Recording

The bass player for the punk band we played with in our first gig went to this expensive recording school called Full Sail. He offered to record us, so on thursday he brought some of his gear over and we laid down tracks for 3 songs (Waste My Time, Mission To Mars, and Down Here Together).

Recording music is a very tedious (and many times expensive) process. You're making something that's permanent, so there's a strong desire to make it perfect. It is VERY difficult to get through an entire song without messing up at least once. The slightest hint of missed timing, a missed note, a buzzed fret, or an awkwardly hit drum can ruin an entire 5 minute take.

I've read a lot about recording online. There is a very good article about the Old 97's recording their latest album here: http://www.prorec.com/Articles/tabid/109/EntryId/288/Point-to-Point-4-The-Old-97s-Blame-it-on-Gravity.aspx . I also have a moderate amount of experience recording my own songs on my pc using a shitty mic and CakeWalk Guitar Tracks recording software. When it comes to recording a band, there are several ways to go about it. You can try and record the whole thing "live", where everybody plays their mic'ed instrument together, or you can record one track at a time. Both have their positives and negatives, but I think the one track at a time method is used most often. That's how we recorded on thursday. Kenny (the guy who recorded us) mic'ed up Keith's drums first. Keith played along with my unplugged (hence silent) guitar. After Keith recorded all three songs, Kenny took down those mics and put them on my amp. I chose to play through my practice amp, a 6" Marshall, because it (in my opinion) has a better clean tone than my larger gig amp. When you record, volume and effects in an amp are many times not used, because those things are much more easily added later in editing on the computer. So the most important thing in a recording amp is the sound of the clean channel on a low volume. Anyway, I had headphones on, listening to Keith's drum track, and laid down my guitar track. This was hard for several reasons. First, I'm not a very good guitar player. Second, many of our songs start with the guitar first without any drums, making it EXTREMELY difficult to catch Keith's first tap in perfect rythm. The way I combatted this was to look at the computer monitor to see the track display, which would show when the burst in volume of Keith's drums was coming up. A better and much smarter method would have been to have Keith play a tap beat from the beginning and delete it later, but we're not smart. Lesson learned.

After I finished laying down the guitar we scrapped Mission To Mars because the timing was so bad (not to mention the lyrics are not yet polished). So I laid down vocals for Waste My Time and Down Here Together. Thus, the chorus of the 1st song my band ever recorded is this:

"Don't talk to me unless you're going to sleep with me."

I'm a regular Bill Shakespeare.

Anyway, the vocals went way better than I thought. I, like pretty much everybody else, cringe when I hear my recorded voice. I always think I sound nasally, pre-pubescent, and over-emotional. But Kenny had a really nice vocal mic, and I had one of my better "voice days", so it wasn't as bad as I had expected.

I LOVE singing. I wish I had more range and control, because if I could sing for a living it would be a dream come true. I mean I LOVE it. I'm always singing. I just cringe when I hear it played back to me.

So we took about 3 hours and came away with 2 1/2 songs. This is fast work. I was disappointed that Kenny wanted to record that fast, as I would have much rather set the goal at recording one song and getting 3 perfect tracks than recording 3 songs filled with fuck-ups. That said, I don't know what kind of magic Kenny can work in editing, because every time I caught an imperfection, his standard response was "no worries, I'll fix that in the mix down". He was great to record with, and seemed to really know what he was doing.

Anyway, in 2 weeks we'll get a mix back from him. If it sounds worth a crap I'll post it on here, YouTube, and/or the myspace page/band website. I'm really hoping it turns out good so we can use it to book more gigs.

One decision that was made was to just record guitars, drums, and lead vocals. We didn't add any bass, effects, keys, backup vocals, or anything. On the one hand this is good, since it means when we play live, it will sound just like the record. On the other hand, we may not end up with a full sound, and I think Keith and I would both agree that when we hear the songs in our heads, they have all those other elements. That said, we can always go back and add them in later.

This experience really made me want to finish the studio. I think I'd really enjoy recording and would be good at it. If I had my own setup, I'd never forget a song, and I'd be able to take the time to record it to my standards. My current personal economy prevents me from doing that in the near future.

Ok, that's all I have to say for now. Hope this finds you well. Thanks for reading. Peace.