LAST BLOG R.I.P. SCORE

Turns out the new technique John wanted to try with the new drumhead didn’t seem to work in his favor. I started playing the drum set to get a sound out of the bass drum while he sat n the studio and fiddled with the EQ, he occasionally came into the live room to move the mic around. He had asked me to play a straight boom, clap, boom, clap kind of beat. Simple enough, first beat I had learned.

            It was cool to see how long I could actually hold a straight beat without doing anything else that I had learned. My instructor has taught me how to spice things up, but also to not spice them up when you weren’t supposed to. This was on of those times that I wasn’t supposed to. I played a straight beat for around ten minutes until John told me he was ready to EQ a session.

            He said just play whatever I felt like. So, I just went kind of crazy on the drum kit and started playing forever. This was cool to see him utilize me as a drummer so he could fix things up for when actual session that mattered came up and he was ready for this kind of thing.

            I will miss working here I think. I talked to John and he said that I could come back on scheduled visits to help him out with things. I will take him up on that after this band’s tour is over. Which I can’t wait for. 

last week blog 2

Wednesday was a better day for me I would like to think. I waited in the studio for a little while by myself because John Keegan was making breakfast upstairs so I just hung out for a little bit. Once he came down we started the day. It started with talking about all sorts of genres of music, which was hilarious to see his views on some music. He said some jokes about Journey, which I enjoyed. 

            We started off the day by setting up the new drum kit he had received and had me tune. On one of my days off he asked me if I could make a run for him down to Guitar Center because he needed a new drumhead. That was fine with me because I drive right by it on my way to band practice. We tuned everything up and set everything up and started the microphoning process.

            I had never done this to a drum set. I had always entered the studio, hit the drums, and left with some money. That was, and is, my job. I took this internship to learn things outside of that “I just hit stuff” process. I had done a pretty good job. I didn’t realize how big of a deal the placement of the stands made. The drums were easy enough to do, but I had to realize that I still had not even put the cymbals on the drum set and the mic stands were in the way, so I started over. But I got it done! By this time it was time for me to leave and go deliver pizza.

last week blog 1

The start of this week was probably not how I wanted to start this week with the band. When I first joined this band I was all excited about it and I started talking to James, my drum teacher, about it. He started laughing as he recollected his days as a band guy. He told me he was sick of waiting around at shows and all the band drama.

            I just don’t deal with the band drama, whenever somebody starts having a hissy-fit I just leave the room because I simply don’t want to deal with it. This had resulted in me eating lots of pizza or Mac n Cheese. That takes care of the band drama for the most part, until it involves me.

            We had a show at the Middle East in Boston, which is a cool venue I suppose. The booker told us to be there at 4 pm. Okay, awesome, I got it. SOUNDS GREAT RICHARD. Recently we have been booking with Richard who just doesn’t know anything about anything and I am pretty sure he is the most unorganized person I have ever met.

            Long story short, we were going on last of seven bands. So like around 6 or 7 maybe? 11 pm rolls around and we are finally getting onstage. I did not get home until about 1230 in the morning. Thankfully, my SCORE supervisor saw this as comical because ehe has been there before and he suggested that I should just take a chill day the next day, because I rarely have those. This was a relief. 

week 5, post 3

Post-production is always interesting with this band. I had a dentist appointment today and Luke kept calling me, which never happens. I obviously couldn’t answer it because I was having my gums attacked by sharp things.

          I called him back as I was on my way to practice, and he tells me that Aaron, our old bass player, showed up and thinks he is playing the show that is on Monday. This was incredibly awkward because our fill-in bassist was also there. I told him I would deal with it when I got there, because of course I am the only one with guts there. I arrived and talked to Luke and told him how it was not professional for me to tell Aaron that he wasn’t playing with us anymore, and especially not on Monday seeing as how we hadn’t practiced with him for a while. I told Luke what to say and to just be as nice as possible.

          Of course Aaron freaked out and started making excuses like he always did. What it boiled down to was this. Luke told him that he had to come to all three practices before the Monday show. He did not show up the first practice, which simply means that he isn’t playing for us. Simply as that, then excuses broke out and I was not having it so I just left the room and made some food upstairs in his kitchen like I always do when unnecessary arguments break out. This concluded the week. We are also shooting a music video on Sunday, which will be funky as well as a very important show on Monday. 

week 5, blog 2

I didn't go to studio on Wednesday, well I did actually. I woke up due to a scheduled alarm and went into shower-eat-studio mode. Once I walked into the studio I was expecting to find John getting annoyed with his computer like I usually find him. This day though, I did not find anybody there, so I decided to wait around to see if he would come down from upstairs or something.

          I decided to use his computer to see if he had any cool projects open. I woke up the computer from sleep mode to find a Craig’s List page open to a drum set located in CT. At this moment it clicked because the previous day he had told me that he was headed there to pick up a drum set. This was rather silly because I was sitting there doing nothing for an hour. I did not go with him because he would not be back before 3 pm which is when I would've had to go work.

          On Thursday though, John discovered that I had a talent for tuning drums. He had this very bizarre drum that he could never get to sound good. I asked if I could give it a go and I had it studio worthy in about 5 minutes. He was very excited because it was a unique drum. He followed this with having me tune the drum set that he had picked up in CT. This was cool for me to be in my own setting: tuning drums and holding drumsticks. He then assigned me an errand, which I still have to do because the first time I went to do it I messed up. He wanted to try a different microphone technique so I had to buy him a drumhead. The one I bought was a 22-inch, not a 20-inch, like the one he needed. Hopefully they will accept that as a return. 

week 5 blog 1

Monday at the studio was sort of a crunch day for us three. It was John, his wife, and myself. There was a company that needed old tapes from John. They were either ¾ of an inch tapes, or they were BetaSP tapes. I was working on his giant computer to organize things in Microsoft Excel, which is most likely the worst program on the face of the earth. It is just awful. It was easier to make tables in Microsoft Word, so I did that instead. It was quite a process.

          First we had to find all of the tapes that were marked already in the preexisting graph. They were organized something like “TV00704” with varying numbers. It was a weird process because each tape had two TV episodes on it. Sometimes the tape would have only one episode on the graph, which would be I would have to pick that out of a “word bank” and put it into a different graph and enter in the other episode on it. It was mostly a lot of that. This took up the entire day. After we had a completely full box of tapes, we would put the corresponding graph into the box and package it up. It was funny to see his wife work faster than me because I was in the studio quite often, but she had done this before apparently. She is basically a superstar.

          After 2 pm came around I finished up what I was doing and headed to Middleton for band practice. This was sort of annoying to me because once I got there it was a day of training our fill-in bassist. He is cool and everything, but I definitely didn’t need to be there. It was good to be there I suppose, band chemistry is always a thumbs up. 

Week 4, blog 3

Wednesday, it had arrived, the day we were leaving to go home. Paul told us to leave around late afternoon to maximize traffic avoidance. We had some small things to finish up on the songs and tell Paul where we wanted some effects in the songs. We also added some piano and strings. I think most of us were pleased to be leaving, because we were getting rather sick of each other, and by that, everybody was sick of Jake and Luke arguing about everything. I am the newest member of the band and I learned some cools things about each member, and some things that I could have gone on not knowing. The most appropriate example would be that Steve really likes this girl and he is trying to win her heart. I would have never suspected this because Steve struck me as a ladies man. I also learned that Luke doesn’t shower that often. This didn’t bother me that much because he didn’t smell. We actually talked about it and I asked, “Dude, why don’t you shower at all?” He responded with, “I don’t really smell, ever and my skin doesn’t produce a lot of oil. My doctor told me to shower as least as possible or else my skin will become very dry and irritable.” I was okay with that; it didn’t bother me at all for two reasons. He didn’t smell, and his hair didn’t ever become greasy which told me that he was telling the truth about his oil thing.

To sum up the ride home, there was a lot of fighting about gas money and money for tolls. Some of the tolls were $13! Luke was the only one with cash on him so he was very upset that he had to spend so much money, turns out that his mom was going to reimburse him for gas and tolls. This fighting could have been avoided.

            All in all, I think Steve and I became better friends and I found out that we were pretty similar. This trip resulted in a decision that the band would be going on a small tour May-July. Not sleeping in a van or anything, but lots of day trips and lots of driving. I am thoroughly excited. 

Week 4, Blog 2

            We had to wait to get Luke and Jake to find out what was going to be discovered. We decided to go as a group, because if we were going to die, we should at least be all together, and if it was something awesome, we should see it all together. It was time! At last we pushed the curtain aside on the other side of the window. What was there?! Another door! This EXIT seemed to becoming more and more of a death trap. We said, “Whatever lets do it.” And we did.

            We opened the door to find another window. This window was just as boarded up and just as heavy as the previous one, but it lead to the outside of the building. This is where this EXIT becomes extremely ironic. It was a fire escape! But the bottom half that lead down to the ground was broken and there was no making a safe escape from a fire. So, what did we do? We did what any teenagers would do and we went up!

            We arrived on the roof. It was a cool sight, a nice horrid looking brick building to our left and behind, a parking lot in front of us, and another brick building to our right. What a view. The things we found on the roof were rather interesting…

            There was a locked glass case with holes in it with animal bones. A decaying dog in a different case, and many decaying birds in another.

            That was so worth it! We loved it… We decided to get back into the studio before Paul returned so he would know we were still here. We were debating to ask him about it. The was another studio upstairs that was run by somebody else that we had befriended during our stay. We brought it up to Paul and Kevin, the man upstairs. A turn out Kevin’s girlfriend is into making sculptures out of animal bones. I personally thought that was very cool, and we talked a bit further about it. Its for her college art classes. Who would of thunk. 

Week 4 blog 1

We arrived at the studio last studio on April 30, it is the following Tuesday, the 7^th of May. The days have blended together since we have spent so much time there. I think this is partly due to the fact that we didn’t know when one day ended and another began. All of us slept in one room, except for Steve because he snores louder than anything. I would still get woken up by his snoring even though he was in another room, which is separated by two doors…

            The room we would sleep in was without windows. The only light was a green light that illuminated the EXIT sign. This was not much of an exit by the way, Steve and I were rather curious where this led so we decided to venture. We opened the locked door, we were so excited. To see what? Another locked door. This time was business; we open the door to find what? A locked boarded up window. At this point we decided that maybe this was not the best idea. Steve is using one hand this entire time to capture it on video. The window is rather heavy and does not stay open on its own. We left, only to return with renewed ambition to find out the EXIT.

            This EXIT is rather pointless, because if this building was burning down, I think the flames would capture us before we found a metal fork to pick the lock of both doors and open the heavy window.

            BUT IT WAS TIME! We finally decided to open the window. In the process, Steve had caught his finger in the windowpane. There was lots of blood…

            After much cursing and Band-Aids, it was time to return to the dreaded window. It was open, and we propped it to keep it open with a nearby piece of plywood. We would finally find out what was on the other side of the window the following morning.

Week 3 blog 3

This blog is going to mostly cover Friday because it has been so eventful. We woke up around 10 this morning because we had a late night in the studio doing lead guitar for one of the songs. After that we help set up the vocal booth with cables and deciding what microphones use. It is Friday, and a favorite guitar player of ours from the band Darkest Hour stopped by. He was just excited to see us as we were to see him. His name was Mike and he was maybe one of the coolest people I have ever met. I feel like we connected better than he did with anybody in the band. I knew of him, but Luke is obsessed with his band and he was trying his best to not “fan-girl.” He sat down with us to talk about the music life, and just life in general. He was telling us how awesome the music life was. He was telling us about it financially and what sucks and what rocks and how relationships change as you get older. He was telling us how his band hates each other but they stay together for the sake of music. He was telling us that he doesn’t make a lot of money doing what he does, but he is maybe one of the happiest people on earth. I wrote about something similar in one of my journal entries, and he only confirmed my theory. I cannot wait to enter the real word. I hope everything is cool back home! We also met his producer named Brian, and it was cool to see all of the famous people interact. They treated us like they have known it and us forever was really inspiring to hear some of the things that they told us.

          I brought my laptop to do blogs and do research but last night me and Jake bonded over exploring a dungeon on Guild Wars 2. He has got me hooked. It is funny to learn some of the things I have about my band. Jake is a nerd, Luke has girlfriend trouble, and Steve is a neat freak/germaphobe. I honestly love living them. 

Week 3 blog 2

The way bands are recorded in studios is recorded in the following order: drums, bass, rhythm guitar, lead guitar, and then vocals. We are doing it a little differently here though because every studio engineer is unique. We finished drums, bass, and rhythm by yesterday, Thursday. Drums took only three hours, bass took about the same, and rhythm took a little longer because Steve’s guitar was acting up because his tune up was out of date. Steve had to bring his own guitar because he plays lefty and the studio did not have any lefty guitars. Luke was beyond excited because he had plenty of options for guitars. There are SO many toys here. We also met some other celebrities which was so cool; celebrities to us at least. We met the other producer that Paul shares the building with, Kevin. He does more Metal bands while Paul does more Pop-Punk along with Punk. He told us there are always some strange bands that come in here and there. I have been doing some research for my paper in my down time because I finished my parts the day we arrived in the studio. I have also been a little sick because I have been going from eating a lot of meat to a lot roman noodles and Mac n Cheese. We have to buy our own food and lucky for us there is a grocery store down the street. The streets are also very interesting, it is hard to tell whether somebody is going to ask you how your day is or give you a glare because you are the only white person in sight. 

Week 3 blog 1

It is Friday, and I have been so busy that I am just blogging now. We left on Monday the 29^th, to get here on the 30^th.  It was honestly such a great car ride. We left around 6 in the afternoon with an 8-hour car ride ahead of us. The producer we are recording with, Paul Leavitt advised this. He said this was the best way to avoid all of the traffic because we would be traveling through multiple cities. We had so many laughs during the car ride, and lots of sleep was accomplished. We arrived at the hotel around 2 in the morning. We had to manually open the hotel’s automatic doors because it was so late and then ring a bell. The woman at the desk asked us where our bags were and we just said that we wanted to sleep more than anything else. We all agreed that it would take forever to get our things out of the car because it was packed to the brim with luggage, food, equipment, etc. She laughed and gave us our keys to the rooms. Once we were all in bed we could not stop just being delirious and we could not stop laughing. It was actually just mostly me, but it started to get to them and we all stayed up for another couple hours before we got some sleep and had to hit the road again and go to the studio. This was all day one. 

Week 2 Blog 3

          In the tracking room there are cameras so that the sound engineer can communicate with the musicians in the other room without having to run back and forth. Right now there are only ttwo cameras up and running, John wants four. He also does not want them up on stands on the floor because the cameras are really sensitive and could get messed up just from somebody walking around near them. He has the idea of mounting these  cameras on the ceiling and have the the wiring in the wall. To start enacting this plan I took down the cameras and broke down the stands and took the wires into the console room to clean them. I basically used rubbing alchohol to get nasty sticky residue off of the wires so they could be cleaned and installed easily.

            There were four wires totally about 120 feet of wire. This was sort of a tedious job, but not too bad. It was kind of cool to see how the wires became clean and new-looking once again. I also had toe measure how long the wires were, and two of them were on the shorter side, which posed a problem, but John said he could work with it.

            It is almost lunch time today, which is Friday. After Lunch we are going to fninsh clearing out the tracking room so the session has some room to work with. I usually leave at about 2, but today I am staying later because he is going to have me track drums for him. He wants to show me how everything goes to where it goes. From the drumstick to the drum to the microphone and ALL of the wiring until it finally comes up the pro-tools. 

Week 2 Blog 2

           On Tuesday, John informed me that he had a studio session coming up and we had to clear out the studio tracking room. This was Wednesday. Wednesday was a very big cleaning day. He also told me he had clients coming in later after I left and he needed the studio to look nice for them. After clearing out the room that had the giant console in it, I had to vacuum everything because everything that had been sitting, had been sitting there for a long time and everything had dust on it, around it, under it, inside it, everywhere imaginable.

            Everything that was moved had to be taken out of the box it was in and be either installed or put away somewhere else. Where did the boxes go? I had taken all of the boxes and found either a larger box or a smaller box to fill it/store it. The majority of John’s garage is cardboard boxes. This does make plenty of sense.  John buys and sells lots of equipment and he does need this amount of boxes. It is really smart to have a wide variety of boxes because something he sells could be a unique shape or size and he will always have the perfect box for it.

            One of the things I had to move was a box full of modules for a piece of equipment. If you don’t know what this is, its “all the knobs.”  I good chunk of my day was vacuuming out the modules and then installing them into the shelf they were going into. This was fun because I got to see the before and after effect of the vacuum on the modules. And there was definitely an effect. After they were vacuumed on all four sides, I would slide them into place on sliding tracks that were on the shelf, which was also fun.

Week 2 Blog 1

My first day of week two was a Tuesday. I entered at about 9 a.m. as I do every time I come in. I had a coffee in hand as I always do and John said to me, “once you finish that we have our whole day planned out already.”

            I finished my coffee and we spent the entire day working on his audio system. In the studio he also lines up old movies on tape and video and converts them to disks for other companies. He couldn’t do that because his audio system went down during our last storm during a power outage. It is a audio system of 7 monitors including a sub-woofer. There are monitors called masters and others called slaves, each slave has a master. Each master is linked to another master which is linked to another slave. All of the monitors went down because the central master, which has all of the monitors connected to it, crashed. Today is Friday and it still isn’t fixable, so on Tuesday we decided to get at least three speakers and the sub-woofer up and running so he could at least get the audio running because he was on a deadline.

            This was an all-day process because we had to individually wipe all of the monitors twice for good measure, then re-install the firmware, then update it. We did this with all of the monitors but sometimes that was not the problem and if that wasn't the problem we would move on. Towards the end of the ordeal John said it could possibly be a power supply issue and it didn’t have the power to reach the entire system of monitors. And if one monitor didn’t have the power to reach, then it definitely didn't have the power to lend others for them to reach the system.

            This was the entire day at John Keegan’s. After this I had a drum lesson with my private instructor and we discussed pre-production for the band’s Baltimore trip and then we made charts for some of the songs that we will be recording. After my lesson I drove down to Middleton to figure out our itinerary for the bands trip: what would be done for food, clothes, sleeping situations, equipment that is necessary to bring, etc. 

week 1 blog 3

It is Friday, and let me tell you, I have more than enough of this board. I think I am expert at soldering at this point. It was truthfully a lot of fun though. Its honestly fun to see how close you get to burning yourself, but not actually doing it. Burnt myself twice today. I think I have finally finished the board and I am currently waiting for John to come in from the other room to check on my work. My guess is that I will most likely have to redo two or three inputs or outputs, but I hope I did everything right. It only took me all of Wednesday and three hours of today to complete it. I am definitely an amateur, but I would like to think I am an expert.

            We did not end up having band practice yesterday because Luke was called into work until about 630/7 at night. The plan was to practice then, and I was perfectly okay with that until I was reminded that the High School Band had a spring concert that night. So practice did not happen. I spent the day making charts and practicing until I could not move my feet anymore. Yes, drummers use their feet much more than you think.

            There is going to be band practice tonight instead though after I leave the studio. If you think about it, I am going to be score for twelve hours or more today. I arrived here at 9 in the morning and plan on doing lots of practice and preproduction for the EP. If you are interested, check us out on Facebook “For The Year” and follow us through the process. It is a great time. 

week 1 blog 2

On Wednesday, I came into the studio around 9 in the morning. I had Tuesday and Thursday off from the studio and it was strictly time for the band and myself. When I was not with the band I was sitting in my basement for hours on end practicing the songs to tracks that I was given and also writing charts (guides to the forms of the songs) which is maybe my least favorite thing other than breaking drumsticks on stage.

            Anyway, that was Tuesday and Thursday, but on Wednesday, I came into the studio and literally did not move from one chair for the entire time I was there. I left at 2 in the afternoon to make it to work at Cape Ann Pizza. This time consisted of me heated up old solder (pronounced sodder) from inside the board, removing the wires, replacing the solder with new solder, and then replacing the wires. The wires were a complete mess though; they were either really hairy or too long.

            If the wires were too hairy I would have to smooth it out, which sounds painful but its okay because my hands are covered in calices, so I was not too bad. After they were smoothed out, I would use electrical tape to cover the exposed wire. Exposed wire was not wanted because if any two wires touched, that part of the XLR input/output would not work, causing a large amount of frustration for the musicians and also the engineer. This would be followed up by the whole re-soldering deal.

            If they were too long it was just a matter of removing the wire from the solder joint and tripping down the wire with cutters and making everything look nice. Long wires were a problem because there was exposed wire, which was previously explained.

            This was a tough day because when I thought I had finished everything, John would inform me that I need to watch out for X, so I would go back through the whole bunch looking for X. once that was finished, I would be told to look for Y. This got to the point where I had to go through the entire alphabet if you catch my drift. 

week 1 post 1

So far this has been quite the experience. I have learned so much in just one day. The first day was, more or less, a tour of the Studio. Half of my internship is working with studio owner and lead singer of the band Madhouse. Ask your parents, they may have heard of them. There is probably more dollars in equipment in this place than there will ever be in my bank account. It is practically to the point where I am killing two birds with one stone because this has always been something I have wanted to do but at the same time I am using it to pass high school, which is always a struggle.

            I have learned just in the first day how everything in here works. I have never seen so many wires and cables. It is a good time, let it be known. John, my supervisor, told me what I would be working on for Wednesdays and Friday (today). He pointed to something was taken apart on the counter and it was a board of XLR inputs and outputs. He accidentally came upon it and the wiring/job that had been done it was not the best, and it was now my job to redo it. After this happened, it was around 3:30 pm. At this point in time, I had been dismissed from this part of my internship and was off headed to the other part of my internship: The band.

            For the other part of my internship I am traveling down to Baltimore to record an EP (extended play: not a single, shorter than an album) with Paul Leavitt who is the producer of All Time Low, Circa Survive, and some other bands that I thoroughly enjoy. Band practice started around 4:30 and ended around 8:00. I am the new drummer in the band after beating out some other kids via the audition process. I am still fairly new to some of the songs, so band practice is always…interesting. 

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