We are now firmly in overdub-ville on the Shearwater record. Kim finished up her parts and flew home on Monday, and Thor stuck around another day to add a few percussion parts before the lure of Austin became too great. Now it’s just Jonathan, Howard and I doing vocals, guitars, piano, and whatever else comes to mind.

With fewer people in the studio, it’s more tempting (and easier) to experiment with sounds, mic technique, and effects. The Ibanez AD-230 analog delay is playing a big, but subtle role on this record, which is common for me. We got it years ago for cheap from Erik Woffard, and I haven’t made a record in the last five years without it. It distorts beautifully, and creates the most wonderful, wooly slapback and doubling.

Most overdubs so far have been pretty typical, technique-wise, save for some backwards piano added to “Rooks”. (In true “great minds think alike” fashion, Howard and I came up with the idea for this independent of one another.) The Studer A827 24-track can playback and record in reverse, so this was pretty easy to do, except for the last hit of the song — because the drums had stopped by that point, Howard had no way of knowing exactly when to play. We got around this by recording the part (which was late on recording, and therefore ahead of the beat on playback), then using a delay to put the part in time with the song. I then bounced the delayed piano to another track and erased the original.

I dunno if any of that is interesting to anyone else, but it just means that’s one fewer thing that won’t be done w/ a computer. So far, we’re stayed completely analog (save for making safety copies of some takes in Cubase), including all edits and effects, and my goal is to keep it that way.