We’re done. After three months of demos, rehearsals, and studio sessions, ELEPHANTS is finally complete. Sitting here listening to the final mix, I can barely recognize the broken acoustic recording I made in April.
The studio day started early. We arrived at 10 AM with all our gear, ready to capture what we’d been building in rehearsals. The control room felt different this time – less nervous energy, more focused determination. We knew what we wanted.
Our sound engineer listened to our rehearsal recordings first. He nodded along, making notes about which parts worked and what needed tweaking. “The chaos is good,” he said. “But we need to make it controlled chaos.” That became our goal for the day.
We started with drums. The pattern we’d developed in rehearsals – that weird off-kilter groove – sounded massive through studio monitors. The drummer played it fifteen times before we got the take that felt right. Each attempt was slightly different, but take thirteen had this urgency that matched the lyrics perfectly.
Bass came next. The player had written these subtle runs that follow my vocal melody instead of standard bass lines. In the studio, with proper equipment, you could hear every detail. The way he slides between notes during “She doesn’t understand” gives me chills every time.
Recording my vocals was intense. We did the whole song in three takes, then spent two hours on specific lines. The engineer pushed me to sing some parts softer than I’d planned. “Let the pain come through naturally,” he kept saying.
The final mix captures something I didn’t know we were looking for – that feeling when communication breaks down but the emotion still gets through. ELEPHANTS is ready for the world.