In December of 2006, my band the B-cups went into historic Hyde Street Studios with engineer Gabriel Shepard to record our album It Ain’t Love. This travelogue is meant to be viewed in conjunction with the related article The Five Rules of Recording.

Day 1

9:15 am – We arrive at our practice space to collect all our equipment. In keeping with Rule 2, I bring an extra bass drum pedal, every cymbal I own and extra cymbal stands in addition to everything I would normally bring to a gig.

10:00 am – We arrive at Hyde Street Studios and unload all of our stuff. The rest of the band jets off in search of coffee while I set up my drums. Our engineer Gabe suggested we spring for an intern for four hours to help him set up. Josh proved invaluable helping me tune my drums and fetching equipment from the studio store room so that Gabe could focus on mic’ing the drum kit. All in all my kit was surrounded by twelve different microphones to capture every nuance of every sound.

The bass player’s amp is set up in an isolation booth, but he is in the room with me. I like having Manny well within eyesite, so that works out well. The guitar player’s amp will be in a different isolation booth, but Pauli himself won’t arrive until later due to work obligations. Our singer Susan is set up in the control room for now. Her vocal tracks will be scratch only and not used except to help us know where we are in the songs.

1:30 pm – We finish setup early, and I call my bandmates to ask where the heck they are. I grab some healthy snacks we brought (Rules 2 and 3) while waiting. They show up 15 minutes later. Manny is upset because the bass he wanted to use ended up being stuck at the shop where it was being checked for intonation (Rule 1 violation). No matter – he has two others (Rule 2 success).

2:00 pm – We settle in to do our first track. The general plan is that we’ll all play together, but that we intend only to get drum tracks. If we happen to get a decent bass track while we’re at it, so much the better, but all in all, the pressure is on me.

6:00 pm – We’re doing well. We’ve laid down three of our nine drum tracks, and I’m feeling great about my performance. We even have some bass tracks we can use. Pauli arrives, and our spirits are high. It seems we’re ahead of schedule. We break for a quick dinner.

7:00 pm – We start playing with the whole band, and we quickly realize a huge problem – the bass sounds out of tune compared to the guitar (did we fail Rule 4???). We realize that the intonation is off on Manny’s bass. Manny curses the music store that is holding his preferred bass. But what to do? After a large amount of messing around and trying things and tuning and retuning, Manny opts to use his other bass which seems acceptable. Even with the madness, I manage to eke out two more songs worth of drum tracks.

9:00 pm – I’ve been at this for 11 hours now, and I’m struggling with the groove on the track we’re working on. After a short conference Gabe and Susan suggest I call it a night for drums and we work on some vocals. I readily agree.

9:30 pm – I hadn’t realized how tired I had gotten and am grateful for the break. I rest in a chair and have a snack while Gabe sets up the vocal booth.

10:00 pm – Susan sounds fantastic! She gets three lead vocal tracks completed before we call it a night.

11:00 pm – We’re exhausted and decide to call it a night. We’ll meet up at 10:30 am the next morning to grab the rest of the drum tracks.

Day 2

10:30 am – I am back at Hyde Street Studios after a great night’s sleep and a healthy breakfast (Rule 3).

11:30 am – I nail the track I struggled with the night before in two takes. I’m feeling on top of the world. I left the harder songs for the end, so I spend the next several hours working on the final three songs. One in particular gives me a hard time, and I start feeling disheartened. While everyone is in the control room listening back to my most recent disastrous take, Susan drags me into the recording room for a pep talk. Our standard pep talk includes her yelling at me good naturedly about how much I rock. Gabe catches the whole thing in ProTools from the myriad of microphones set up in the room – how embarrassing.

3:30 pm – The drum tracks are done! I feel a huge sense of accomplishment and relief. My role in the band for the rest of our recording time will be one of support and encouragement. We break for a quick dinner before we head back in to sort out the bass tracks.

4:30 pm – Manny and Pauli are playing to my pre-recorded drum tracks. We’re still having problems and debates about the bass tracks, and now a new problem crops up. The guitar amp and tones we had decided on for the rhythm tracks simply won’t work. They sound awful in the studio. We have no other amp (major Rule 2 violation). Susan and I fall into a funk and try to keep our cool while Gabe, Manny and Pauli scramble for ideas.

5:00 pm – More bad news – Pauli develops food poisoning. He keeps having to run to the bathroom to puke, but he stays at it.

7:00 pm – Manny and Pauli are slogging through bass and guitar tracks. Guitar tones take *way* too long to set when it isn’t all planned out beforehand (Rule 1 violation), and we’re frustratingly behind schedule. Pauli looks like death, and we send him home. Worse, Manny’s other band has a gig tonight, and he has to leave by 9:00.

9:00 pm – Manny finishes up his bass tracks just before he needs to leave! Susan heads out to do a vocal warmup.

9:30 pm – I lay down a cowbell part while Susan is warming up her pipes. We do a few cymbal overdubs as well before Sus is ready.

11:30 pm – We break for the evening having finished up all the bass tracks (finally!) and four of the guitar rhythm tracks. We’re doing at least two different rhythm tracks per song, so that’s a lot of tracks Pauli laid in a short amount of time. Sus also got another couple of vocal tracks done.

Day 3

10:30 am – Gabe’s running late. We wait. We’re worn out and running behind. Pauli is going to have to work hard to get all the guitar tracks laid down, and we’re worried about his health.

11:00 am – Pauli is still sick but shows up anyway. He had to return home to change his clothes when he puked on himself in the car on the way over. There’s still the problem of what to do about the guitar tone. Gabe remembers a couple of amps stashed away somewhere else in the studio. He borrows them along with a boutique pedal which sounds like a distorted dream. We fall in love, and we’re back on track. We’re running out of time though, so we have to rush through most of the guitar tracks. Susan and I are anxious about finishing at all.

10:00 pm – For the past eleven hours Pauli is like a man possessed laying down track after track between more trips to the bathroom to throw up. He doesn’t complain once. He’s a true professional. We scramble to set up for the final vocal tracks. We know for sure we won’t get to any of the backing vocals. While Gabe is setting up the vocal booth again, we are disassembling equipment and packing up. We send Pauli home for some much needed rest.

11:00 pm – Susan lays down the last of the lead vocal tracks. We decide to do the backup vocals at my house with Gabe’s portable rig another time. We still have about 8 hours of recording to do which means a lot more money (Rule 5).

1:00 am – We load the last of the equipment into our vehicles for transportation back to our practice studio. The last day and a half have been so frenzied that we’re not sure if some of the tracks even sound good. We’ll have to make do as we have reached the end of our time at Hyde Street.

2:30 am – I’m finally in bed exhausted and happy that the bulk of our recording is done. It will be another two months before the album is actually done. My head is filled with all that still needs to be done – backing vocals, percussion, cover art photo shoot, liner notes, two days of mixing, mastering, CD replication and printing.  My head starts to spin as I fall into a deep sleep to the soundtrack of our songs.