The New Ancients / Every Branch a Quill

2008-05-01T13:50:00.000-07:00

Right On!

Here it is. And here's the Paypal link by which it can be ordered.
Have at it!!

-pete

2008-03-31T07:36:00.000-07:00

A Master Emerges....Along With an Album Name....

well there it is in all it's done-ness:

The finals were delivered late this past friday from Alan Douches at West West Side Music, and they do sound wonderful. The album is called "Every Branch a Quill" and has 13 pretty powerful songs. This record should be blasted as loud as you can bear it upon first listen. Keep your eyes closed too... invite some friends to join you...
The great Dave Ulrich passed off the artwork for the layout to us last week too... so tonight instead of working on recordings we will be readying the package for the press plant so we can get these things into your hands ASAP. I know this album seems like it will never actually materialize, but trust me, it wont be long now. I was hoping to be saying that late last year - but lots of things conspire to foil your plans. Oh Well. I promise though, it will be worth the wait. There is some really good stuff on this. I'd also like to ask everyone to help us out in funding this - as it was a pretty expensive record to make - i'd like to get it paid off as quickly as we can - not because we're making any money off of it - but it will allow us to make another one next year (which has already been started). So here's how you can help:

1) extra crumpled dollars!!! if you have any - donate!! if you go to http://www.theorb.org and donate via paypal and designate that it's for the New Ancients Music - we will get that $$ and it will go towards offsetting the cost of the production. You can also send donations directly to us at Submergent Music using this paypal button below - if you choose to drop us some love using this you will receive the CD and a bunch of other free goodies in the mail. Give it a try.

2) SHOWS. if you go to a church that would be into getting the band to come and play a service or an event, if you run a coffee house, club, living room or basement show, etc etc, - contact me (pete@submergentmusic.com) - and we'll talk shop.
3) Spread the word about this music. Since this is a band made up entirely of people who have full time jobs and families and other bands - we don't tour and play out - so we don't do any work to get exposure... but word of mouth is a powerful and potent tool for this. talk it up!
4) Actually BUY the music when it's available. This is huge. If you do get the CD (this goes for the 1st one as well).... make sure you actually bought it. If you made a copy of it from a friend or downloaded it you just took 10 bucks from me. 10 bucks that would have been great to put towards paying for the art that i worked so very hard to make with NO ONE paying me to do so in the first place. Get it? I know it's easy to just make copies or download CD's by big rich rock stars without a hit on your conscience - but just remember us sitting in a junky little basement studio making these CDs: None of us drove Hummers to those sessions.

Cool - stay tuned for more news..... Pete

2008-01-12T10:30:00.001-08:00

This is it....

All mixed and ready for the business by Mr. Alan Douches at West West Side Music. The disc has been sent off and we should being hearing the final product in mid February. What a relief to have this project done. It was definitely the most involved and complex recording i've ever done to date - i need to do some dumbed down rock projects for a bit - stuff with less track counts. This stuff was exhausting to mix!

2007-12-17T05:57:00.000-08:00

Tracking DONE!
yes sir-ee-bob, we are finally done with the recording phase for this album. Last night i was finally able to pin Jeff Ulrich down for a few hours (most likely by the offer of a sweet chilli dinner and a Blue Moon Belgian White) to record vocals for Be Thou My Vision. All that's left now is a few mix tweaks and it's time to contact the mastering people.
Not Long Now...

2007-11-29T14:50:00.000-08:00

Oooo it's been a while... but we have good news. This CD is almost done!
it's true... as of the last entry in this blog it seems we had just finished the EP. Well, lots of time has past and lots of sessions were done since then... we are now on the cusp of finishing all of it. As of now, one more vocal track needs to be done by Jeff, and i am putting final tweaks on the mixes. I'm also doing little tidbits of "bonus" tracking.... for example, it was requested (begged and pleaded) by one friend who gave me the Stagemaster guitar (see pic) that i use it on something. Ok, no problem.

Also (this is a good one); my friend Matt told me a story about how when he was in grade school he was asked on the night of a recorder recital by the band director "not to play at all, just move your fingers". I guess he was so bad the teacher did not want him to ruin the 3rd grader performance... as if that were really possible in the first place. He wanted to know if i could record him playing the recorder on "anything on the CD" so that he could mail a copy to his old teacher with a note attached saying something to the effect of "Eat It Mrs. Acosta!!". So we had him over on monday and worked hard on figuring out how to fit one hell of an out of tune plastic whistle into one of the songs. Check 'em out:

2007-09-10T11:03:00.001-07:00

Here's the EP!
The New Ancients "These Burdens EP" will be in the studio tomorrow and we are taking orders now at this page here. Sooo many sessions have been done since the last update i don't have time to write about it all now.. but i just found this:
Soul Searching. This is a trailer for the movie that features "Dying Faith" and has a bunch of ORB footage. Check it out... there are some familiar faces in this thing.

2007-08-14T04:53:00.000-07:00

Artwork underway!
Brian Jones has begun the artwork for the EP - here's a little taste of what we might see for a cover for this thing:

Excellent. No recording was done last night (at least by me) as a bunch of us attended a CD release show for a band called Aqua Closet who i produced an EP for a couple months ago. Great show - unfortunately this was their last one before they all go off to different colleges. Pop over to their myspace to get a sample. Here's a shot of the action... notice Matt Littlehale's head in the foreground:

As for the New Ancients' work - i did finish yet another song over the weekend ("Stars of Light") - so that brings us to 4 totally done and about 4 more poised for completion. We're getting there.

2007-08-07T07:10:00.000-07:00

The EP is Done!
Although only in internet form at this point. I put the first 3 songs up on The New Ancients' myspace page, so pop on over there for a listen. This week Brian Jones will be hammering away on some art for the EP insert - once that is done we will send this out for a short run duplication and offer them for sale as part of the "pre-buy" for the full length. In other words, buy the EP for 10 bucks and you get the full length when it comes out later this year.
Last night's session was a vocal-filled extravaganza. We worked on Lamb of God and Stars. Emily knocked out her part quite nicely - since it was only me and the girls, there was no one taking pictures, so the only coverage i had was the picture i took of the equipment so i can keep track of the settings in case we need to go back and re-do something...here's what i was running her vocal through:

that's great. anyway - more songs are getting close to being finished... so in the meantime, go enjoy the first 3.

2007-07-18T08:17:00.001-07:00

Off to master they go....

this week the first 3 songs were sent to Alan Douches of West West Side Music for the finishing touches before we press the EP. Alan has mastered albums for some of our favorite music like Further Seems Forever, Burning Airlines, Sufjan Stevens, The Promise Ring, Ben Folds Five... the list just goes on and on. A few weeks and that should be back... in the meantime i believe Brian Jones will be working on some art for us. Yep.
This weeks session was fgast and furious... lots of work done on Lavish Love, a new one called Stars of Light, lots of girl's vocals out of the way... lots of recording the Jaymar, which is a little moldy toy piano that Christian found in the trash. Excellent.

All the usuals were there doing what they do best...
I got a new phone (you can guess which one) which in addition to doing everything but actually making french fries is a camera too, so i snapped a few shots of the action - heres the usual crew in the back of the room:

Jay was on face duty. He's does well. Very Well.

Tim had this strange look on his face - like i was going to grab my phone and make a run for it. Better keep an eye on him.

2007-06-29T06:29:00.000-07:00

First 3 Almost DONE!
ya ya... you heard right. the first 3 songs of the next New Ancients album are just about done. for the last 3 days i've been in serious mix mode. i'd say one more vocal track to be recorded for one of them and then some edits here and there and it's off to the mastering house. not much other news to report - so here's a pic of cwis playing a toy piano he found in the trash (of course it was used on a song already - bonus points for anyone who can pick it out and tell me where i used it).

2007-06-11T20:53:00.000-07:00

so we are planning a little teaser here to hold you over while we are working on the new CD. We have picked 3 new songs and 2 live recordings to put together and we will release these as an EP for the "pre-buy" of the full length. Here's how it works: you buy the EP - get 3 new songs that will be appearing on the next New Ancients album in addition to recordings of 2 live songs we did for the Princeton Audio Journal CD and you will be entitled to 1 free copy of the new CD when it's done. Sound good? you bet it does.

anyway - tonight we worked on getting vocals done for the songs we are planning for the pre-buy EP - so that meant work for Emily and Leah. Also there tonite was the great Tom Sasso, Brian Jones, Jay Nicastro, and of course me and Tim.

Brian Jones was there shootin shots and banging his glockenspiel. I also caught a shot of him playing some sweet tuneage on one of the many high-end instruments here at Submergent Recording.

Jay has been helping me at the studio for a while now - and by helping me i mean not so much in running cables, setting up mics, setting the gear, getting me coffee, etc... but rather fireing off Seinfeld quotes and laughing loudly in the background... also an important job in it's own right. All joking aside he has been a lot of fun to have around.

This week coming up i will be hammering out some drum parts i still have to go as well as a lead track for one of the EP songs... then next week (hopefully) the incomparable Jef Ulrich and Chris DelaCruz will be back from Europe and we will get some vocals and guitar work out of those two. In the meantime... i have editting to do....

2007-06-04T07:49:00.000-07:00

More work comming tonight. a few songs nearing completion.....

2007-05-18T08:28:00.000-07:00

Haha -

http://www.russomusic.com/07_interviews.html

good stuff.

2007-05-07T20:39:00.000-07:00

Settlers of Catan?
This german boardgame seems to have claimed most of the regular attendees of the sessions we're doing this week. Tom Sasso was in the pen for a bit but said he had to leave early to join a game in progress. Christian said he was going to be late earlier today when i talked to him. I find out later during the session (i was conducting by myself for the most part) that he was out playing a heated round of this island inhabitation game. Jay N. who has been sitting in on sessions with me recently was also rumored to be out playing. What the heck? So it was just tim and i again, which is ok as we have tons of stuff we can do on our own... although at this point tim and i are doing most of the work on this album. The two of us tried out a bunch of new gear tonite that we got from the infamous Russo's Tent Sale this weekend. Some of it will be staying, and some will get sold for sure. We have 2 brand new songs we are now working on, and they are catchy. This promises to be one great CD....

2007-04-26T04:46:00.000-07:00

Well, the budget wasn't approved. Unbelievable. I'll just put that behind me and get down to business.
It's been a few weeks without an update here, but have no fear: we are still at it! I will try and remember all the news and fill you all in. We are still slowly making progress on the recording... it grinds to a crawl when you're trying to make 2 full length albums with 2 bands that have many of the same people in them (the New Ancients and The Ringout), but we're doing our best. We actually started some vocals in the last couple weeks and got some keepers from Michelle and newcomer Leah for These Burdens and Great God. These guys have very similar voices and they are really mixing well. Michelle busted up her arm a while back but it hasn't seemed to hurt her signing which is good. Although now she can't really do those wild "over the head hand claps" she usually does during the ORB services.
So we were held up for a couple weeks because i was doing location and interview recording for a group at Princeton Seminary who is doing an audio journal type CD featuring the ORB. It was a lot of work, but fun at the same time. We basically got a 15 track live New Ancients CD out of this... that will be on the shelf for now as there are no plans to release it. The CD that Princeton is releasing will i guess have some of the songs on it along with interviews with Christian, Nicky D, Kathleen Gill, Tom Sasso, and others.
So, after that was all mixed and shipped over to Princeton we got back to work on the album. We've been acquiring instruments here at an alarming rate, so there's lots of new sounds on this recording so far. Tim, Jay Bueno and myself were working last night and we counted 17 stringed instruments down in the studio. There is barely enough room to walk in there now. Among all the goodies is a new banjo being lent to us by the great Dave Petillo. As of now, it looks like we are not going to be able to get Dave Ulrich (did banjo on the first CD) to play for quite a while. He is taking some time off of his job at the Sci-Fi channel to bike across the country with a friend. Or... at least thats what he's telling us. So in lieu of that news, we picked up a banjo and have started using it all over the place. Also new on deck is a sweet little concertina that Brian Jones will be squeezin' for some of these songs. That's coming up next session i hope. What else... more vocal work coming up too... more guest singers... getting Andy Bova to hit some drums for a few of these gems.... hopefully we'll get Pete Nilsen back for some more astounding violin work too. These songs are really some of the best work we've ever done at this studio. I can't believe how monsterous Great God is sounding.... goose bumps central.
That's enough for now. Here's a little video compilation from the last 2 sessions. More of the same here, but some nice footage of Christian acting like a buffoon towards the end. Enjoy!

2007-02-26T20:08:00.000-08:00

So for those who don't know, the New Ancients do the music for the sunday services at The ORB. Recently, the board asked the heads of all the ministries there to come up with a budget for the year. since i'm "sort of in charge" of the music, it was my job to come up with what we the band would need for the coming year. here's the budget i came up with for the band:

sunday night service music requirements:

technicals:

2 smoke/fog machines
4 1 gallon containers of coconut scented fog liquid
1 3' diameter mirrored disco ball
4 400W spotlights
1 LFI I-2000 High Power LPSS (Lamp Pumped Solid-state) laser system
1 12' x 24' projection screen (mounted behind performers)
1 10000 lumen projector
10 hrs (minimum) of Richard Simmons' Sweatin to The Oldies
tapes to be used in projections set behind performers.

4 personal platforms for performers:
- 3' by 3' wooden platforms raised 1' with metal grating sufaces.
- powerful fan mounted in platform to blow air upwards on performer
effectively blowing hair upwards and giving clothing a more active
appearance.
- 4 200 watt lights mounted in each box to "under light" the performer
for added impact.
- each platform shall have a footswitch that the performer can use to turn on
the unit during extra praise choruses and solos.
materials cost: $15,000

performer transportation:
-6 segway personal transport units shall be available for performers at all
times before, during and after the service.

cost: (@ 5k each) $30,000

crew:
-a crew of 10 (ten) stage technicians shall be available at all times.
each member shall be equiped with the following:

- flashlight
- 600volt taser
- toothbrush
- hairdryer
- makeup kit
- sewing kit
- duct tape
- notary puplic stamps (each member shall be a registered notary public)
- defribrillator
- $2500 cash on hand at all times.

*NOTE* crew must keep all congregation members away from performers at a distance of at least 20 feet at all times before and after the service.

cost per week: $30,000

wardrobe:
6 full length evening gowns
6 color coordinated jumpsuits ala "The Bay City Rollers"
6 full Medivial costumes ranging from serf to nobelman and nobelwoman
6 star trek outfits
The following Muppet Show outfits:
1 full size kermit the frog outfit
1 full size fozzie bear outfit
1 full size miss piggy outfit
1 full size Dr. Teeth outfit
1 full size Sgt. Floyd Pepper outfit
1 full size Zoot outfit
1 full size Janice outfit
1 full size Lips outfit
1 full size Animal outfit

wardrobe cost: $6000

before each service the follow foods/drinks/preparational items will available
to the performers:

1 blender
1 electric slicer
1 fruit centrifuge
1 large refridgerator containing:
5 evian and 10 perrier waters (NO Aquafina!!!)
1 gallon of fresh orange juice
10 lemons
1 kiwi (skin removed)
4 plain yogurts and 1 maple vanillia yogurt
1 jar of pickled cactus
6 varieties of hot sauce
roast beef
chicken
Manchego goat cheese
lobster tails (fresh)
6 bottles of new castle lager
2 bottles of strawberry flavored milk
1 jar of honey
a large box of salt
2 large boxed of Arm and Hammer baking soda
1 extremely large box with a 60%-40% mix of salt and arm and hammer baking
soda
10 potatoes
1 gallon of olive oil
a wok
1 10 gallon kettle to boil water
1 box of Frankenberry cereal
6 pairs of chopsticks

equipment total ( 1 time total): $800
weekly subtotal (for food): $300

total - $82,100

here's a short vid clip of me doing some bass, and then talking to christian as he tells me how the board voted on my proposal.

2007-02-21T06:06:00.000-08:00

short night last night as we only worked on 1 song (What'er He Sends).
I did few passes for a drum track, some tambo and bells, and Rob started work
on the horn part he had written.

Love it! sounds so good. this is going to be one heck of a sunny song when it's done. tom was there as usual taking pics and vids and spraying tim in the ears with compressed air. Good times. Tim brough over his violin that he found in the attic of his parents house and the 2 of us tried to play some things; he on his fiddle and me on my cello. That was pretty funny - a couple of total noobs on their stringed instruments trying to kick out the jams.

The night quickly degraded into the 4 of us just listening to Wesley Willis songs. Someone needs to be there keeping the night on track! Oh wait.. i think that's my job. Ooops.
I feel like this album is going so slowly at this point.. i need to start putting in more time on it or it will take 2 years to complete.

2007-02-06T11:10:00.000-08:00

Moving Forward by Going Backwards.

So we are making progress by going back and re-doing all the scratch tracks that have been put down so far. For now, we seem to be focusing on "Great God", "Chase The Shades of Night", "These Burdens", and something else i can't remember right now. Those songs are the furthest along, so they have momentum and are easy to work on. Last night it was me, christian, michelle, tim, tom, sandy, and Blue (who showed up knowing full well that he may not get to actually play anything - but he was there for the laughs). we focused mainly on drums as i had the drum room set up and ready to go from a couple days prior. I got some ideas for beats from christian (you can see him in this weeks video coaching me - very funny). i did many takes of this simple little pattern. many takes:

here i am tuning up a drum. i hate that beard. it's coming off tonite.

Tom again did the photos and vids... he's got this new little gag going where he's sneaking up on people in the control room and spraying them in the ear with compressed air. check out the video for his latest victims. Now that i think of it.. that's probably not the best idea to do to an audio engineer.

While i did take after take of 2 songs on the drums and christian played the comedy puppet, tim ran the board and computer and blue noodled his banjo. While we rocked, the girls knit.

here's the vid for this week. i left it a bit longer since youtube seems to have an unlimited amount of storage space for whatever junk people want to let the world in on. good for us!

2007-01-30T05:48:00.000-08:00

Chase The Shades baby...

Last night we knocked out some serious parts for "Chase The Shades of Night". Mr Tom Sasso was alive and well after winning his cage fight brawl contest this weekend and in top form for taking vids and pics. See?

He brought chips with him to shower upon the people and my floor. Note Christian is holding the bag upside down in this picture. Yay! Rats to follow!

Anyway - i've been using a pair of older AKG 451EB small diaphram condenser mics for things like overheads, percussion, acoustic guitars, etc. for like 8 or 9 years now and i've grown very used to them (i.e. love them), but in recent weeks, they have been crappin out on me in the middle of sessions. They both have different noise issues and don't sound matched any more. Time to send 'em out for a good old fashioned fixin'. In the meantime, i had to bite the bullet and buy new mics. ugh. i literally can not stop buying equipment - even when i want to. so last night we tried out a pair of josephson C42 mics. i liked them on the acoustics and percussion bits we used them on, tomorrow night we'll see how they perform on drum overheads. here's me setting them up for some acoustic tracks:

in addition to guitars, we put some rhodes lines down for the song as well. I know, we don't own a rhodes, but through the magic of computers, almost anyone can without the worry of keeping it tune or storing it.

finally, here's tom's little video montage of the night.

2007-01-24T19:29:00.000-08:00

Not too much to report this week as one of the bands tim and i are in with Jeff Ulrich (the Ringout) had a show on monday, so the usual session was off. We played in Somerville, NJ at a burger joint. Yes, a burger restaurant. Like with a big counter with registers and guys in red uniforms working the grill. They moved all the tables out of the way, set up a PA, and let the good times roll. We ate burgers and rocked. Actually, Jeff had a burger and i had rice pudding. The show was ok, it was the second show we've done with our new bass player Scott, who is working out superbly. We love him. Not too much to note about the night other than me locking the keys in the van and having to pay 100 dollars to some guy to come out at 11 PM and pick his way into it. Good Times indeed. So a couple days later, Tim and I were back in the studio wth a local band who finished early and we decided to make up for not doing a New Ancients session on monday. We didn't get much accomplised other than scratching out some stuff... here's a pic of tim and the laptop running Ableton Live providing sweet sweet drum beats for bed tracks for "Paper Sky":

I've also done some prelim acoustic drum and bass parts, and the great Anthony Sole was here with some tasty guitar playing on "These Burdens". Hard to believe we are actually making progress. More to come next week for sure - hopefully some more videos too.

2007-01-10T06:30:00.000-08:00

A Time For Class

Ever since working on the last Unsent Letters album "Better Than Beautiful", i've wanted to get my hands on a old, used cello to have at the studio. Aaron Anastasi had a couple guys from Princeton come with him one session who were there to play violin and cello for a song or two and the sound of the recorded cello just knocked me out. Now granted, this guy could REALLY play... but i've always wanted to get one. So lo and behold, this christmas, my parents up and got me a cello. Whew! (They actually rented it for me so i could see if i indeed was up for learning it). Now, i've been playing lots of instruments for a number of years, and sort of consider myself able to pick up pretty much anything and within an hour or so get something on it to sound at least good enough to use in one of our super-densely-layered multitracked indy electro-acoustic songs (in a recorded setting). Not So on a Cello. It is one of the hardest things i've ever tried to play. period. There's no faking it on a cello, thats for sure. after 10 minutes or so i sounded like i was playing a tree saw with a cat stretched between 2 ends of a stick. I did however love the challenge and the reward of "sort of getting it" every once in a while. I decided to keep it and start working at it. That was last week. For this weeks session, my good friend and ex band mate Pete Nilsen came in to do some violin for "Great God" over the top of a cello and bowed double bass part i had written and recorded.

In the old days, i was in a band with Pete and his brother John called Choose This Day, along with Matt Agresti on bass. Pete also played violin for the first Million Time Winner album and did some parts for "Jesus Master" on "Light For Dark Eyes" that never made the final cut. *sniff*. Pete spent last year in Russia studying violin with some sort of Ninjia Violin Masters or something and it showed. We started noodling around (he on his violin and me like an idiot on my rented cello) and everyone in the room just started howling it sounded so awesome. By the end of the night we had what may very well be the sonic pinacle of this recording and we haven't even finished one tune! The parts he arranged were that good. I tell you we will be hard pressed to match the level of intensity he brought to this track on the rest of the recording. Check the videos of Pete warming up.
While Pete wrote out his arrangements, tim and i put down a temporary bass track. While we were making noise down in the studio, Matt was upstairs churning out a real New Ancients web page. Soon soon. The page will have a lot of album info from the last release that just couldn't fit in the layout, but it's still interesting none the less. Want to see who played what on Light For Dark Eyes? go see http://www.thenewancients.com (when it's done of course).

2007-01-10T06:28:00.000-08:00

not much to report as i was the only one working this night. i scratched a few guitar lines and noodled around with some drum ideas. I also did some programming for beats i'm thinking of using on "Chase The Shades of Night".
I got this groovy little Epiphone Valve Jr. 5 watt guitar amp recently. 5 watts doesn't sound like much does it? like what you'd expect from a desktop ipod speaker set or something. Let me tell you this little thing is the loudest 5 watts i've ever heard. i have a feeling it will show up on almost every song we do for this release.

2007-01-10T06:18:00.000-08:00

Well, well... here we go again.

It's 2007 and the New Ancients have begun another album. We already have identified about 10 or 11 tunes to tackle and have begun recording parts for them in hopes to whip up another knockout indy-neuveau-hymn CD. I got a lot of positive feedback about doing a blog on the recording process of the last CD, so it's time to start another one. These blogs will be organized a little differently; first off this one will be a separate blog itself, as the other one by the end was so long and full of embedded quicktime movie clips, that it took 15 minutes to load. Also, speaking of video clips, all the new ones will be hosted on the new boob-tube: Youtube.com, so anyone can see them anytime.Plus, it will save the ORB space on their server not having a 2 dozen or so 6 MB clips of their pastor acting like a mental patient.

This time around the recording process will look much the same as it did for "Light For Dark Eyes", with the exception of some new gear, new instruments, some dandy new microphones and guitar amps, and some new people lending their skills to the party. We should be working every week at least 1 session a week, so look for this thing to be completed around early 2008.
Serious. I'm being realistic.

Ok, on to the show!

The first session began with no ceremony or celebration to speak of, just get in, sit down, shut up and lets go! We began by choosing songs that we wanted to do... some of which are being demanded by people (quite fervently may add) and we started assembling scratch tracks for 5 or 6 of the 11 or so we had picked out. In attendance was Tim Bennett (doing electric guitars), Christian, Michelle, Tom (shootin the vids as usual), Brian Jones, and myself. I think christian did most of the scratch acoustics for the night, and Tim put down a few electric parts. Brian did some glockenspiel for "These Burdens" - i liked it so much i went ahead and ordered one of the same glocks that he has. i love it except for one or 2 of the notes being WAY sharp. oh well, that sort of thing never stopped us before!