dig a little deeper.

welllll well well.

it’s been a few weeks since i’ve blogged, but what else is new.

they always say that there’s no rest for the wicked… and how true it is.  things have been busy busy lately but here’s a look at what’s been going on with me over the last little while.

i’m continuously working on the songs that i began tracking with jake about a month ago.  it’s actually going to be the debut album for his new project called ‘the seasonal’, i can’t remember if i said that already of not and i’m too lazy to check.  he’s getting his band together and getting amped up for shows and tours and all those exciting new band things.  anyways, the songs are turning out really great.  jake was up again on sunday to lay down the last of the lead vocals that we had to finish up.

in other news, i’ve had a few other projects on the go over the last few weeks.  my good friend mike fluit came in to record a song as part of a project for a class that he’s taking at western university.  mike and i have been playing together in our church band for almost two years now and i’ve always loved jamming with him; he’s an incedibly talented guy and genuinely one of the best dudes i know.  i was stoked to have him finally come in to the studio and record something.  as expected, mike layed down the parts in no time and we made a short day of it.  the song turned out awesome; great sound, great message.

shortly after that i had another friend of mine, evan fletcher, in.  evan also plays in the band at church with me and was eager to get in the studio and lay down some songs ideas.  we had a great day in the studio messing around and getting some song structures recorded.  his tunes are kind of a mixture of acoustic and electronica, with a little pop sprinkled on top.  i’m going to bury my head in my computer for a few nights and do some programming to fit in with the acoustic and vocal bed tracks that we layed down, but the final product should turn out pretty cool.

so all of that, coupled with the 60+ hours that i work at the studio not on my own projects, has made me a busy man lately.  in and amongst all of that i was able to have a few days off of work and get home to visit my family for a few days.  i spent a lot of time with my dad doing some landscaping in his backyard.  i can’t imagine not living close to my family.  so so important.

anyways, that’s it for now.  i’m gonna post a few pictures of mike and evan’s sessions, and a few of simon (my coworker) and i messing around at work.

back to work!

mikey givin’ the eye.

ladies and gents, evan fletch’n.

evan feat. the westar

look! a racoon!

wingspan.

burger solo.

update!

happy saturday!
t.g.i.s. right?

it’s been about two weeks since tracking with jake stopped and i’ve been having a tonne of fun working on the songs.  i’ve been concentrating mostly on the drums for the past week or so and they are sounding awesome.  i’ve developed a new technique for layering in additional samples that is kind of goofy but really speedy, and the added samples are just the little extra that the drums needed to get them sounding punchy.  i’ve also been trying out some new compression techniques for the drums which, in some songs, has me running up to five separate compression busses (!!!) but it’s really sounding great.
(sorry for all that nerdspeak but i’ve been having a lot of fun with it)

on thursday of this week i was feeling a little stir crazy in my office during lab time, so i started messing around with the old organ in studio two.  it’s a beautiful old hammond m3 that we run straight into a leslie model 147.  it’s a filthy combination and once all the tubes are warmed up it just sings.  so, feeling inspired, i decided to lay some organ down on a few of jake’s songs, as well as some other mixes i was doing.  i had an amazing time working out parts and ended up tracking until about 4:30 a.m.  it was a long night, but totally worth it!

the other thing that’s kept me busy while i sit in this little office here is scoring; working out some string parts for jake’s tunes.  i’ve been messing around with pro tools 8’s new MIDI editor and MIDI to score function, which seems to be awesome (it hasn’t made any mistakes yet!).  it’s allowed a (fairly) untrained musician like me to have nice sheet music for when instrumentalists come in (which is a lot better than me just humming the line or banging it out on the piano!)
anyways, hopefully two of my friends will come in to lay down some violin and cello parts on the record.  dang, i love strings!

well i’ll thinks that’s all.
i’m headed home to my parent’s tomorrow for a few days.  i’m hoping to get some good scoring done, and also head to my old church to write some more piano parts.  oh goodness, i should do some bass while i’m away too…. so much to do, so little time!

be blessed!

organic.

my girl leslie.

tambo jambo!

scores of scores.

print it!

android pays a visit.

thursday!

today is thursday.

more days, more recordings.

(mo money, mo problems)

the week is progressing fast and the songs are turning out really well.

most of today and yesterday have been spent on electric guitars.  my friend paul maxwell came in to lay down his lead parts on the songs and they are turning out amazing.  we’ve got more heads and cabs than we know what to do with, which, for a gearhead like me, is perfect.  paul layed down the filthiest solo on one of the tracks, ‘wait for you’, and i think my jaw is still on floor.

we took a break from tracking last night to have some fun and jam out some tunes.  jake, paul and i, along with our friend alex, are playing a show this friday at the casbah lounge in hamilton, so we were preparing for that.  we’ll be playing a bunch of jake’s songs from his last e.p. as well as some brand new stuff that’s going to be on the album that we’re recording right now.

reaching back a bit, on tuesday night jake and i drove to hamilton to do a radio interview for c101.5 fm which i mentioned in my last post.  we had a great time hanging out with ‘gunner’, the host, and talking about recording and the show on friday.  gunner played two songs from jake’s ‘hello penel’ e.p. in between parts of the interview.  it’s an awesome experience to hear songs you’ve recorded being played on the radio.  maybe it’s because you’re listening less critically, or maybe it’s just radio compression, but things always sound great on the radio.

it’s time to head back into the studio, but i’m going to post a few pictures from the studio as well as a few from the radio interview.

waiting.

gunner!

c101.5fm

fake.

the bass-ics.

vox.

big p.

amps! amps! amps!

4a.m.

new!

what’s up everybody?

today i am tired.  it’s tuesday and i’m almost halfway through a week-long recording session with my friend Jake Gerard.  we’re tracking songs for his new record (or project, maybe i should call it).  we’ve spent the last three days holed up in the studio tracking beds for seven brand new songs and three old ones.

on saturday and sunday my good friend seth partridge came in to lay down drum tracks on the songs.  seth and i have been friends for years, but more recently in a professional sense as he’s now a session player, and i always need a good drummer.

the drum tracking went fantastic, considering the time contraints.  we got seth’s kit sounding awesome and he layed down some heavy parts.  he came in after only hearing the songs for about a week beforehand, but he was prepared and his parts sounds amazing.  i’m going to post a picture of one of his charts because it is ridiculous.

after some long days on the weekend we slept in a bit yesterday before heading back into the studio to start on guitars.  after sleeping much of the weekend, jake finally got to work on some acoustic.  (even as i write this, jake is still sleeping in)  true to his moniker (‘one-take jake’), jake destroyed acoustic in a matter of hours.

since we had hit our stride with acoustic we decided to move on to tracking jake’s electric parts as well.  it was a late start (around 11:30p.m.) but after a quick outing to pick up a friend’s amp (see pictures) and getting locked out of the studio in the process (thanks gare!) we really got rolling.  the amp i just mentioned is my friend kevin’s ac30.  we worked into a nice warm overdrive tone that fit well into a lot of the songs.  jake’s gretsch was singing and i couldn’t record the good takes fast enough.

we ended up messing around with electric guitars and tweaking tone until late into the night.  we ended up leaving the studio at around 6:00a.m. and decided to get some sleep.  on the way home we met a biker (glen) whose tire had warped and gave him a ride; an interesting end to the day for sure.

today we sleep in, laaateee.  tonight, jake and i are heading to hamilton for a radio interview.  the station is slipping my mind right now, but i’ll probably post again quick once i know.

tomorrow jake’s friend paul is coming in to lay down lead guitar parts.  there’s a dual rectifier in the gear room at the studio that i haven’t been able to really fire up yet.  it’s been staring me in the face every time i go in there.  tomorrow it’s going to scream.

i’m going to post some pictures that i’ve been taking over the past few days, and i’m sure there will be a few more posts to come this week.

also!  whenever there are little breaks in tracking i’ve been tweeting, so you can follow progress a little more closely from there.  there should be updates on the sidebar to the right, but you can also find me at twitter.com/stevelensink

alright. i should go wake jake up.

charts of a madman.

go jays.

seth brings the laughs

working out parts.

snooze.

one take.

ms.

the king.

finally.

happy easter all! this will be a quick post, and more personal than professional.

i was at my parent’s house tonight playing an old classical guitar, that my brother found, and my father seemed to genuinely enjoy my playing.  it’s probably hard to understand how big of a deal that is to me, but it really is. finally!

anyways, big things are on the horizon; more posts about recording and things of that nature are on their way.

the best is yet to come!

post!

so it’s been a considerable amount of time since i’ve posted, which simon keeps harassing me about.

…for that, i apologize.

there’s been a lull in sessions lately and so i haven’t had much to post about.  in the meantime i’ve been working on some audio post for a short video clip to fill my time.  it’s been an awesome experience since i haven’t done anything like that in a long time.  i’ve learned i have a knack for foley sync but my voice definitely was not meant for voiceovers (at least, not without some processing…)

i’ve been doing a lot of pre-production with jake for the full-length that we’re tracking in the beginning of may.  that’s been a tonne of fun.  this will definitely be the most prepared that i’ve ever been for a session.  we’ve over-thought and over-talked everything… which probably means we’re forgetting something crucial!  I can’t wait to get started though, and get a great sounding album.

also!  the megan hamilton album that i mentioned in my last post is being released next week tuesday, april 7th.  her and her band are doing a cd release on thursday, the 9th, at the rivoli in toronto.  so! if you’re in the toronto area, and want to see a fantastic show, you should check it out.  the facebook event can be found here.

last update:  i’m on twitter now, so if you’re into that kind of thing, you should follow me, and experience another venue for my lack of updates.  i’ll try and figure out if i can get those updates on here as well…

hope all is well with you!

see your midnight breath in the shipyard.

so a few posts ago i mentioned an album that i had the privilege of assisting on back in august that was going to be released soon.  i thought i would post a little more about that now.

so the album is ’see your midnight breath in the shipyard’ by megan hamilton.  megan is a singer/songwriter from toronto who has put together an absolutely unbelievable collection of fantastic songs for this record.  it’s slated to be released on april 7th, 2009.  i also wanted to post a little video that megan made to talk about the album a little bit.  she also covers some of the genius that went into mixing this album.  so take a look, listen, and enjoy.

completion.

so it was a busy weekend.  or rather a busy sunday.

jake came up to finish mixing the songs that we had been working for forever (literally, it’s been forever.)

we ended up laying down a few new guitar parts and things like that which worked out really well.  thankfully though, we finally finished everything up (at around 6:45 a.m. on monday) and jake left with a master.  so, if all goes according to plan he should be releasing the songs as a little e.p. in the next while.

we’ve been talking a lot about the full-length that we’re planning to track in may, which i’m really amped about.  the songs are shaping up really nicely, and i think this time we’ll go in a lot more prepared, which will be nice on the engineering side of this.

anyways, i was hoping to upload a few of the tunes on here, but i’m new to this whole blogging things, and i’m generally pretty bad at the internet as a whole, so you may have to wait.

or!

keep an eye on jake’s myspace (conveniently located in the sidebar to your right) as i’m sure he will be posting new tunes soon.

i think that’s all for now.  i have the next week off, so i’m going to use that time to see my family, and not think about the studio.

goodnight, cruel world.

new toy.

so i got a new toy the other day (that’s her on the right.)  it has significantly decreased my editing time, but also significantly increased my amount of hand sweat (there’s some kind of inverse relationship there…)

anyways, i’m finishing up the mixes for josh and corey.  i should have something to post by this weekend.

this is the beginning.

so i’ve started this blog in hopes of keeping tabs on projects that i’m working on.  i’m 100% sure that this will fail miserably and i’ll post about three times a year without any substantial content at all.

anyways, lately things have been busy:

forevermore was in the studio at the beginning of january to track for their new e.p.  we spent an entire weekend together (they slept on my floor), got a tonne of tracking done, and were entirely sick of each other by the end (or at least, they were sick of me … the way it should be).  but for real, i love these guys and we had an amazing time together.  they’re now working on piano and some final vocals at jon’s (drums) studio.  i can’t wait to hear the finished product!

about two weeks ago my good friends josh and corey came up to lay some tracks down for their new project.  i had an absolute blast recording these guys, it was definitely a hilarious day.  after a tragedy with the old krakauer grand at the studio we ended up tracking a lot with a keyboard, which was a bummer because i love that piano.  i’m working through the tunes right now doing rough mixes and getting everything together and it’s sounding amazing.  the songs are packed with so much emotion i can hardly mix them.

this past weekend corey was going to come up again with our other friend nathan to lay down some ‘roomates’ tracks but he was struck down by illness after a long week of acting, so unfortunately that session fell through.  it did give me some time to see my family though, which was nice, and seems to be more and more rare lately.  hopefully we’ll find time again soon to get into the studio and lay some good things down.

in other news, an album that i assisted on back in august just came back from the mastering house and it is sounding amazing!  i’m so happy with the way it turned out.  it’ll be releasing soon and i probably shouldn’t say much more than that, but when it gets closer to the date i will post again.

i’ll try and spice up these posts with pictures, so as to not become boring.  so the first few (b&w) are from sessions with forevermore, the next few are of josh and corey (the first being the beautiful krakauer), and the last few are from some 2-inch transfers i was doing last week.