Well Willis, Bill, and I were doing a Sunset tour to the west coast in a rickety car running on vegetable oil. Inevitably, the car broke down several times in the desert. We landed in arizona and were replacing some fluids and this homeless native american came and talked with us. The first thing he said was "are y'all skyclimbers?" The second thing he told me was that he just got out of jail and was going to kill me. I told him he wasn't and he offered to show us around those mountains out there. He knew them very well. I never did find out what skyclimbers are, but I think his assumption was right.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Album THNGS
So today was the digital release. I just got the vinyl test presses and they sound awesome. hopefully I will get them in a couple of weeks so we can sell them on tour. We also just made some new t-shirts with a silkscreen of a hammerhead shark and jewels. Super neon and stuff. Will be selling those as well.
Here are two importerant dates
On july 1st we embark on an east coast tour with Sunset
On August 24th, the CD and vinyl will come out
booom
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Things and thingz
So today I got word that Willis started this blog. BOOM. good job
So we are in the midst of recording a new album. It will be the fourth album under the moniker Sleep Good, which I have gone under since I was fifteen. Now, Sleep Good is in fact a band. It consists of Willis McClung, Deke Dietrick, Marc Miner, Michael Bain, and me, Will Patterson. Their instruments- bass+vocal, drums, Pro-One synth, guitar, and Wurlitzer-guitar-vocals, respectively.
The album consists of 13 songs
There were originally around 17 but we needed to cut the album down to under 40 minutes so that we could fit it on an LP
The remaining songs will be released, but sneakily...The album will be released on many formats and each format will have its own bonus track. For example: The CD will include a special, the cassette will have a special, the VHS will have a special gem, the floppy disk set will have a special.
Other cool things about the album:
The album has not touched a computer. Everything was recorded direct to an API pre-amp (borrowed from Bill-same which was used to record Sound Team's Work EP)
and on to my Otari MX-5050 mkIII 8 track 1/2" reel to reel tape machine. With the exception of a space echo, everything is recorded straight to tape. While we are sacrificing some pretty crucial things like compression/eq/etc, certain cool things have surfaced which I feel like gives the album some sort of soul. Because this is all recorded on tape, there is no editing capabilities besides punching in/out and splicing the tape. Before this album, I recorded mostly on computers and would spend good deals of time editing and perfecting stuff. I can't do that on tape really. The majority of the tracks on this album are single takes. There are definitely some punch ins, but not many because a lot of the tracks I was recording by myself and would have to punch in with my foot. It was pretty awkward considering the machine is high up on a table. This led to some less than perfect punch ins which are pretty subtle but it kind of comforts me to hear the imperfections. I think that if you listen to some albums recorded on tape (i.e. the microphones), there is probably a higher likelihood that there are mistakes.
As far as progress
The album is really nearing completion.
On 12/1/09, we started recording the album and I set 2/1/10 as the completion deadline.
I have never done anything like this before, but it turns out the deadline actually motivated me.
While we did not get the album recorded by then, I am more than happy because we have almost completed all of the intended tracks plus several others which surfaced/were written during the making of this album. This justifies the boring deadline.
Today I added acoustic guitars and lead vocals to the song friends.
Yesterday Willis came over and we finished the lead vocals and harmonies for Made Without You.
A cool technique we came up which has really shaped this album is we both simultaneously sing the lead vocals on to one track, and then both sing the harmony. The sweet thing about it is that willis and i have very similar sounding voices and when they combine, they create a new person. You can't really tell if it is me or him.
Throughout the recording of the record, I have been filming us with a VHS video camera.
We are going to release the album on VHS for probably about 20 copies. All of the music will be on their complimented with a video album. Each song will have its own video.
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