Ellery Stimulus

Fan Love Song Number Four:

Thanks everyone, we’re so grateful!! 

The planned final day of our studio work was Wednesday, July 15th.  Today is Monday July 12th, and we’ve woken in the charming town of Bellefonte, PA, headed west toward Cincinnati.  We barely thought it possible to finish 11 songs in 18 days.  We’ve finished in 13.  (-ish.)

Here’s what happened since we last wrote:
We left for last weekend with a set of rough mixes in-hand for all 11 songs.  Malcolm’s recording process is rather unique (more on that later), and the songs came together quickly.  Not only did they come together quickly, but Malcolm is a great mixing engineer.  The actual mixes of each song sounded pretty fantastic almost from the beginning.
So we took these 11 mixes with us and spent most of July 5th listening and taking notes on what we wanted to add, change, etc.

On Monday, we listened to some parts that had been sent to us from a musician in Norway.  (So lovely; I think you’ll like them!)  Then we spent the first half of the day working on vocals.  I had re-written the bridge to one song, so I had to re-sing it of course…  And I wanted to give another try with a couple others.  We spent the latter half of that day finishing background vocal parts, etc…

On Tuesday, we did the last of our instrumental work: Malcolm and I both played some keys, Justin played some guitar…  And then we spent a few hours on two songs that just weren’t quite feeling right yet.  We left the studio fried but reasonably convinced we had ironed out the arrangements.

Pedal steel greatness.

Justin drove to Manhattan on Wednesday morning to retrieve Jon Graboff, who played some beautiful pedal steel and guitar parts.  What he added gave those songs the feel of complete-ness….  There was really nothing more to do on any of them but let Malcolm work his magic.

By the time Justin returned from NYC on Thursday, Malcolm had finished three mixes.  And they were beautiful.  We knew he was great but we were floored.

[As a quick aside, this is why the Fan Love Song didn't happen this week.  With Jon in the studio on Wednesday there were no opportunities to shoot a video, and on Thursday we discovered we were, as Malcolm said, "off the hook" -- No more to do on our end (!!) but leave Malcolm to work on the final mixes.
Which was amazing.  But we needed to leave the studio to give him quiet, so we were instrument-less.]

We came back at regular intervals on Thursday and Friday to listen to what Malcolm had worked on.

(In case you’re interested: It’s generally best to leave the mixing engineer (if he’s a good one) to do his work on his own.  As the artist if you stay and listen you can be counter-productive, and/or a nuisance…  :)  After working so hard on the songs, your ears no longer respond to them rationally, and you can start asking for “more of this” or “less of that” when it doesn’t work as well for the song.  So in our experience, it’s been much better to leave the engineer to it (which they also prefer) and then come back to hear his finished product, and then give our impressions.)

Everything sounded great immediately.  We only had a few tweaks, and a couple overarching suggestions.  But he had nailed it.
We left Friday night to drive to Boston, and we had final mixes in-hand.  We listened in the van and in our room, and sent some final questions/suggestions.  We began to realize that not only would we not need to stay in Kingston until July 15th; we could reasonably leave on Monday.  Nay, Sunday.  Unbelievable.

(What was the hurry?  We could have stayed in town another night but we’re exhausted.  More to the point, we’re lonely.  Emotionally drained insomniacs who need to see our loved ones.  Once we got a hint that maybe we could head home on Sunday, there was no way you could have kept us in town.)

Yay I did it!

On Sunday we drove from Boston to Malcolm’s studio and listened to his final work on the few songs he had changed since Friday.  We loved them.
And that was it.
Justin packed up all our instruments, Malcolm readied our hard drive, we loaded the van, and we spent a moment in the driveway just feeling floored and deeply thankful.  It had happened too quickly to see it coming and feel ready for it.  But we were finished.

We got the last of our things, said our goodbyes, and pulled down the drive.  We made our last jaunt down Broadway St in Kingston, packed up our apartment (you should have seen us excitedly scurrying!) and took off (”Goodbye Kingston!!”) westward.

Record in-hand.