Before & After, part II

Before packing it in for the night, I should point out that another side project very dear to my heart is also drawing to a close. As many of you know, I am happily the member of a band comprised of my high school friends who went on to pursue careers in music.

In addition to playing shows of varying quality (and attendance), we have been undertaking a major recording effort for the past two years. We have recorded albums together twice before...

Once in our drummer, Dan's, garage, in the earliest years of our band (not a particularly good album)...

And once at a recording studio (a slightly better but still not great album).

This, however, is a different undertaking entirely, and it's one that I'm really excited to share with all of you as soon as possible. Like I said, we've been working on it for two years, and it is really, really exciting! We recorded the bulk of the tracks during the summer of 2008. The father of our lead singer, Dave, loaned his entire house to us for over a week, and we set up shop.

With the help of Tom, a college friend of Dave's, who is now chief engineer at a studio in Woodstock, NY, we experimented with the different acoustic properties of each room and recorded some really gorgeous/interesting/unique/weird tracks and songs.

Then, we (and especially Dave) spent well over a year dissecting every second of every track numerous times, and basically being very picky. In the end, the sound was almost to the point that we wanted, with the exception of one minor detail...string ensembles to record tricky string parts on many of the songs! We had hit a bit of a roadblock.

However, circumstances changed. Dave was admitted to graduate school (largely on the basis of this album) and Ryan, our keyboardist, headed to graduate school at Indiana University. Access to capable string musicians was no longer an issue! In total, 3 string and wind ensembles of various sizes were hired to record the additional tracks.

And so, well over 2 years after our first rehearsals of the songs that will be on this new album ("In a Bubble"), I got to attend what will be the final string recording session this Tuesday.

These songs have truly become the soundtrack of my life. It is amazing to think not only how many times I've listened to and practiced them, but also how many huge changes my life has undergone since the first time I played these songs. And after it all, I am still just as thrilled to still have people who will let me play music with them, and just as eager to share this big part of my life with all of you soon, hopefully! In the meantime, Happy November, and keep warm!

Before & After, part I

Since this semester is getting very busy, I'm going to take a quick break from relaying stories about my travels to Denmark to share 2 updates on my side projects you may have heard about. First, I think I mentioned that our apartment here in White Plains was being converted to a Belgian monastery (at least in terms of brewing). Well, the transformation is complete (and successful)!

In case you forgot, this is what things looked like at the outset...

Following the excitement of our brewing evening, many boring weeks of fermentation followed, and they generally looked like this:

Pretty boring, right? It was exciting to see the bubbles produced from the fermentation process as they escaped from the airlock (at least when compared to the level of excitement contained in the cases we were reading simultaneously). In any event, it was soon time for bottling, so Dan and I temporarily re-prioritized use of our dishwasher (see photo)...

...and then we neatly bottled everything in our hygienically superior, monastery-like brewery (office closet).

Actually, it's not quite accurate to say that we bottled everything. There is actually a fair amount of stuff that you don't want to imbibe, as evidenced by the following photo (warning: the following photograph contains graphic depictions of deceased yeast. Not suitable for all viewers)...

Thankfully, none of the Ghostbusters-esque gloop escapes the notice of the resident brew monks, who suffered through some interim quality control checks before allowing the beer to bottle condition and carbonate for a further 2 weeks.

In the end, it was most definitely worth the effort, sweat, and tears (it's not easy to wash 100 billion of your yeast friends down the tub, after all). Look at our gorgeous Trappist ale (*technically, only a few monasteries in the world can produce actual Trappist Ale, so this is actually just Trappist style). Note the wonderful little champagne bubbles produced by the bottle conditioning process...you won't find many beers like this! All in all, we're very happy with our initial foray into an unknown hobby, and time permitting, we will probably be back at it soon!