News of Late...

Well stuff has been coming together with the album. We have basically got the drums "in the can" as of last night. M1, M2 and I (Brad) tracked "Throwing Rocks at Cars" and I recorded the vocals. We really kicked it in the ass compraed to the first recording. We have 14 tracks for the disk. INcluding one spoken word piece penned by M2.

Aftger listening to the disk (though not in it's final mix and mastered version) I am pretty pleased. People have had comments like it is Elvis Costello or a dark Dave Mathews not bad examples from lay-folk so to speak.

The disk is dark in mood. And certainly there is a theme threading throught it, which was a goal from the onset. Now we have some last bits to do including bass tracks for about half yet to do. We are laying down another bass track with a miced amp this time. Seems to provide a tighter more focused bass sound. We are micing a small practice bass amp with a dynamic kick drum mic in foam. Very little EQing is required....and the bass is much easier to move around in the mix.

M1 has a few tracks to try some stuff on I have some more sigining to do and Steve the bass tracks. We should be done with all recording sometime next week and then we start the mixing.

It has been a long 8 months in the CatBox recording. Lots of frustration and expense with computer hardware but it has been worth it.

The latest mixes will be on our sonicbids site.

(Only three....)

Thanks for reading.

BRad

P.S. May 15th Sprizzo....come down and celebrate us getting the recording portion of the album finished...

More from Turner Hall

More from Turner Hall

More from Turner Hall

MKE Rally Against Violence Show

Soul Amp plays MKE RAV, Turner Hall Ballroom
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 04/23/2005

MKE Rally Against Violence Show

Soul Amp plays MKE RAV, Turner Hall Ballroom
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 04/23/2005

MKE Rally Against Violence Show

Soul Amp plays MKE RAV, Turner Hall Ballroom
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 04/23/2005

MKE Rally Against Violence Show

Soul Amp plays MKE RAV, Turner Hall Ballroom
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 04/23/2005

MKE Rally Against Violence Show

Soul Amp plays MKE RAV, Turner Hall Ballroom
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 04/23/2005

News...

Did some more tracking on tunes this last weekend. M2 laid down soem sweet congas and bongos on Turn Out the Morning and Flowing On. We also created a soundscape piece with some funky things I have laying around the house. Might make the disk....

We're playing at Turner Hall on the 23rd of April with a gob of other bands.



M2 and I drove to town, Sunday April 18th...is not...Drank a beer of two and ate at Points East Pub dropped a disk off, chatted with James and Matt from Clementine and went ot Onopa's to drop a disk off....and have a beer.

Check out Clementine's tunes (WMA's) from above. They are cool neo-pop tunes, light a airy with catchy hooks.

Summerfest? MOBFest?

Well we put in our submission to Summerfest via sonicbids. I woudld like to see Sonicbids utilized by booking agents more. Summerfest still took snail mail submissions, your standard presskit. Though we opted to use Sonicbids. They stated that 40 bands would be booked via sonicbids EPK's.

I suspect it will go well for summerfest and they will book more using Sonicbids in the future.

Also submitted to MOBFest in chicago. Time will tell....

Red Fang

I stuck a Eminance Red Fang 12" speaker in my guitar cabinet last night. great speaker sound really nice. And a ton cheaper than a Celestion Blue....

We took a stab at recording a different version of Turn Out The Morning last night but had some computer and other issues that kept us from getting a good take.

Oh well...it happens.

Selections Made for Disk

Division Protoype III is done and on it are thirteen songs timed at around 50 minutes.

The tunes coming on the final release are as follows: (Not final order)

Spinning Things
Capital People
Seeing Jimmy
She Slit Her Wrists Again
Throwing Rocks At Cars
Shove
She Walks Up Ahead
Spiritual Mouthwash
Flowing On
Johhny's Wife
Memory of a Friend
Turn Out The Morning
Division

We're figuring out the final look and packaging but we'll be selling pre-release version at gigs until release sometime in June(?).

G4 Dual 1.24 GHz

Just ordered a new (used) computer for the Cat Box studio. My G4 400 Mhz power book wasn't cutting the mustard when it came to running AudioDesk 2.03 on Jaguar. I was having issues with the app crashing and hanging up during recording. I don't know if some of the problems are related to the weaker machine or if it was OS X overhead related. OS 9 pefromace always rocked on this machine and we never had issues with recording 8 simultaneous 24/48 tracks. The processer would max out trying to mix 10 tracks with effects plugins.

I really like the new effects in AudioDesk 2.03 and it was pretty much a no brainer to move on to a more powerful system for mixing and mastering our upcoming disk. Which by the way we are almost done recording. We have a few sessions yet to do but we are still on track for getting the disk in the can by May 1st.

Main Stage March 12

Heres a shot from a fan from the Main Stage gig on
Saturday. The gig went well we made some good bucks
and played to a warm crowd of about 60-80 folks. Most
were chatting and drinking....but hey it is a bar
after all.

We played two sets. Pretty much all our material but
the difficult Beautiful Painting tune. Starting with
most of the older stuff in the first set and all our
newset songs in the second. We probably played at
least 8 songs that had not been played out live yet.

It was a good gig. The Main Stage has great sound on
stage, free bud lite and bud for the band and a pretty
laid back atmosphere. Can't beat it. One of the better
venues in SE Wisconsin.

WCCX 104.5 Carroll College

Well Soul Amp lost it's radio virginity on March 10, 2005. I drove over to Carroll student center where the 10 watt radio station resides and dropped the Division - Protoype III off to promote the show on saturday at the Main Stage.

WCCX reaches about 20,000 people in a three to four mile radius of Carroll College. No sooner did I reach the the car and turn the key then there was Spinning Things playing. Even though I told them to play Division or Capital People they non the less played the opening track...

Thanks to WCCX.

Note to DJs: "Flowing On" has the word "Shit" in it.

M2 and Steve...

M2 and Steve prepping for a recent recording session.
Note the mic layout and foam baffles. Helps to reduce
the bleed from the guitar, bass and key amps. We try
to get as much live as we can.

Motion Sound KBR-3d

Cat Box SHots
Originally uploaded by bodland.

Here is M1's new motion sound rotary keyboard amp. USed in the recent recordings in the cat box. Dig the low tech recording technique. AudioTechnica AT2035 capturing the swoop of the the rotary horn. The Korg tosses out a ton of bass and the high SPLs blew the MXL990 and MXL2001 out of the water. The AT can handle a very high SPL. A great mic to have in your kit.

M1 runs the Wurli and the KORG-Cx3 into the channel with the rotary. The Kurtz PCX2 goes into the stereo input.

This as a very versatile amp. We'll be rigging it possibly with a half moon switch for controlling the rotor at the Korg rather than a footswitch as it is now. M1 likes to stand.

Cat Box SHots

Cat Box Shots during tracking of Division prototype III

Cat Box SHots

Cat Box Shots during tracking of Division prototype III