If the TakeOffs go to three guitars I <u>WILL</u> move to Kauai to compete
for the possition............and surf.
Nice journal Ron........ (what am I supposed to say, I want that job). Can't wait to hear the finished product. The pictures are great too. <u>ESPECIALLY</u> that one of you... (I want that job bad) Any idea when the completion date will be for the record ?

Rick

Surfgitar
OK. My new mantra...
Must move to Kauai. Must move to Kauai. Must move to Kauai. Must move to Kauai. Must move to Kauai. Must move to Kauai. Must move to Kauai. Must move to Kauai. Must move to Kauai. Must move to Kauai. Must move to Kauai. Must move to Kauai.

Don't listen to him Ron, I'm your brother!! ....remember that time mom got us all candy bars and I gave you half of mine?? DO YOU??!!! ..:lol:

Rick

Hey Doug!! Great pics of the pier....we spent many an afternoon right on that pier!! Our brother Bob used to go out on the fishing boats and catch Halibut....they'd be out there for days!! I got busted for smoking pot in that town...i was 16!! Spent two weeks in a felony tank with some roughnecks!! Mom had to come up from San Diego and get me out!! On the bus heading back to SD she asked what it was like to smoke pot!! I didn't smoke anything for several weeks after that!! Awwww the memories....what a life i was having. Rick...i remember that candy bar so...the job is yours...unless surguitar gets here first!!

The TakeOffs
"Kauai's Only All-Instrumental Surf Band"
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-TakeOffs/312866840587

Morph...yeah, you get a couple points....OFF!!....for calling that musubi a "spam roll"....looks mighty tasty too! Spam wrapped in sticky rice and seaweed....and a nice piece of ahi? You'd be a "local" in a couple weeks!! If guys at the beach saw you eating this stuff they might even let you catch ONE wave!!

The TakeOffs
"Kauai's Only All-Instrumental Surf Band"
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-TakeOffs/312866840587

surfgitar....since when?
I love that

Rick

Surfer...yes, we see him around...there's lots of celebs here....they come here not only for the beauty of the place but for privacy as well....it doesn't matter who you are...it's WHAT you are inside....we could never afford a guy like that to produce our record....he did the New York Dolls record here and he rented a friend's reverb tank for that project so he's ok with us!!
For anybody that's moving over here this week to be the 3rd guitarist in The TO's...rehearsal is Thursday at 3pm!

The TakeOffs
"Kauai's Only All-Instrumental Surf Band"
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-TakeOffs/312866840587

OK, where was i.....well, we've had a few setbacks with the obsolete digital gear we're using for this project...a Mackie HDR 24/96...of course we would have prefered an analog setup but we don't have "day" jobs and couldn't afford it so we had to go digital...the first overdub session with Bill came to a crashing halt when out of nowhere the machine just stopped and declared an "error43"...."call a Mackie Technician"...."wait a minute here" i'm thinking...."it can't just stop in the middle of a take and that's it....can it?" So we tried everything we could think of to get it going again...got out the 1,500 page manual...!@#@!$#%!@....couldn't find ANY reference to an error 43...shut the thing down, waited a bit and fired it back up....error 43...i mean we're all there....Bill was in the middle of one of the songs....UUGGHH...i said to Conrad "i don't think we can get the vibe back even if it starts working again" he said he thought we could if we just took a break and re-grouped but the machine never came back and it was too late in the day to call a Mackie tech, so the session was over after several hours of troubleshooting. I asked John if he was gonna call Mackie in the morning and he said yeah so we left it at that and went home.
When i got home i got on the computer and did a search for Mackie "error43" and came up with a few vague responces on a forum somewhere...not much help....! The next morning i call John and ask if he called Mackie..."no, i just pulled the power cable from the wall and then plugged it back in and it works fine now"....i'm thinking it's NEVER a good thing to just unplug a digital machine like that while it's stuck in an error of some kind....but he did and it's his recorder so...we scheduled another OD session for Bill. We all got there...Bill sets up and we dialed in a starting tone and went to the first song we needed to work on....we're cruising along doing different takes and getting comfortable when i notice there was no snare track....the track was there but didn't have any information on it...it was blank...i'm engineering all these sessions so i ask John to take a look at this....of course i'm like "where's the snare track?" He says "i don't know, i didn't do anything" I grill him about how he pulled the plug that morning and what happened exactly which led to several more hours of troubleshooting and trying to find that snare track....one thing about digital recorders is, you can almost always go back and "undue" something...none of us deleted the track so it had to be in the recorder somewhere....during this troubleshooting process Bill's like "i'm out of here"!!! I understand that attitude....we're not recording our record anymore...we're trying to understand this digital recorder and figure out how to use it and recover tracks and....enough already!! The session came to an end...i said to John that he should of called Mackie before just unplugging the thing and it was real frustrating....i went thru ALL of the songs to confirm the snare was missing on the entire project...horrifying...before Dennis went back to the mainland, he had made a "safety" copy/disk so he could begin doing overdubs over there while we finished up here....turns out he couldn't use the copy over there because it would only work with Mackie equipment which he didn't have, so he just parked it....we called him to send us his copy which would have the snare track and the project would be saved but....i would have to do all my OD's again, the bass re-do's and everything we did after Dennis left....i'll tell you i was bummed!! I had spent 7 hours doing OD's and i was disapointed to say the least...i was trying to remain positive..."yeah, sure i'll just do them again" but inside i was....!@#!%@#! Ha! A couple weeks later we get Dennis' copy and i arrange with John to come over and just troublshoot and see what we had and how to procede. Befor i went i called Mackie and waited 20 minutes to talk to a tech who basically cut me off saying "those recorders are obsolete and we don't service them anymore" he refered me to a website with a forum...he wouldn't even listen to me!! When i got to John's i started by trying to "find" the missing snare from our copy...there's actually two...an internal copy which is the "master" and the disk which is an external copy....i started with John's disk cause it had all the work i had done already and i knew that snare track had to be in there somewhere....nothing! couldn't find it and after an hour and a half we put Dennis' copy in there and....NOTHING!! There was nothing on his disk....took it out and tried again...nothing...still had the internal version but no external copy...i just about cried..."that's the end of this project"....wow, what a bummer....i even thought, out of desperation, that maybe we could "tweek" the hi hat track which had some snare on it and....nah, can't do that...it's over. I sat there for awhile...refusing to give up...went back to Dennis' copy...nothing...went back to John's copy and i'm sitting there looking at the snare track and trying to figure out how to get inside the thing...it's just a "file" and has to be in there...i start soloing the track and noticed the number "4" in the "take" collum where as the rest of the tracks had the number "1"...i clicked on the take file and found the snare had been moved to take 4 which had nothing on it...there was no take 4....so i clicked on take 1 and there it was....we found the missing snare track and all was saved....i called my psychiatrist right away!! ha ha!....it took me/us about two and a half hours to find it...NEVER GIVE UP!! On each track there is the option of having up to 8 "takes"...i guess so you could do a bunch of takes and comp them to make one good one or something like that...heck i don't know...but that's where it was..on take 4...don't know how it got there...doesn't matter at this point!!
So, last night...well, yesterday actually...Bill and i met at John's to do those OD's...John had a gig and left us to work on our own....we did 5/6 hours of work...everything but one solo is done...we'll do that on Sunday before the Sheraton and then it's off to Dennis to do his OD's and mix....i'm kinda spaced out about the whole project...i mean i did my OD's back in January and it's been a long time between sessions...we all have busy schedules and it's been really hard to coordinate this project....but we're this close to being finished!!
Now, i'm gonna have a mango smoothie and go to the beach....work on some new originals. I didn't take any photos of us sitting around looking bummed out....!! ha ha! For right now...all is good.

The TakeOffs
"Kauai's Only All-Instrumental Surf Band"
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-TakeOffs/312866840587

We're done!!!!! The band's part that is....finished the last overdub today....listened to each song several more times....made track sheets for each with notes about the various takes etc. It was a frustrating project from a digital point of view but we didn't have the $$$$ to go analog...maybe this record will lead us to an analog project in the future...speaking of which...i was listening to a cassette the other day and i gotta say it sounded way better than a CD!! Maybe we should put this record out on cassette?? nah!! So now we have to transfer the "files" to a format that Dennis can work with to do his overdubs and mix...when i say "his overdubs", we don't really know what that's gonna be....sounds a bit strange i know, but he has plans to "orchestrate" a few songs...we know he wants to add horns to something too....it will be very interesting to see what he does and i can't help but wonder if we're gonna like everything he does??? We'll see...i'll keep you posted...now i've got to start getting the graphics together...should i do it myself (i've done a few records but only out of desperation!! ha ha!) or get a pro like stormtiger who's told me he would be interested, or....?? anyway, thanks for reading all this.....

The TakeOffs
"Kauai's Only All-Instrumental Surf Band"
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-TakeOffs/312866840587

Ron, this is great stuff! Don't look now, but you write better than most of the people I've worked with over the years. Writing is kinda what I do for a living (or did when I was working). I encourage you to take your postings and assemble them into a chronicle of the project together with the pictures. If for no other reason that simply having them so you and the Takeoffs can always remember the excruciating details of giving birth to your first "professional" recording.

I addressed the envelope, wrote the check and stuck the stamp on it. Will mail it tomorrow and look forward to my copy of "Blue Avalanche"!

Now I can see that you got the Marquee WAY after recording was completed. Maybe it'll be on the next one! Also, I"m selling my house and am thinking about a move to Hawaii for my "Golden Years". Still want a third guitarist??? I can more than carry my weight but you'd have to listen to me whine about wanting to do some Shadows covers!

Aloha!

You're not drunk if you can put your socks on while standing.

Wow - what a journey! Another great "behind the music" write up - Thank you for that.

Also just saw the conversation on the News post for this release.

Copying here for better visibility (for others who like me may see this for the first time the last post and not realize this was also covered in the opening posts you made, Ron. Lots of info and some cool pics in the thread... I need to go back and read it all from the very start!)

Would that be the same Dennis Dragon formerly of The Surf Punks?

Johnny_Z | 17-Sep-2011 15:46:01 |

Yes, Dennis was the drummer and resident wise guy in The Surf Punks and he's still bouncing off the walls!! TakeOffs' bass player John Hunt was also in The Surf Punks. Conrad, Bill and I were never in The Surf Punks. Dennis' brother Daryl was the "Captain" in Captain and Tennille their father was Carmen Dragon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Dragon I'd say a pretty musical family.

Ron-Rhoades | 17-Sep-2011 16:31:06 |

Fady

El Mirage @ ReverbNation

Last edited: Sep 19, 2011 09:23:56