Recording Waiting (Save Your Life) at Avatar Studios

The band at Avatar Studios in New York City in April 2005, re-recording “Waiting (Save Your Life)” with producer Gregg Wattenberg.

Studio Journal

The band wrote this journal for omnisoul.com during the sessions, as it ran at the time.

Day 1: Arriving in NYC

Hello friends! Welcome to our brand new feature on omnisoul.com. Visit us here every day as we will be updating you on the recording of “Waiting (save your life)” for the Fantastic Four soundtrack. It was a smooth drive from DE to NYC. There’s definitely something about this city that energizes me. I grew up in NY just outside of NYC so in a way it’s a bit of a homecoming for me. Our hotel is in a great location not far from times square. We hit the town and Tyler played some hockey with 8 year olds at the ESPN ZONE, we have some video tape that i’m sure will one day surface :-) (Refer to Exhibit B). We’ll begin recording tommorow at Avatar studios. What an incredible team we have to work with! I am so excited I want to go to sleep so that tommorow will come sooner. Thanks for stopping by the site and remember that we’ll be updating the journal feature of the site every day of recording! ‘Night…

Later on, Derek

Day 2: Drums Day

At 7am we were rudely awakened in our hotel from horribly loud construction down the hall. Now we’re unrested and have our first big day in the studio! After many irate calls to the front desk with no action to rectify the problem, we decided to switch hotels. At 10am we all arrive in the historic Avatar Studios located on West 53rd Street. Greeted by our producer, Gregg Wattenberg, we were anxious to get to work.

Jamie

Day 1 is drum day. It’s now 10am. Fast forward to 11:30pm. We finally had the right drum tones! It only took 13 hours and 30 minutes of playing drums and expirementing with different snares. Not too shabby. I was then able to cut the first tracks of our album before the day was done! Even though I was about to pass out, it was so much fun. Definitely an exhausting day for all of us due to our construction buddies at the hotel. ok… time to pass out. We’re all looking forward to laying down the bass tracks tomorrow!

Tyler

Day 3: Bass Day

So there were two very important discoveries today: (1) There’s a place around the corner from the studio that has these these slammin’ protein shakes. We literally all get 2 per day. My personal favorite is called the “health shake”. It features bananas, blueberries, strawberries, soy milk, vanilla frozen yogurt, and, of course, protein. And (2), Greg Gordon (our engineer) reminds us of ‘the dude’ from The Big Lebowski. From now on, whenever asking for his opinion on a sound or take, we say “does the Dude abide??” There’s nothing more satisfying than hearing “the Dude Abides” after tracking a part :-) BTW, If you’ve never seen The Big Lebowski, I give it a ‘strong to very strong’ recommendation. Thanks for listening - I’m off to get a shake.

Josh

Day 4

What up…today went great, I got to lay down all of my guitar tracks, and everything sounds sick. I used a Paul Reed Smith guitar, which I swore I wouldn’t do…but this one model just sounded amazing. I also used some Fenders as well and messed around with getting awesome guitar tones with “The Greggs”. Tracking today made me realize how tight our album is gonna sound and I can’t wait to finish tracking and get it out there! Derek got a chance to start getting some guitar sounds, which is gonna make the song sound even bigger. Get excited about it…cuz we are.

PS: Josh saw a “rat” when we were sitting in the bar lounge of our new hotel that we were moved to because the other hotel sucked…and he shrieked like a little girl. Turns out the “rat” was but a tiny mouse…I don’t know if that makes it any better.

PPS. I thought I saw Jay-Z when we were walking around the city and I myself shrieked like a little girl. There was a pimped out Mercedes SL500 stopped at a light, and I was freaking out, turns out it wasn’t him…maybe I should start wearing my glasses.

Shawn

Day 5

Although there is no proof through photography I do play electric guitar in the new version of “Waiting (save your life)”. My man Artie (instrument tech) has an amazing selection of vintage guitars. I fell in love with a Telecaster from the 1950’s. I NEED ONE. Anyone want to loan me 20-35 grand??? Anyway, this track is smokin’, i can’t wait for you all to hear it. Jamie is currently tracking some slammin’ piano and keyboard tracks. I’m sure he’ll take some time out later tonight to write you all about it. We’ve spent at least 12 hours in the studio every day of this process so far, it’s amazing to have a job that I love this much. It’s a dream come true. Thank you all for your undying support, it means the world to us all.

Much love, D nice

This morning, Derek finished up his guitar tracks, and then we moved on to keyboard stuff. I played some fun instruments today including an awesome Yamaha grand piano, a Wurlitzer, an old Moog and lots more. So, I got all my keyboard parts in Waiting banged out today. Tomorrow we’ll be moving on to some post-production, and then Derek will record the vocals. We’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel with this song. I think everyone’s gonna dig it. Many people have been asking me if we’ve made any drastic changes to the song. No drastic changes have been made, but all the changes we’ve made thusfar, in our opinion have enhanced the song for the best.

Adios guys … we’ll be home soon, Jamie

Day 6

Hey guys,

This is Derek checking in from NYC. Today was very very long. But very rewarding. Basically we made a bunch of decisions on arrangements, additional keyboard parts, how the guitars should be mixed. The song is really shaping up into everything we’ve ever wanted it to be. By 11pm the guys hit the town for our first Friday night in the big apple but I was feeling inspired to cut some vocals so I put in some overtime. By the time we figured out the right microphone to use it was midnight. I sang a couple takes and I felt really great about them. We’ll have to see what they sound like on Monday. I’m currently back at the hotel it’s 1am and I gotta hit the streets and find my bandmates. Man new york is amazing! One of the few places in the world where your night can begin at 1am. Have an awesome weekend everyone!!!

Derek

Days Off

For our day off, we decided to get the hell out of our smelly hotel rooms and get some “fresh air” in the city. We decided to go to Chelsea Pier, and hit some golf balls…some of us did better than others (refer to Exhibit A: the video). Before hitting some balls into the river we decided to get some food. Now, I ask you this, when was the last time you went to a restaurant where refills of Coke were not free? Well today was our day to experience this type of restaurant. The inside was packed so they told us it would be quicker if we went on the deck, which was directly in the sun. So when you’re getting a sunburn in the beginning of April, you’d like to have several beverages to drink, because the food is taking more than hour from the time we ordered. Long story short, Derek got them off the bill cause he’s the king of “can I talk to your manager?” Back to recording tomorrow…hell yea.

Shawn

Day 7

Today was a day where we had A LOT of downtime! 99.9% of the tracking has been completed. All that needs to be done now are the vocal harmonies and some small post-production ideas. Gregg and Greg spend the majority of the day working on cleaning up the Pro Tools session to get it prepared for mixing in LA. We’re trying to make sure that every miniscule detail of the song is ‘bullet-proof’. So far it’s sounding way better than I ever thought it could! Diana and Alan Meltzer (the owners of Wind-Up records) came by to the studio tonight to hang out and hear our progress. We got the thumbs up from them. Tomorrow is our last day in the studio, so we might be working a long day.

We’ll have the tune online for you next week!

Jamie

Last Day

Today was our last day in the studio, and it was spent putting the finishing touches on Waiting (save your life). We truly believe the song came out great, and we’re really exciting for all of you to hear it! We’re being told it’s going to be available online sometime next week, so be sure to check it out.

As fate would have it, we were treated to the best game of Madden 2005 football ever played: Shawn (the Eagles) vs. playstation (the Giants). Shawn was up 24-20 with under a minute to go. Shawn was pleased with his performance, and appeared comfortable with his 4 point lead. Surely he could play conservatively and come out with a certain win. But the Giants had heart, and refused to go down quietly. After numerous completed short passes, the Giants were suddenly knocking on the Eagles’ door at the 20 yard line. One play later, the Giants scored a touchdown. The final score was 27-24, a real heartbreaker.

Josh