Homebrew is my nickname for rough versions of songs, in which I am playing all the instruments and supplying all the vocal tracks. (If other people are involved in a recording process, it's generally for a more polished studio version.) These are mostly demos for the band, though a few are just documentation, or else proof of concept for composition experiments.
Most Homebrew tracks are as lo-fi as it gets, using GarageBand and the built-in mic on my laptop. Sometimes I'll get a bit fancier with mics and amps and so forth, but rarely. This tends to mean there's a bit more room noise—tires squealing on alley ice, rain, the cat demanding lunch (right after "all the same" in verse 2)—but I like giving the songs space like that. It's a better indication of how they'll fare in the world, and I've never been a huge fan of surgically sterile studio sounds; I'd rather have a bit of grit and ambience.
I almost never bother with miking the drum kit—Charlie is both a better drummer and a better sound engineer than I am—so the percussion often consists of handclaps, snaps, or bongo-style slaps on the edge of the table. For Whiskeyboots, I didn't yet have a drum kit, so the bass drum sounds come from banging a felt mallet on an unabridged dictionary.
I do not apply any sort of pitch adjustment (which is obvious in a few tracks, alas), and I try not to do much cutting and pasting between takes. Sometimes I noodle around with GarageBand's amp filters. Again, not much. Most guitar solos are little more than placeholders, since I typically play rhythm and hand the solo over to Charlie or Zach.
Anyway, as we work towards the second full Baguettes album, there's enough Homebrew to put out a decent compilation. What should be on it?
Most Homebrew tracks are as lo-fi as it gets, using GarageBand and the built-in mic on my laptop. Sometimes I'll get a bit fancier with mics and amps and so forth, but rarely. This tends to mean there's a bit more room noise—tires squealing on alley ice, rain, the cat demanding lunch (right after "all the same" in verse 2)—but I like giving the songs space like that. It's a better indication of how they'll fare in the world, and I've never been a huge fan of surgically sterile studio sounds; I'd rather have a bit of grit and ambience.
I almost never bother with miking the drum kit—Charlie is both a better drummer and a better sound engineer than I am—so the percussion often consists of handclaps, snaps, or bongo-style slaps on the edge of the table. For Whiskeyboots, I didn't yet have a drum kit, so the bass drum sounds come from banging a felt mallet on an unabridged dictionary.
I do not apply any sort of pitch adjustment (which is obvious in a few tracks, alas), and I try not to do much cutting and pasting between takes. Sometimes I noodle around with GarageBand's amp filters. Again, not much. Most guitar solos are little more than placeholders, since I typically play rhythm and hand the solo over to Charlie or Zach.
Anyway, as we work towards the second full Baguettes album, there's enough Homebrew to put out a decent compilation. What should be on it?
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