sound close to the snare sound on the rest of the tracks, so it took us a little while to accomplish a comparable snare sound. After a half hour dicking with the snare we finally were able to start Bison. We were only able to do a few takes before we had to stop for the night.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>Saturday - Jan. 3<sup>rd</sup> through Wed. - Jan. 7<sup>th</sup> </strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We came in Saturday and knocked out bison in minimal takes. With that out of the way, we had one song left. &ldquo;Through a Maggots Eye&rdquo;. Once again the metronome issues arose. The beginning and part of the middle of the song was too slow. So instead of doing those parts, we decided to try and get whatever else we could get done. Billy ended up getting about a quarter of the way through the song. The next few days we found out how touchy metronome tempos are. We were able to fix all the problems we had and Billy was finally able to finish his drum tracks on the 7<sup>th</sup>. Billy did his tracks with all his soul and we couldn&rsquo;t be happier with the turn out. Now it&rsquo;s Matt&rsquo;s turn.</p>

The Week in Recording - Week 1 (by Jam)


By soulexistence, 2009-02-13
The Week in Recording - Week 1 (by Jam)

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<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>Monday Dec. 15 &ndash; &ldquo;In the A.M.&rdquo;</strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Well it&rsquo;s been a long wait. Life has been passing us by and we&rsquo;ve been caught in a current, but we could never give up even through loss and uncertainty. Soul eXistence has always stood for an expression of life within the escape and creation of music. Life is progressive waves through time and has shown such in the music we&rsquo;ve all created these past sixteen months. Unknowingly, and at times, very frustrating amounts of passion and loss have seriously affected this band. Our combined passion is like an unstoppable force meeting an unmovable object.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This album is dedicated to everyone who has stuck around with love, patience, and support through these crazy times. We also would like to thank the past members, mainly Jeremy Barragan for sharing our time together. Thank you everyone who has given us an ear, we give our hearts to you. The album is still untitled, but it&rsquo;s a full L.P. set with thirteen tracks, all of which have been previously posted on our site and on the previous blog. In the following months after the release of the full length L.P. we will be releasing a few E.P.&rsquo;s with some extra material not released on the L.P. Some of the songs we&rsquo;ve done on the past two demos we will be redone with our new lineup, and with better production and performance. They will be part of the E.P.&rsquo;s, but the exact songs still aren&rsquo;t decided. Look for about 3 to 4 upcoming E.P.&rsquo;s after the release of the album.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Pre-production has come to its tail end, by mid-afternoon Monday we will be at &ldquo;The B House&rdquo; in the process of setting up drums, tuning heads, setting up mics, and taking footage for our DVD that will be released with our L.P.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We will be posting weekly updates of the recording progress written by Jam. We&rsquo;d like to hear feedback on what people are looking forward to regarding us, our upcoming release, or anything in general. Please keep up the support and we&rsquo;ll continue to give you our complete soul existence&hellip;&hellip;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span>&nbsp;</span>&ldquo;Just before we hit the record button to light speed&rdquo; - </strong><strong>Monday Dec. 15 2008</strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Our first day at &ldquo;The B House&rdquo; was rather efficient. We moved all the drums inside right before it started to rain. Once Billy arrived, we a room that seemed quite suitable for our needs. Billy&rsquo;s rug was laid out, the drums got set up, and Billy began getting everything where he wanted it, then began to tune as Matt and I went back to my house to get his stereo so we could have something to hear the tracks through. We got back and Billy played us his drums now that they&rsquo;re tuned. They sounded huge! So Matt got the mics set up and positioned where he wanted them. Despite our efforts and our eager attempt to get started, we weren&rsquo;t able to start recording today. So we made due with the time we had and started testing 4 different mics for the right sound of the snare. Matt has amazing ideas for the type of financial setting we&rsquo;re in as far as equipment goes. We have done well so far with Matt&rsquo;s Frankenstein computer and pro-tools guided by the ears and minds of the band.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Months of practice along with hours of setting and correcting metronomes and scratch tracks we are finally ready to get started tomorrow. If all goes as planned, Billy should be laying down &ldquo;Flagrant Disregard&rdquo;. Just being in the studio at this point in our lives, makes us very determined and focused on what needs to be done.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>&ldquo;A Day of Flagrance&rdquo; - Dec. 16 (Our sixth year of existence)</strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">After a nights sleep, I think we&rsquo;re all ready to go strait into the studio at 6PM. Matt, Billy and I walked into &ldquo;The B House&rdquo; at around 6:30 PM with all remaining equipment needed to commence recording. We took a few moments to listen to the scratch track and the practice recording we did a few months earlier. We were finally set to start. Though we had less than an hour to record, it seemed as though we could get the song done before we had to stop for the night. Of course, we hit a temporary roadblock as we reached the middle of the song. The metronome count for that section was faster than it needed to be. That type of stuff almost always happens when we actually start doing takes. So with little time left to record we decide to call it quits for the night so Matt could redo the sections that needed to be redone before we started the next day.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>&ldquo;Exit the Day&rdquo; - Dec. 17</strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Matt and Billy decided instead of finishing &ldquo;Flagrant&rdquo;, they wanted to start &ldquo;Exit the Excoriated ****&rdquo;. This is one of the seven songs we wrote with Billy after the departure of our former singer Mark Burnett. This song is kind of a sarcastic tribute to him leaving the band the way he did. This is to be the first song on the album with it&rsquo;s sister song &ldquo;Through a Maggots Eye&rdquo; second.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This was definitely Billy&rsquo;s time to shine. He did an amazing job laying the drums down in a timely manner and very efficiently. It was really fun and we got some great footage of Billy out of it. During playback everything matched up to the metronome and altogether sounded really sweet. So with one song finished, and another day in that bag, we&rsquo;ll be returning tomorrow after Billy gets off work to finish &ldquo;Flagrant&rdquo;.</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>&ldquo;Day 4 &ndash; The Continuation of &ldquo;Flagrant&rdquo; - Dec. 18</strong></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Today was pretty fulfilling in the means of recording. To start off the day we finished &ldquo;Flagrant Disregard&rdquo; with great and proper timing. Since that was out of the way, we were able to begin &ldquo;My Only obsession&rdquo;. We ended up making it to the halfway point of the song with what time we had left in the day.</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">After reviewing what we had done so far, we all felt like we were very productive with the time we had to work with, which wasn&rsquo;t very much. We also have been able to get some really good footage of everything that has been done so far for the DVD.</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>&ldquo;Obsessed&rdquo; &ndash; Dec. 19</strong></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Today was pretty much a finishing up day for &ldquo;My Only Obsession&rdquo;. Billy was blazing through takes with precision and finesse. The ending did prove to be a little annoying when we realized that that guitar with the click isn&rsquo;t good enough for everything. During the end Matt and I play a double lead while Billy and Luke keep the rhythm strong. So with out the bass track, it&rsquo;s kind of hard for Billy to decipher exactly where he was at because it changes during the lead and those changes aren&rsquo;t quite there without the bass line. With a break needed, we decided to listen to the practice version to make sure we knew exactly what patterns Billy played at the end of the song. We also wanted to see if he wanted to make anything different. Matt decided he should record a scratch version of his lead at the end so Billy knew where he was going since we couldn&rsquo;t get the bass in there. It seemed to be the only other option. In no time our little dilemma was dealt with and we finished the song.</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">We&rsquo;re pretty eager for day six, the recording of &ldquo;Another Day in Paradox&rdquo;. Tomorrow will be the last day we can record before Christmas. We all have the family thing to do, for the holidays.</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>&ldquo;Just Another Day in Paradox Before the Break&rdquo; - Dec. 20</strong></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Day six of drum recording was the longest, but the most fun of all so far. We started at 12:30 PM, not stopping till 9:30PM. With an enthusiastic will to return, out first week&rsquo;s work was the greatest recording experience we&rsquo;ve had in a long time.</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Billy and the rest of us insisted on mapping out the entire structure for each song so he knew exactly what he was doing for each part. From his fills, to his thunderous double-bass beats, and his change-ups, this song was turning out beautifully. Of course once we get to the end we find out that it&rsquo;s a little too slow. So Matt and Billy immediately started listening to the practice version, and Matt quickly redid the metronome count, and then recorded the scratch guitar track. We got a perfect live feeling, and with the extended album version of this song, it turned out amazing. It was the perfect way to end the week of recording.</p>