Cutting Tracks

The past few days were pretty rough, but I did get to cut a whole bunch of tracks with Kelly Toledano (working along with me in the project Model Minority) and Ashi Toledano (Kelly's brother).

A shitload of tracks.

Kelly and Ashi Toledano came up to Berkeley from SoCal (Palmdale) early Thursday morning around 5 or 6 AM. I had been drinking from Wednesday night all the way up until then, so I had to crash for a little bit before we got to work.

I woke up Thursday at around 10 AM or so, and we decided to cut all of Ashi's tracks. I think Ashi might not have had much studio experience, but he was a real trooper. We set up all his tracks and he was ready to go! I can tell he practiced like crazy, since he cut most of the tracks in one take.

5 tracks: 4 hours.

After that, we decided to take a break and we cut maybe 2 or Kelly's tracks. The work went a bit slower since we just ate lunch and we were pretty tired.

2 tracks: 2 hours.

We decide to go with our friend David to SF to meet up with another buddy Anthony. We just ended up drinking a bit at Gordon Biersch and playing some pool at Anthony's place. Eventually, we got back home around 3, ready for some sleep and the next day.

0 tracks: 8 hours.

The next day, Kelly hit the tracks hard. We went from 11 AM to about 3 PM nonstop, and cut about 8 tracks in a row. We ended the day by having a nice drink. And as soon as we were done, the brothers decided to go and hang out in SF (and then leave for home immediately after).

8 tracks: 4 hours.

Total: 15 tracks: 10 hours (work) 36 hours (span).

I swear, people who have been practicing at home before they go to the studio to record is every audio engineer's wet dream, because there are no hassles, no silly retakes, no changing the lyrics here, forgetting the structure there.

So a note to all you musicians out there: practice before you go to the studio, and record tracks like that! Don't piss off your audio engineer/producer! Save some damn money!