Recording

my roommate and i have been recording music off and on, always late at night, for just over a week. we have eight or so vague songs, which ideally after tonight will have evolved into three finished tracks. it's been an interesting process, one more or less alien to both of us. my roommate L has been playing bass for most of his life, a skillset which seems to be serving him pretty well in our experiments with guitar as well. my own skills going into this are limited to some high-school experimentation with fruityloops (looping beat software which has since changed to FLStudio), some vague experimentation with acoustic guitar and keyboard, and some seven or eight years of fanatical devotion to listening to music - and figuring out, sometimes subconsciously, the structures and mixdowns of my favorite songs. so L is learning to play for keeps, and how to play along with himself on earlier tracks. i'm learning sequencing, fading, panning, effects... taking the sounds we get, the tracks, and putting them in some semblance of order. the point is that all this is work on a side of music i'm not used to seeing - the construction. some of our music i'm really happy with, some needs some work, but no matter what, every time i sit down to work on this ends with putting on some favorite album or another and having a renewed appreciation for the time, skill, and structure of songs i might have already heard thirty, forty, two hundred times. http://www.myspace.com/soundtracktoaslowdeparture oh yeahhhhhhhh. and as a sidenote - anyone bouncing around here with the capacity to record instruments (as me coming to you is a little out of the way, unless you happen to live here in chicago), let me know - we're looking for a few more people to round out the sound. particularly a drummer (actual drums or keyboard drums, don't care) and someone with a few years of guitar experience to their name.