lesson learned... don't record on an empty stomach! my loudly grumbling tummy ruined the last chord at the end of a nice guitar take... ah well! now i know.

i'm fighting a bug of some sort tonight... had to stop editing due to a splitting headache. so i'm spending the night on the couch, watching crime dramas on tv. i'm also doing some brainstorming for album cover ideas... i know i was trying to hold off until done mixing but i can't stop myself now.

k

well i finished vocals today! i'm getting really excited about finishing this record... i can't wait to have new cds and new songs on my myspace... a new design for karenkosowski.com... it's so much fun. but first comes first... now that vocals are done i'm almost ready to mix... just a few more keyboard things to add i think...

tonight is the cd release party for my friends Sunshine State... if you haven't heard them, check them out! :)

k

this is so cool... you can now buy tracks on my myspace page... or for convenience sake, right here!

turn on your microphone

well i'm in the final days of recording vocals... only a couple songs left and a few loose ends... (ie: maybe a few background vocals, doubles, etc). one song is a tune we re-recorded off of Out Here At Sea, because denton (the drummer) loves the song and wanted to play on it... (you'll have to guess which one)... the other is New York Minute (the don henley cover), which we've reworked a little, given it a slightly different spin. i'm not sure if these two will end up as part of the finished tracklist, or as b-sides... it's gonna depend on how it all sounds once everything is lined up in a possible listening order and tested out. but i digress... today frequent breaks are a necessity because the temperature in the studio gets pretty high due to the fact that it's a sunny 28 degrees celcius outside, the studio has a huge window that's not well insulated, and the air conditioning must be off when recording. breaks aren't bad tho... aside from cooling off the room they keep me from getting into my head too much. i try to stay disconnected from phone calls and the outside world so as to stay in a creative headspace, however surfing the net can be good relaxation and fodder for inspiration.

for example, the following has inspired me to name the album "napkin":

http://www.zefrank.com/napkin.html

- just kidding.

speaking of which, i don't have a title yet... it's started to cross my mind, considering what might work... but i tend to leave that to the end (almost with the artwork) anyways so it's not super important yet.

any suggestions? email me or use the messageboard, i check both.

k

tonight there was a small fire in our building... i was just getting ready to record more vocals when the alarm went off... at first we wondered if it was a false alarm, but when i checked the hallway i could smell smoke. i ran back to the studio, unplugged the harddrive and stuffed it into a bag, grabbed my gibson (while marc grabbed his upright bass) and we carted everything down the 9 flights of stairs. thank god the fire department is only a couple blocks up the street... we could hear the sirens and see the trucks coming from the window even before we got our shoes on. kinda funny, waiting in the lobby with the other tenants, holding my harddrive - but at least if the building burnt down the record was safe!!

back to recording...
k

last night i just didn't have luck on my side... i was playing keyboards for Courtney at one of her shows... but when i got there and powered on my keyboard for soundcheck, my piano was gave me an error message and wouldn't work. i raced to Long & McQuade, scraped in the door just before closing time... they looked up the error online for me and apparently it's an "internal malfunction" that has to be serviced by a dealer (ugh)! i rented a new keyboard, got back to the gig and set it up, only to find that my sustain pedal was the wrong polarity.... in other words, when you use an incompatible sustain pedal, it ends up doing the opposite of what it's supposed to do - it sustains when not being used and cuts the sustain when it's pressed. (it's a simple polarity issue and i've never understood why manufacturers can't just all use the same standard of polarity)....so ended up racing home to get another sustain pedal (which made it all the more frustrating because it rendered the "time-saving" trip to L&M's kinda useless, i could have just run all the way home the first time and got another keyboard).

bleh. that, plus that marc was feeling under the weather... what an evening! at least it was fun to play with Ben and Court again as a full band... we haven't been able to do that for a few months due to touring schedules, etc.

k