last day of vocals and noise makers
the cut *off refers any band that needs a demo or a cd to C.R.T. Studios. We have recorded twice there and we are always pleased with our finished product. Great sounding and a great price. If you have a band or just want to record in a studio we suggest Tim at C.R.T. Studios call him at (817) 819-1995.

from tim: Greetings from the studio!!! Tim here... We just finished tracking the last "hit single"" from this, my friends latest effort(name yet to be determined). This is the most involved and grouling recording I've done in my professional career and i'm glad to say we are DONE. The last things left are to go over every single track and insure that all things are kosher, and to add some digital magic. I am looking forward to dipping into my new bag O tricks and sweetening the performances that we spent the last few weeks working on. I am a bit nervous as the spotlight has just been abruptly put on me and I can't tell the guys they messed up, it's all on me. Oh well... I've always worked well under pressure!!! Anyways I am happy to use the cut off as my guinea pigs for all the new stuff I bought over the summer. After all, they helped pay for a bunch of it! Everything except the drums went through the new neumann U87 I just bought. The kick drum was recorded through a shure beta 52. The snare top was a Shure SM57, the bottom was a Audio Technica 4033. The toms were Shure Beta 98s. The overheads were at 4033s as well. The ride was a ochtava 319 and the high hat was the U87. All other mics were the U87 through a focusrite preamp. The raw tracks are going into a alesis HD24 24 track hard drive recorder. I will transport those tracks from the alesis to my PC for editing and dynamic processing through a firewire interface and export them back to the alesis this week with Kyle's oversight so we can mix the tracks down to a 2 track final product for mastering. I'm not sure anyone cares to know any more particulars about my stuff so I wont mention the little things that make a great CD. The trick to it is to spend the time to do it right and stay focused as a team( band and producer included). I have been stretched to my limit every week we have worked on this but have found new motivation every time I here the latest additions to the basic tracks. Now it is starting to sound more like a product worthy of your time and money(whoever you are!!!). Anyway I'm done yapping so goodnight and if you want to reach me go to my web sight that doesn't exist yet or give me a call at the number somewhere in this sight, I'll be waiting on baited breath!!! Peace Tim (aka C.R.T.).

from kyle: wow, i can't believe we're nearly finished! things went much more smoothly today and i had a lot of fun exploring my darker side with evil trucker. the vocals are sounding great and i think everyone will be pleasantly surprised. next up is acoustic guitar and perhaps a little ivory tickling is in order. oh, by the way, did i mention that i love green bullets, the microphone, not the weapon.

from jake: its 2:12:58 and we are just getting started. jayson just got all over kyle's' ass for "f" ing up the lyrics to "push" but now everything is ok and they are back to being best good friends. once again we have socks hamilton gracing us with his knowledge and presence, and our friend casey rogers is back to do her part after spending a week rehearsing on her vocals. well, we will write more when we have more to talk about. big up yourself. its 5:05:43, and casey finished up her vocals about an hour ago, and has since left for the parks mall. my voc's are finished up as well with only a little tambourine left. i wish you all could understand how happy i am to be finished with this project, because damn i am happy. we have come up with some nutty shift to do during "the evil trucker" and it sounds very pleasing to the ear, yet almost disturbing in a loving way. ok, Jim done and i hope you all enjoy our record.

from jayson: kyle is done with the lead vocals and it is coming together. casey is up to bat right now and just had her first take. this week we practiced with her and it is sounding good. big ups to casey for the help. also big ups to walker wood for letting us use his roland xp-30. we would have loved to have him play on the album but, due to some prior engagements he was not able to. now all we have is keys, shakers, tambourine and backup vocals. we just finished up the back up vocals on evil trucker and everybody got a go at yelling. the back up vocals were done by plugging a bullet mic into a overdrive pedal and a electro-harmonix memory man then we ran that through a washburn bass amp. it sounds pretty wicked if you ask me but, it fits the song well. not much left to do. I know it is going to sound great I hope the fans dig it. chad just called to check up on us. he is in california right now visiting his three year old daughter.

vocals and noise makers. special guest casey rogers

from jayson: it is 9:30 p.m. and kyle's voice just crapped out while singing mesa. we went to pooh's corner to get some honey to help his voice but, that attempt fell short. chad is telling me what to do and i don't like it. kyle is helping casey warming up her vocal cords. we are all excited. well nevermind, i guess we are going to call it quits tonight because tim (the guy recording us) is tired.

from kyle: today was the most hellish nerve wracking experience since we started this project. sometimes experimenting on the fly ain't such a good idea, but i think the subtle changes and backing vocals are really going to make this record. I got 10 songs done before my voice decided it was through but i am pleased with what i got done. I understand now why making a cd takes so fucking long.

from chad: the day started out pretty crappy from the beginning. Since dark karl apparently doesn't call people back, we never had a confirmed appointment at the studio today. Luckily we were still able to get some stuff done, it was just delayed a bit. I've been sitting around listening to kyle throw out vocals all day. Damn, does that guy ever stop sweating? Anyway, he's doing a great job, but I'm feeling tired, I'm coughing, and I think I've come down with the syndrome. To make matters worse, some people stopped by and gave us fliers with their missing 9-month old dogs. It's making me depressed and stuff. Screw this, I'm going home.

from jake: today, ladies and gents, is the always popular vocals and at the moment our friend kyle is having one shit of a time with "small bits of chalk". other than that we have about 6 songs in the bag, and everything is coming up milhouse. the great stephen sones and alton miller stopped by for a brief visit and gave some needed inspiration that kept us going, like soldiers in the rice fields back in 'nam. well, back to work. see you soon friends.

from casey: it's 7:30 p.m. and i've been here since 11:30 a.m. and have yet to put my stamp on the project. however, my "time to shine" is rapidly approaching. the fellas are keeping me entertained though so time seems to be flying by...i guess. that's all i have. - i just tried to "lay it down" and realized that i might should have tried to go through the song first. you know, learn the words and such. now i have to come back again to finish it up.

from kyle: finally, the the solos are done and sounding pretty good. the record is really coming together nice, and we're all pretty pleased with what we've accomplished so far, but still much to do.

from jayson:

from kyle: i am so tired of playing guitar i cant stand it, but once more i persevered and got some good stuff tracked. i think I'm up to about forty gallons of water so far in the studio, not my normal beverage of choice, but what ever i takes to just get finished

from kyle: ever the perfectionist, my guitar tracks took a little longer than expected but i think the product or quality is more important than the billions of times i retracked. still using the marshall/tele combo mostly, but i snuck in the sg and prs when i could.

from jayson: since kyle took forever I got a late start. my first task was to supply the troops with some tasty dirty tracks. plenty of distortion and power was used to blow the seams out of everyones pants. the power was supplied by a crate vintage club 50 watt head and a marshall 4x12 slant cab. majority of the tracks were done on the same settings but on push, evil trucker and big swim more gain was needed.

Bass and kyle's"dirty" guitar tracks.

from chad: of our many hours spent in CRT studios, about 2 were spent on me. I used a 5-string Warwick Corvette, which was strange because it was 2 more strings than I'm used to. I recorded through an Ampeg cab with a Crate Vintage Club 50 head. To put it simply, I played a bass guitar through a loud amp. I was pleased with my performance and the amount of time it took. While the other players were stuck in the iso area for days, I was done in no time. I was driven by the desire to go watch "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" and "3 o'clock High" (a great 80's film featuring one of the greatest fight scenes of our time ...rivaled only by the Rudy Grimmer/Calvin Shelby battle of 1998). What a superb experience!

from kyle: i used primarily my nashville ed. telecaster through a marshall dsl 100/4x12 slant cab. tim double handicapped my amp for a great cranked gain tone. I also used a gibson sg for some of the heavier songs as well as tim's prs. lots of work still to do but starting to sound pretty damn good.

The second day was much better. Jake and the click track are becoming best buds and we were able to get 9 more drum tracks recorded. It was a long day but now we have 13 drum tracks to work with. Next week we'll start on the bass and guitars.

from jake: on the 20th we spit out 9 tracks due to me telling the click track to go to hell. as far as equipment goes, i used a premier kit with maple shells. the rack toms were 10 inches and 12 inches, and the floor tom was 14 inch, all with remo ambassador heads . the bass drum was a 22 inch, and all the hardware was DW, with DW 5000 pedals. the snare was a maple pearl 14x5.5, and that's all i know about that. all of the cymbals were zildjin including  17, 18, and 19 inch crashes with one 12 inch splash. the hi-hat was a 14 inch A series, and the ride was a 20 inch ping ride. and last of all, the sticks i use are zildjin 5B DIP with wood tips.

First day in the studio. We started with a quick run through all the songs we were planning on recording just for a rough go-by. After that we selected the tempo for the click tracks and started tracking on drums.

from jake: first off i would like to thank the click track for totally ruining two days of my life. but it is all for a good cause, so i tried my best to not lose my nerve. tim, our recording engineer, has a lot of good input and is already making my drum "F" ups sound amazingly better. on the 19th we only got 4 tracks done due to my introduction to the click track

from chad: i'm glad jake plays drums instead of me....