“this is a new word to me, near-fields.”

dear reader (hello! i haven’t posted in over a month),

my mind is filled with many such quotations (generally deadpanned in a thoroughly french syntax) from my wife, certainly because i love her but also because they’re funny. (”are you going to read me nietzsche?”)

of course, this opener is related to the sudden infestation of monitoring equipment in our tiny apartment, which my aforementioned wife has accepted graciously and with humor. (”do you like the new speakers?” “yes, they’re bumblebee-ish.” it sounds like lines from a foreign language textbook. welcome to our home.)

i’ve been struggling to write this post for several days now, but actually i think this is probably the best moment. last wednesday night joe and i left late and arrived in pgh at 2 am to begin recording on thursday morning. st. david’s in the south hills lent us their unsuspecting and conveniently vacant rectory, and we transformed it thursday into a little studio. (watch the photos page for a nice series on this.) we managed to track one whole song while we were there, wrapping up on saturday with a little extra keyboard work by megan.

since i’ve been back, it’s been All About the Mixing. this is scary because a) i’ve never mixed anything totally by myself before and b) my inner recording workaholic is brutal. having survived two days of it so far, though, i can report that everything is great. the tracking, it turns out, was wonderful despite the sprint. drums are tight. vocals sound great. the song is really gaining a life of its own now that it’s fixed in a tangible medium (little shout-out to copyright law!), and that’s what you hope for as a recording artist: that certain intangible extra.

it’s actually so great here behind the ‘phones that i can’t wait to record the next one. you can call this a soft announcement: good night, states is going to be releasing several tracks this spring, and i couldn’t be more excited.

watch the news page for a real announcement about the release of this single, “long coats, no energy.”

love from rainy montvale,
steve

ps. does ANYONE know how to make quicktime my default music player? stupid apple.

Tags: band life, by:steve, creativity, new releases, recording, songwriting