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Frying Nemo Band: Recording some songs - August 2005
and ongoing
The morning we started
recording our Frying Nemo demo came early for all
of us, but Nowell especially I think.
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We recorded in Bryan Arzaga's
Soundtracks studio in San Jose, a short jeepney ride
north of Dumaguete. Bryan has a full studio setup
in his basement, the final audio feed goes into his
computer where it's converted into a digital track
for a cd.
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We recorded each instrument
separately, but to save some time (and money) we recorded
the bass and drums together. Kerwin couldn't make
it to the recording session, so Gerard Locsin from
Dumaguete's well-known Enchi reggae band played the
drums on the first three songs for our Frying Nemo
demo cd.
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Raul is not only a great
saxophonist, he's a conductor too.
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After Nowell and Gerard
finished the drum and bass track, I got to record
my rhythm guitar track and then the vocals. The screen
is in front of the mike to prevent the popping sound
of my breath coming through on the recording.
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Next to record was lead
guitarist Steve De neef from Belgium.
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Raul added his signature
sax to the tracks last.
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I forget what these guys
were talking about in this photo, but it was funny
as I remember.
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To add a little polish
to the nearly finished songs, Gerard recorded some
backing vocals and bongo percussion accents.
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Sometimes it was stressful
trying to keep all the parts of each song tied together
and sounding good.
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After we finished each
of the instrument tracks we got to listen to a rough
cut of the songs on Bryan's computer.
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The next time we recorded
Bryan's studio wasn't available so we set up our own
recording studio at Kerwin's house.
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Ace on lead guitar knew
how to set up the mixing board and connect it to his
computer so that we could record our song. Kerwin
sent a text message to his DJ friend at a local radio
station while we were setting up the equipment and
we heard over the radio "hey everyone, Frying
Nemo is in the studio today, they are one of my favorite
local bands". It was a good way to get everyone's
confidence up before the recording session I thought.
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We recorded a song that
Kerwin wrote called "83"; it's a great song,
but Kerwin has never told us what the title of the
song means. To start the demo for 83, Kerwin recorded
his drum track first.
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After Kerwin's drums,
I recorded the rhythm guitar track since our new bass
player Kekerdz was just playing the song for the first
time that day.
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It was a little intimidating
to record my vocal track with everyone watching! In
this photo, I'm keeping time by counting off on my
fingers to make sure that I came in at the right time
with my vocals.
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Kerwin is a multi-instrumentalist.
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Kekerdz was up next and
put down his funky bass beat to add to the developing
song.
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Some of us in Frying Nemo
are more mature than others.
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After Kekerdz finished
his bass line, Raul recorded his saxophone solo and
riffs.
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At this point the song
was starting to come together so we stopped to listen
to what we had recorded so far.
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Ace was the last track
with his smoking lead guitar which made the song sound
a lot more polished.
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Kerwin took a little time
to practice his arena rock stage act.
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I think in this shot we
were listening to the progress on the song so far,
though I can't remember why Kerwin and Raul were laughing,
hopefully it wasn't because of the song!
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Ace recorded his lead
guitar parts while listening to the partially finished
song it the headphones.
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Here's some album artwork
for our demo cd in progress. If you download the songs
and want to print out the artwork, just click on the
images above to get a .pdf copy of the front and back
of the cd case booklet insert.
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Here's the cd case tray
insert, just click on the image above to download
a .pdf of the artwork.
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| Written
by Raul Limbaga on sax, it's the jazziest
song on the demo |
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| Written
by Raul Limbaga on sax, it's our three-chord
punk song |
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| Written
by Kerwin Elman on drums; the title
is Kerwin's riddle |
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| Written
by Raul, it's our first song in Tagalog,
the national dialect |
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| Written
by all of us, it's a jam that we usually
start out our set with |
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After two months of playing and
practicing around Dumaguete, Frying Nemo was starting
to gain some momentum, although at the end of August
Steve De neef our lead guitarist had to return to his
home in Belgium to study jazz guitar. Luckily Ace Descuatan
was back in Dumaguete and had September off because
he was getting ready to move to Kansas to get married.
The month that we had Ace playing with us went by really
fast, though we managed to play at Hayahay every Wednesday
night with him and also record Kerwin's song "83"
before he had to leave Dumaguete. We are planning a
reunion tour with Ace for some time in the future.
(Click
here to see the photo essay--39 photos) |
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