Hey Artios fans! We have been hard at work the past couple months and its about time for an update as to the progress we have been making. Where to start?
We finished up all of my lead vocal parts for the first 7 songs on the album. Most of the harmony parts have also been completed for the first 7 songs. While working on doing harmony parts for “Baron01″ we brought in our good friend Hal to help fill out our group singing section.
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Notice the snazzy Artios shirt.
Sorry there hasn’t been a post in a while. I’d come up with some great excuse but I don’t really have one. I bought an acoustic guitar over the weekend so I suppose I could use the excuse that I’ve been playing that. We’ve actually been quite busy lately. We got Pat‘s acoustic guitar track recorded for Down in Flames. We’re also half way through Erik‘s vocal harmony part for These Four Walls. Unfortunately he’s got a cold or something similar. Playing an instrument with a cold is annoying but the instrument’s not affected. Singing with a cold is a whole other story and he’s been fighting to get a good tone. We got a good chuck of it done, though. Pat also came up with a additional harmony for the bridge of These Four Walls that sounds killer.
At least the sideburns survived.
Mike got his hair cut last week. If you don’t know Mike it probably sounds like we need to get some better material to write about. If you do know Mike you’re probably struggling to comprehend what you just read. He’s had long hair for a while now and last week he got most of it chopped off and donated it to Locks of Love. They will take the hair and use it to make wigs for children suffering hair loss due to medical conditions. I’m not sure if he plans to grow it out again or not but it was quite a shock when he walked into the studio.
This post isn’t music related so sorry about that. If you’ve not heard of Minecraft, it’s a cross-platform computer game that’s incredibly addicting. It’s available for download for a small fee (20USD last time I looked). The basic idea involves using the materials available to build an unlimited world of structures and devices.
Patrick and I have been playing recently and building a nice world. If you want to join us you can log in under the multiplayer section to:
Server: artiosband.com
You won’t be able to change anything once you log in. If you want to participate, send me an e-mail and I will add you to the operators list.
Well we finished Patrick‘s lead vocal part to It’s Alright last week. We had a very productive night despite have to delay our start by an hour and half due to the concert going on in the recital hall next door. Normally the rooms are sonically separated enough that the recital hall doesn’t bleed into the live sound room. This time, though, we were up against a drum ensemble so we had to wait. Eventually we got underway, though, and captured some great sounding vocals.
Here you can see a clip of what we were up to. The “dancing” presented in this clip does not represent the views of Artios or any of its individual members. For inquires and angry letters, please send them directly to Patrick.
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We had to bust out the tape and patch the inputs up.
…the bad news is we didn’t have any time left to record anything. We started out by getting Mike’s amp up in the attic of the barn. This wasn’t easy to begin with; in case you hadn’t noticed (or don’t live in Michigan) it was very hot today. So we got Mike’s amp up and running and were about to track when we noticed an obnoxious buzz in the microphones. We switched it out with Erik’s amp and realized that had a buzz in it, too.
Erik was working on getting us up and running while the rest of us were distracted by the food and beer.
We played at Erik and Patrick‘s parents’ party today. The weather was great and the company was even better. Mike had to work in the middle of the afternoon so we played early. Sure some people might not consider 1PM to be early but for musicians getting up before the sun goes down is outside of our comfort zone. We had some great times with friends. We also got to share our music with the people that floated by on pontoon boats during the course of our show. If you were on one of those boats, I hope you had a great time out on the lake today.
Ryan running through his drums for sound check.
The day was not without its problems, though. Pat broke a string on the acoustic guitar. The our friend Joe offered up his guitar but the lack of a pickup meant we couldn’t use it. All things considered, though, the show was a success. A special thanks to the Sebastians for hosting us and to everyone that came and enjoyed our music. I had to leave at five but I hear there were some jam sessions that happened after that, too.
Well we finished all of Pat‘s piano parts for Barn 01 tonight. He had two parts we tracked. There’s a deep heavy part underneath the light poppy part you may recognize from our live shows. Being able to record multiple passes gives us so many more options for part-writing. Who knows, we may even add an organ part.
I also got a chance to play around with MIDI. This method records the keys Pat presses as individual events rather than capturing the audio produced by the keyboard (we did record that too). This will let us take his part and add or change the sound made by his keyboard during mix-time. It might save us the trouble of re-recording the part if there turns out to be something we wanted differently.
Below is what the part looks like. The red section shows the part Patrick was actively recording at the time. The grey section underneath that is capturing which keys he’s pressing (MIDI). If you want to hear it instead of just seeing it, make sure to watch for the release of this song down the line.
Here’s a video we took over the winter if I remember right. We posted it on facebook but not on any of the other channels. If you’ve already seen it, sorry. If not, take a look.
It’s a video of Ryan tracking his parts to the song It’s Alright. The audio on this video is the actual audio that will appear on the final album. We were at Monaco Bay in Kalamazoo. It’s a bar we attend from time to time after our sessions and gigs are done. Pat had a brief stint there as a keyboard player and Erik works there as a live sound engineer as well as taking up the drum set from time to time. The room sounded great. Sorry to all the audiophiles out there but I don’t remember what we used to mic this thing.
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Hi, all. Due to popular demand we’re releasing the individual MP3′s of our basement show songs. If you want all of them, grab the .zip file. Otherwise the individual tracks are available as well. We wish we had some photos or videos to show you of the experience but oh well. Next time.
Enjoy!
All tracks: Zip File
Download: Sunset Drive
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For more information about The Basement Show, check out the WIDR website or The Basement Show online.
