The Setbacks' Studio Adventures - FRIDAY APRIL 30th

April 30th, 2004

For the past few days, we've been in the recording studio, laying down some meaty and delicious tracks for consumption by you, our voracious fans. I hope you are hungry because these tasty nuggets are sounding amazing. But that's enough self-back patting; let me give you the run down of the time spent at Little Bullhorn in Ottawa.

FRIDAY APRIL 30:

Our meeting time Friday was for 7pm at the studio. Earlier in the week, I had made a large fuss about us always being late, and was determined to get everyone there on time. I lectured on how this would be costing us money, and we’d need to be efficient. So when I arrived at 7:15, the gear was already loaded into the studio. I felt shame, and was reminded about my stern words from earlier in the week. As Steve and Paul started into some sort of "impression" of my rant, Chris proceeded to engage Jarrett Bartlett, our recording engineer, in a drawn out game of 20 questions. He pummeled Jarrett with questions about the studio – everything from the colour of the mixing board knobs to the age of the carpets on the floor.

When the impression of me finally degraded far enough that neither of the two could continue because of laughter and Chris finally had all the details of the studio committed to memory, we began setting up the gear.

Chris set up the drums in one room, with a clear view of the mixing board through a thick sheet of glass. The guitars and bass amps were set up in the second room, pointing in various directions. The plan was to have us play in the room with the mixing board, while our amps blared in the other room. Of course we couldn’t hear those because of the soundproof walls (we also couldn’t hear Chris), so next we worked on getting a good mix in each of our speakers (or headphones for Chris).

After an hour of “can I get more of me in my mix” coming from everyone, we were finally all satisfied. Chris was already sweating like a man of Italian descent should, due to the excess coverage of hair. This is what we like to call his “squirrel necklace”. He wears a gold chain so that he knows where to stop shaving. The studio is allegedly air conditioned, but this being the first real warm day the system was just warming up, only blowing air and not necessarily cold air.

Soon Jarrett left, and left us to get used to playing in the room with the set up we picked. The real recording would start tomorrow.

We checked out at about 9:30, and popped into Pubwell’s around the corner for some of the city’s biggest and best Calzones. For some reason we got involved in a heated discussion concerning the government’s control of the seal population. I have not heard so many made up statistics in one sitting before. But would we be able to put our differences aside tomorrow in the studio? Only time will tell.

-tk