Satori: Awakening

"Awakening" is the last of the early songs recorded for the album Belief.  I can still hear all the influences of this song- The Who, Fugazi, etc. There's even a little bit of Traveling Wilbury's in there.  The song is a bit of a second cousin to "Belief." The story here is mostly about bringing the recording back from the dead, but I did want you to know three things:

1. Becky Kupersmith wanted to call our first album, King of All I see based on a lyric from this song. 

2. Ryan Jones sang on the bridge, and probably should have sung on a lot more songs, because he's a better singer.

3. The breakdown is my favorite in any song. 

This particular recording has an interesting story behind it, because the original master no longer exists. So Andrew McKenna Lee and I had to resurrect the song using a casette as our master. There had been an expectation when we finished the album that we would put out a CD, but then we discovered how much a CD cost, and we opted to put the album out sooner rather than later, so we put it out on casette.  We argued that we could release the CD version later.  Sigh.

The two biggest problems with a casette master are: 1. The speed and 2. The hiss.  The speed meant that the song was not at its original tempo and not quite in the original key.  This was pretty easy to fix.  The second problem was the hiss, which only became noticeable in the quiet parts.  We Eq'd some of the hiss away, but you also lose a bit of high-end sparkle, so I added an acoustic guitar, which doubled the guitar part I played on the electric. This meant that I could eliminate the original intro, and have the acoustic as an intro, which meant I needed to re-record the vocals for the intro and try to blend it into the original once the original recording kicked in. 

Unfortunately, the hiss returns thoughtout the song whenever it got quiet, so I began adding other sounds and overdubs to mask the hiss- the sound of a wave, a ringing bell.  You'll notice these elements whenever the band gets quiet. 

The last spot of hiss was at the very end.  So I just recorded the last note for bass, drums and guitars.  Hopefully you can't tell the difference, but now that I've told you...