We are slowly but surely rolling out our web and social media presence. The biggest additions are the YouTube channel and official RGBmono website. Now that it has been posted here, we’re fully expecting all two of you to crash the YouTube and our hosting servers – and then just watch the money roll in. That’s how this works, right?

We also plan on the usual things as well: a Twitter feed and Facebook page so you can get important status updates like every time we open a new bottle of bourbon or “just saw the cutest rat scurrying outside the studio!” (True story from last fall.) Studio and black plague hijinx aside, we’ll also be posting music opinions and production notes because we think no one is doing this on the internet and it will make you pump your fist in excitement – maybe even a pelvic thrust or two.

Until then, check out our latest uploads and let us know what you think and check back often or subscribe so you can keep up to date. Hope you like our stuff!

Kara who has a great earthy and soulful voice, is now laying down some tracks for us. We’ll stay a three piece for a while with Kara singing, Michelle playing guitar/piano, and myself on the keys/sampler.

Here’s two scratch vocals of Kara in her first run through the songs, which turned out pretty good considering two things:

1) “Hey Boy” may seem simple, but it’s actually very difficult to sing and she did this in three takes – which is very impressive. “Spinning” is much more straight forward vocally, but the syncopation at the end tends to throw even super skilled musicians off if they are coming in for the first time.

2) We had to record her using our backup Blue Snowball USB mic since our portable rig wasn’t being recognized by Garage Band for some reason (Kara couldn’t make it down to the studio so we tried to use Michelle’s laptop instead). So if you hear a bit of funk and it’s a tad uneven, yes, we know. We’ll be re-recording cleaner takes in the studio soon and we’ll post them.

So on with the new vox:

Spinning by RGBmono

Hey Boy by RGBmono

]]> http://rgbmono.wordpress.com/2010/11/05/new-vocals-same-love/feed/ 0 rgbm http://rgbmono.wordpress.com/2010/06/21/sleeping-with-the-devil/ http://rgbmono.wordpress.com/2010/06/21/sleeping-with-the-devil/#comments Tue, 22 Jun 2010 06:42:03 +0000 gsound http://rgbmono.wordpress.com/?p=49 ]]> To prove that the upcoming album isn’t just “Spinning”, “Panic”, “Hey Boy” and “Walking”, here is the latest song we’re close to wrapping up: “Sleeping with the Devil” ( aka SWTD). Here is a portion of it:

Sleeping with the Devil (partial) by RGBmono

The song continues the space theme with samples from the lunar landing and distant guitar. The voice over is a public domain recording from the lunar landing that was recorded to our B-16 reel to reel and played back/fast forwarded. The machine sounds were recorded separately and later edited to match the tape speeds. It wasn’t as hard as we thought it would be.

The music, like all the other tracks were recorded/mixed in Pro-Tools . The rhythm and organ samples were composed in Kontakt. The clicking is a type-writer sample we pulled from freesound.org with Michelle playing the guitar and keyed instruments.

And now, we are happy to also mention that we have a drummer and vocalist joining us! They are going to be a big part in helping develop the RGBmono sound and can’t wait to start recording with them soon.

More soon and thanks for reading (if you made it this far).

In the mean time, here is the latest version of “Hey Boy”. We added some new sound effects and a marching band. No, not a *real* marching band, but Michelle whipped out a quickie band through MIDI and a live snare. This is probably the last mix of this song we’ll post as it’s pretty much done aside from final EQ and mastering.

“Hey Boy” by RGBmono

We did want a live marching band, but all the royalty free samples we found were either worse quality than a Dead Head’s recording after their 5^th tab or were of high school bands that were all playing different songs at once. Plus the USC marching band was booked through 2012.

The sounds effects are roller coasters we pulled off freesound.org and we did our best to punctuate the song with them. The announcer is myself because we couldn’t get a French guy, but felt the script was better put in English as the roller coaster and crowds were esoteric enough.

RGBmono “Spinning” Rhythm track stem by RGBmono

It’d be nice to think that if Phil Spector made an electronic beat, he’d put 4 times more reverb on it than we have here…and a 50 person choir. Also, when yuo layer a song this thick, it’s always interesting to hit the mute and solo buttons  to see what kind different versions of the song you can create.

We’re looking forward to the remixes and will post them once they are available.