Monthly Archives: August 2011

Week 1: Pete Eisenberg and Tom Holmes – “A Penny Around My Neck”

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I kicked off my challenge to record a new artist each week with Tom Holmes, my friend from Valley Access Channels, and his friend Pete Eisenberg. Without further ado, here’s the song we recorded.

Audio MP3

A Penny Around My Neck
by Pete Eisenberg

A penny around my neck, a place for you in my heart
Time and Life proceeded to try to tear us apart
Life’s funny like that, it will never cease to be.
I will always be there for you, you’ll always do the same for me

What if we never met? How much different would we be?
Sometimes I think about that and laugh, it helps me to believe
That we were brought together, a family to the core
It reminds me of this penny from 1964

Chorus:
It was the year we met the Beatles and surrounded by candles
Dylan taught them all how to turn on
He said “The national bank at a profit sold roadmaps for your soul”
Everybody was diggin’ that rock and roll

We convicted old Jack Ruby for killing a patsy
Malcolm left the nation of Islam
Mandela he was sentenced to serve his life inside
And Martin Luther King he won a Nobel peace prize

To Kill a Mockingbird won an academy award
And three Civil Rights Workers brought tears to our eyes

Have we come any further since that year?
A lot has changed between us but keep this one thing clear
I want you to know what this penny means to me
Hanging around my neck constantly

Chorus

A penny around my neck, a place for you near my heart
Time and Life proceeded to try to tear us apart
Life’s funny like that it will never cease to be
I will always be there for you, you’ll always be my lucky penny

I will always be there for you, and you’ll always be my lucky Penny!

Behind the Scenes

Here’s a short video that explains the story behind this song.

We recorded in a music room down in Pete’s basement. After turning the A/C off, it was actually a pretty good-sounding room. Between the carpet, the couch, and things on the walls there was very little echo.

My portable recording setup.

We started the song off by recording Pete’s guitar, the driving force of the song. His rhythm was really on, so against my usual instincts I decided to not force a metronome on him. I used two identical mics (Audio Technica 4040s), one over the sound hole and one over the fretboard. That way, I could later pan the two tracks left and right to give the guitar a fuller, stereo sound.

Pete recording guitar

For Pete’s vocals, I used the same mic as the guitar, but with a pop filter. I didn’t do any EQing to Pete’s voice, it’s just naturally super rich and awesome sounding.

Pete steps up to the mic

Looking back, it would have made much more sense to use a metronome from the beginning, because next I had Tom record the drum track. He could have easily looped his drum machine had we used a metronome.

But in the end his drum machine worked out great. I recorded both analog and MIDI signals, and I ended up scrapping the MIDI track in favor of the drum machine’s sounds. Tom recorded three separate drum tracks. First was a shaker, which I panned to the right in the final mix. Second was a ride cymbal, which I panned to the left. And third was the kick and snare drum track, which I kept in the center.

Tom and his drum machine

Next we recorded Tom’s bass line. To even out the bass volume from note to note, I used a lot of compression, much more than any other instrument in the song.

Tom getting into "serious bass player" mode

Next, we recorded two mandolin parts, mostly just because Pete has two of them! One was a standard mandolin, and the other was an octave mandolin. I swear, all you have to do to make an acoustic guitar song sound more sparkling and professional is put a mandolin part on top of it.

Pete and his octave mandolin

After I left Pete’s place and went to my producer’s cave in Minneapolis, I recorded a couple more tracks – the acoustic guitar solo and the vocal harmonies for the second chorus. It’s funny, my vocal track by itself sounds kind of flat and wussy, but blended with Pete’s voice it morphs to take on his inflection.

I had a lot of fun recording with these guys, and hopefully one of these days I’ll make it back out to Pete’s house to jam with them!

Recording Night at Pete’s

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Just a quick update, since it’s pretty late. I just finished recording a song with Tom Holmes and his friend Pete Eisenberg. Pete invited us over to his house beforehand for a delicious meal. It was great to meet Pete, who also happens to be a 3M employee. He’s originally from upstate New York. He moved to Boston, where he met his wife, and they later came to Minnesota when Pete’s career led him to the 3M headquarters in St. Paul.

Pete and Tom’s song is sounding really good so far. With a room full of guitars, how could it not turn out awesome? Pete played acoustic guitar, mandolin, and sang. Tom laid down electric bass and synth drums with his drum machine. We weren’t sure how that would mix in with Pete’s acoustic instruments, but I think it’s going to sound really cool together. I may try adding a little guitar melody and backing vocals, but I think the song is almost good to go. Check back this Sunday for the final mix!

Song a Week Kickoff!

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This week marks the start of my challenge to record one new artist every week. And to start us off is a friend of mine and a talented drummer, guitarist, bassist, etc. – Tom Holmes. He was raised on old-school techno and grew up with some of the guys in Atmosphere. At the same time, he loves blues and anything with a good guitar riff. It does say something when you name your son Hendrix!

Tom and Hendrix

I’m really looking forward to producing Tom’s song. It sounds like it will be a heartfelt song dedicated to a friend of his. I’ll be heading back to Stillwater this week, and we’ll hopefully have something ready to post by the weekend!

Nose to the Grindstone

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The muggy Minnesota summer is wrapping up, and we’re heading into my favorite time of the year. For some reason fall gives me a boost of energy and motivation. Probably from the years of recovering from summer vacation brain melt. Anyways, it’s perfect timing for this song a week project to start next week. No one has volunteered for the first week yet, since everyone wants as much time as possible to write their songs. But I’ll hopefully be able to convince someone this weekend.

I just came back from an inspiring trip to California. The first half of my adventure was hanging out in LA with my friends Brandon, Doug, and Carson. Brandon co-runs a really successful YouTube channel now, and it was awesome seeing how he lives and breathes his video work. It’s a crazy balance between being able to do anything you want, but having the discipline to keep putting out quality work every week. It inspired me to rethink my priorities. For one, my fleeting desire for a full-time job is now out the window again! Right now I think working nonstop on my creative skills is ten times more important than saving up money.

For the second half of my California trip, I went to the San Fransisco Outside Lands music festival with my friends Nick and Kevin. I don’t know that I gleaned that much as a producer, but we saw a boatload of awesome bands! I thought I would be sick of music in general by the end of the weekend, but there was enough variety to keep it exciting. The best surprise out of the bunch was Phantogram, whose female singer does some catchy and quirky vocal looping.

Jose Gonzales’ band Junip was another incredible just-under-the-radar group. Such a smooth mix of minimalist acoustic and electric sounds. And of course, the big names were all really entertaining – Arcade Fire, The Decemberists, Muse (what a light show!) and The Black Keys. Would I ever want to be on stage at a festival like Outside Lands? Not sure. It would be a ton of work to get to that point, but it could be a heck of a lot of fun along the way…

 

Orchestration

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For you guys that are coming in to record your songs, I’d be happy to help orchestrate your song by adding additional instruments. I play piano, guitar, electric bass, and sing decently if you think any of these would fit in your song. If you ask nicely, I might even dust off my violin. We’ll have plenty of instruments at our disposal, synthesized and real.

Mitchell Johnson ticklin' the ivories at our house piano.

If you have musician friends you’d like to include on your track, bring them with! For mixing reasons, it’s usually better to record each instrument individually. But if you want everyone to play together as a group, we can do that, too.