Well it’s been awhile since my late-night heartfelt musings about finishing recording…almost three months later I’m ready to report on the rest. To be very honest, the past several months have been unexpectedly stressful, but I will cautiously divulge that I’m beginning to feel some satisfaction as a result of our hard work and financial investment and am hopeful for some successes as a result of our efforts. In a cosmic sense, of course, the greatest reward comes from our devoted fans, who have somehow incorporated our music into the soundtrack of their lives. So many stories have come our way of how the music has been influential to people, and it has been wonderful to provide amusement, therapy, diversion, or background music to the day-to-day existence of friends and strangers alike. But…we’d also like to make our money back one day, play more above-decent paying gigs, and have opportunities come from this that will allow us to continue to write songs, develop our sound, improve and grow both as a recording and performing ensemble. So there is a lot on the line.
The Final Mix
After we finished the recording, our engineer Russell Anders and producer Jon Stickley began to mix the songs one by one. They spent a few weeks mixing levels, adding and cutting fills, choosing the breaks to be inserted, and other technical details that I don’t even understand. That was a good use of time, since each band member has a slightly different idea of how each song should sound. Jon and Russell were able to get everything very close to being finished, and we got a 3-week break from the music. We distributed their mix among the band members and then sent our comments around by email (i.e. there’s a weird buzz at 0:23 of Climbing Devils Pass, etc.). When there were differences of opinion (mostly regarding backup), majority ruled, although I can’t live with something trumped the majority. This was surprisingly efficient at achieving a group consensus without much consternation.

For me, the mixing stage was difficult for two reasons. First, the mix sounded different on every sound system, and listening that closely to the music, I practically went crazy trying to discern whether or not certain details needed attention. What sounded great on playback in the studio sounded completely different in my car or on my home stereo or computer speakers. Secondly, the mix sounded very different than a mastered CD that you might otherwise pop into your stereo, and not knowing ahead of time exactly how the mastering process would change the mix, it was really difficult to figure out which details should change within the mix and which things mastering would address. And with no time or money available for going BACK to the mix after visiting the mastering studio, it just felt incredibly overwhelming to finalize the mix.

In Part 3 of this series, Dehlia Low’s Anya Hinkle talks about the final weekend of recording “Tellico“, her reactions on hearing the rough mixes for the first time, the photo shoot and packaging as well as paying your hero more than just respect.

Dehlia Low’s final recording weekend, Feb 20-22

It is interesting how in recording this material, it’s kind of a process of letting go and moving on from these songs. Although the listener might feel that this material is brand new, for me, the process of “officially” recording each song, very possibly the only time it will ever be recorded, is kind of like saying goodbye.

We’ve been performing and practicing these tunes for many months and to think that they will be crystallized, frozen, in this one performance, a single interpretation of something that is actually continually evolving, something that is somewhat different every time, is vaguely dispiriting. Now that they are recorded, they are “done.”

Time for new songs, new things to write and learn and share and work out. So it’s a sentimental process, and also a daunting process of looking to the future and hoping you can continue to create more material like this.

Today, we got an unmixed copy of the disk, minus a few parts we’ll be plugging in during this final recording weekend,. I drove to the next town over to eat dinner just to have the chance to listen to it in the car….

If you missed part 1 of this four part series with Anya Hinkle from Dehlia Low you can read “Dehlia Low: The Making of “Tellico” – Part 1.”

Hi there, this is the second installment of Dehlia Low’s “how to make a cd” travelogue.

If you’re just tuning in, basically everything we decided to do originally has been altered slightly. If there is one thing the studio does, it is to break up everything you planned. However, I think this is to be expected since we simply have little experience with recording and we learn as we go.

Studio Here we Come

Coming into the studio, we made a CD of all the songs we planned to record, either live recordings or recordings from practice, just to hear them all in one place. We also practiced with a metronome as a band to get used to using a “click,” which we planned to use in the studio. This also gave us the opportunity to establish the tempo for each song so that we could start right away with recording at that tempo.

Probably the most important thing we tried to establish was our goal to have a good time with the CD, be supportive and positive both to ourselves and each other, and to have a lot of faith that everything was going to turn out great. This seems to be working out for the most part….

Recording: Who, What, When, Why, How

Hi, we are Dehlia Low. We’re a young bluegrass band from Asheville, N.C. that includes myself, Anya Hinkle (vocals, fiddle), and Stacy Claude (vocals, guitar), Aaron Balance (dobro), Bryan Clendenin (mandolin, vocals) and Greg Stiglets (bass, vocals).

We’ve been together now about a year and a half. We’re in a place that many “up-and-coming” bands find themselves…we need a CD. A full-length, professionally recorded, mixed and mastered disk for sale, promotion, and general ascent into the stratosphere of success that every musician hopes to find him or herself inhabiting.

(As the old saying goes, there are literally tens of dollars to be made playing bluegrass music and we want to make sure we have every opportunity to secure these financial opportunities).

This is not our first recording—our eight-song demo/EP was recorded in a basement studio with no real isolation (so at least we didn’t lose that “very live sound”). At the moment we have a whole lineup of original songs that we’ve already been performing and are arranged and ready for recording. What is a band to do?…