02 November 2010
08 March 2010
Weekend Recording Update
Over the past weekend, Mike's friend and coworker Lou, added violin to 3 tracks on the album. Additionally vocals and background vocals are making some progress.
Mike and I have discussed cover art recently and we plan on doing something really cool and unique for that. More details and maybe a few sneak peeks will follow.
Nick
Mike and I have discussed cover art recently and we plan on doing something really cool and unique for that. More details and maybe a few sneak peeks will follow.
Nick
01 March 2010
New Post, New Author
Hey everyone, this is Nick the current drummer and former roadie of the Brokes. Just wanted to introduce myself as a contributing member of the blog. Unlike Matt I am not a writer so don't set your journalism expectations to high.
Quick recording update: Drums are done as Matt said. Over the weekend our good buddy Dave added some piano/keyboards to some songs. They sound awesome, granted I may be a bit biased. The album is finally starting to take shape. Can't wait till its done so we can share it with all of you.
Nick
Quick recording update: Drums are done as Matt said. Over the weekend our good buddy Dave added some piano/keyboards to some songs. They sound awesome, granted I may be a bit biased. The album is finally starting to take shape. Can't wait till its done so we can share it with all of you.
Nick
21 February 2010
01 January 2010
I Have "Totally Been Slacking"
So this marks the first official "not for class" post on my blog. I actually had the intention of continuing posting even after my assigned quoted of posts desisted, but the Brokes and I have been revising and reworking the album so much, I have been hesistating from revealing anything before I can make some authoritative statements.
I decided to abandon that approach. The album is obviously still in the works, but from what I have observed, Mike is really making an effort to get as much recording done as often as possible. Everyone else seems to be motivated in a similar matter (minus the band's blogger of course).
These are all good things of course, but there are reasons why bands wear the merit badge of "self-produced" with honor. When you listen to a drum track for the first time, it might sound great...even better than you may have expected. However, after the 100 time that late crash in the 2nd pre-chorus sounds like a 'slap in the face everytime' (to quote Mike).
Then there are the what if questions. What if we added piano to that track? or violin? What if we supplemented that chorus with a choir, rather than just one or two vocal tracks? As someone who has written one or two things before, I can sympathize with the reality that you will never entirely be happy with a project to the point where you would call it finished (except in those rare case where you can even believe you wrote/recorded/whatever-ed something). I think this is because what drives an artist--a good artist at least--is not always selfish. there genuinely is a desire to please the audience, and this drives artists to always be better.
So...the album will get done. It won't get done because we'll all join in a sigh of relief and agree it can't be any better than where it's at. It will get done because there's someone out there--someone I don't even know--that is going to think the Unsmokable Brokes is an amazing band. Because of that, the album has to get done.
I decided to abandon that approach. The album is obviously still in the works, but from what I have observed, Mike is really making an effort to get as much recording done as often as possible. Everyone else seems to be motivated in a similar matter (minus the band's blogger of course).
These are all good things of course, but there are reasons why bands wear the merit badge of "self-produced" with honor. When you listen to a drum track for the first time, it might sound great...even better than you may have expected. However, after the 100 time that late crash in the 2nd pre-chorus sounds like a 'slap in the face everytime' (to quote Mike).
Then there are the what if questions. What if we added piano to that track? or violin? What if we supplemented that chorus with a choir, rather than just one or two vocal tracks? As someone who has written one or two things before, I can sympathize with the reality that you will never entirely be happy with a project to the point where you would call it finished (except in those rare case where you can even believe you wrote/recorded/whatever-ed something). I think this is because what drives an artist--a good artist at least--is not always selfish. there genuinely is a desire to please the audience, and this drives artists to always be better.
So...the album will get done. It won't get done because we'll all join in a sigh of relief and agree it can't be any better than where it's at. It will get done because there's someone out there--someone I don't even know--that is going to think the Unsmokable Brokes is an amazing band. Because of that, the album has to get done.
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