Screaming Mimes Blog

Last night we did the trumpet, trombone & violin overdubs for "Pretty Soon Now". And when I say we, I mean that Mac, Ross & Freddie played the instruments and Randy recorded them. Which really means that I sat around, did nothing, and voiced my opinion a lot while everyone else worked. Upper management here I come!


This gave me a lot of time to snap photos and sketch, of course.

We worked on the second bridge first... this part features a big horn melody that goes over some very strange diminished chord/key changes. Luckily the Mac & Ross handled it perfectly. While this was going on I wrote out the final violin melody for Freddie and he went to the second studio to practice.

After a few takes Mac suggested doing a high blast on the very last chord, which sounded extremely cool. It's always exciting to hear the fresh ideas that other artists bring to your vision. This musical apex hits right before a large "end-of-the-world" swooshy sound effect and into the final verse...


Randy used a really nice ribbon micrphone that captured the sound of the horns perfectly... I've read a dozen theories about how to record horns. Cramming a condensor mic down the bell, ribbons on the opposite side of the room... I think everything has been tried. Anyway, the sound coming through was clean and clear and really captured the dynamics of the instruments.


We hadn't written anything out for the big ride out at the end of the song, but we knew we wanted something. I grabbed some paper and scribbled out some parts and Mac spent a few minutes transposing them for their respective instruments (under the watchful eye of cardboard Marylin). This overdub turned out to be a lot of fun, key-changes notwishstanding, and I think you'll dig the final result.


While the horns were working on the bridge I wrote out some long violin chords for Freddie. First we recorded the ending coda - legato style. It took some takes to nail down... there's a few tempo changes as the song winds down but Freddie kept at it until he was comfortable with the part. He then tackled the bridge chords, and with this section he was able to relax and got it in just a few takes. This completely changed the tone of the section, adding a timbre of sadness to an otherwise positive tone. Thinking of the lyrics of this section, I think it works perfectly.

After the gents were done Randy set about mixing all these new ingredients. It turned out rather well thanks in to small part to his mad editing skills. He found an errant bum note and was quickly able to fix it, and in a little over an hour we had all the horns and violin in. We then turned our attention to the clarinet overdub done by my wife a week ago. This part goes in the first bridge, and Randy used some mixing tools to soften the sound up and give it a bit more "woodiness". it sounds fantastic. We then worked on some bowed upright (me), violin (my daughter) and cello (my wife again), mixing parts in and out as needed for the song's big ride out.

Around 11:30, after suffciently turning our ears to mush after 8 hours of mixing/recording, we called it a night. There was no way we could objectively record the vocals that were still needed.... they'll have to wait until another night.

Blat!

Dave