i found this file in my homedirectory on one of the servers at UK. the timestamp on the file claims it was last modified on Sun Apr 20 23:57:58 1997.
normally, i would presume this was for a class, but i can't recall what class i had in spring '97 that would've required answering such a question... and, now that i think about it, i filled out an application just before spring break in '97 for an internship with Industrial Light and Magic (which i didn't get, much to my dismay). this is probably a leftover from that, but i have no idea why it would've found its way into html on the ecc machines... it has that bragging-about-yourself tone to it...
Q: what is your greatest accomplishment?
A: The recording of a full album, Leave Bronx, on a shoestring budget and borrowed equipment.
In the summer of 1996, after nearly a year and a half of writing and playing music together, As of Yet, who consisted of me and three friends, had amassed a catalog of somewhere-in-the-vicinity-of 20 songs. We of course wished to have them recorded, if for nothing else, just to keep from losing them. Once already had we committed our music to tape in a fashion more elaborate than just setting up a boom box to make a fuzzy, noisy transcript of a practice session; in the fall of '95 we borrowed a cassette four-track recorder, rented four microphones, and made a rough-edged but accurate demo recording which served to get us gigs in local clubs and preserve those seven songs in a muddy, low-fi way.
In '96, however, when we decided it was time to record again, we didn't wish to repeat the low-fi mess of the previous recording session; we in fact wanted a real album, something we could play on the radio... but we didn't have the kind of money necessary to make such a recording at $40 and hour in a big-time studio. After much talk we agreed that the do-it-yourself route was our only option.
I've worked with four-track recording since high school, and knew exactly what I wanted to do with this new project. It was almost an unspoken assumption that the recording was my baby, and I knew what I wanted to do at every step. "Why should we settle for a recording quality less than what we wanted when we were going to take the time, blood, sweat, and tears to do it ourselves?" I thought. I purposefully set my personal goal too high --- aiming for digital CD audio quality from purely analog equipment (and not even the fancy, expensive, professional analog stuff, either).
Getting it all together proved a logistic problem; I was working 40 hours a week soldering electronics, and the other band members had dispersed to Louisville, Covington, and Charlotte. We recorded the fundamental instrument tracks, the drums, on a weekend when we could all be together. At this point we had devoted the good microphones to the drums, so the drum tracks were the keepers; then we added the other instrument and vocal tracks, one by one. This part was where a lot of the fun came in; deciding how to allot the recoding slots so as to squeeze seven different instruments, one to a track, onto a four-track machine. Finally, once all the recordings were made, they all had to be mixed together into a coherent, cohesive unit. All told, over those five weeks I molded together recordings of thirteen songs.
Early on in the recording process we could tell it was working well; the recordings were clear and bright, and blended very well. Some borrowed equipment added all the right touches --- a little echo here, a tone change there. I was pouring my heart and soul into the project, and the effort shows. The final mixes, which sound run-of-the-mill to an ear jaded by today's digital audio, boast incredible sound quality for the methods and equipment on which they were made, especially when you consider that we recorded thirteen songs for less than $300 --- about a tenth what that would've cost in a professional studio.
Finally, after six months of trouble with artwork and index cards and tape manufacturers, we finally have in our hands printed and shrink-wrapped cassettes bearing our names and faces. It's an impressive feeling, a real sense of accomplishment. Even better, when people who have heard the tape compliment us for the sound, and ask "Where did you record that?" I reply, "We did it ourselves," and I can't keep back a great big grin....
heh. i think by now this has been superceded by a couple of things (such as CbS), but it's interesting reading... or at least just narcissistic.
Sun Jan 30 23:46:16 EST 2000