Skinny Moo front man Jay Goodman came out tonight to provide some guest vocals for one of our upcoming songs. As always it’s a pleasure to include his performance on some DD69 music.

He provided guest vocals on Funk Out With Your Junk Out, adding an entertaining spoken word part to “Freaky Whacked-out People” and some patios-inflected bridge vocals to “Player”.

This time around his stylings will be featured in the song “No Time for Sleeping”, a song which has also recently been featured elsewhere.

Thanks for your time and performance, Jay.  The check’s in the mail.

I’ve been fortunate that my friend “The Deuce” has lent me his Marshall JCM800 amp and cabinet while he’s off camping for a few days.

Maybe fortunate isn’t the right word, because now I really want one of these.

I’ve cut several guitar tracks thus far, and it’s been fun.  For some tracks I wanted some feedback so I played the part kneeling in front of the amp.  It felt like church.  Well, a church where there is a wall of roaring guitar in your face at jet engine volume.

I restrung the SG and used it for some of the parts.  The combination of that guitar and the amp create this amazing “biting” guitar sound, and the tracks really have more presence than tracks I’ve recorded using other amps.

The thing is, I haven’t been able to turn it up past volume = 1.  I can’t even imagine what it would sound like at higher volume levels because it’s deafening at 1.  Now that, my friends, is rock and roll.

Amazingly we’re being super-productive as of late.  Despite the fact that Mike continues to forget studio night (even though most of northeast Ohio knows when it is), we’re forging ahead and finishing track after track (okay, to his credit, he did do a Sunday “make-up” studio to track some bass today).

The 11 songs we chose to focus on at the beginning of the year are in the final mixing stages, or mixed.  We’re scheduled to return to Ante Up studios in July to start mastering a couple.  We’ve also been steamrolling through getting tracks laid down for another ten or so songs that have been sitting around for a while.

At this rate we’ll have cleared the pipeline by the end of 2010 (!), and hopefully we can focus on some newer compositions that are already written, as well as getting back to some jamming and idea generation.

Oh yeah, and hopefully some people out there like what we’ve come up with…

Saw this video the other day (tweeted by @wmcfest).  So cool.

I wrote a couple entries about my last experience recording my Hammond organ.  It was a little complicated due to some missing equipment and the fact that I was experimenting with the setup.

A few days ago I decided to record some more tracks.  This time I changed things up a little bit, but overall it was a far easier recording experience.

Once again I used my Tranzport remote control to control the Pro Tool rig downstairs.  I was able to use my in-ear monitors to listen to playback.  This time around I actually had all the pieces parts, so I was able to leave the transmitter downstairs and just wear the belt-clip receiver and earbuds.

I also chose to do a different mic setup on the Leslie this time.  I used a Shure SM-57 pointed at the top louvers on the cabinet.  It was much easier than using the big condenser microphone I used last time.  I also didn’t have to take the Leslie cover off, and I didn’t need to cover the mic with a blanket to damp out some room noise.

I also was able to start off with a decent baseline setting on the preamp.  I had to make some adjustments since it is a completely different mic, but I wasn’t starting from scratch.

Overall it was a much better experience, and I actually like the dynamic microphone sound much better.  It’s “tighter” and more direct.