Today went by in the blink of an eye. I knew my role right from the get-go. Get the rhythm tracks done today. Shouldn’t be tough. I banged out 3 songs on Friday night and upon a second listen, they still sounded great Monday morning… Mind you the 3 I did on Friday were all songs I was really comfortable with.
I don’t even remember what song I started with. To tell you the truth, I don’t really remember much about today. Here’s what I do remember. ‘So Be It’ sounds amazing. Up until today I’d been playing the verses in a quick down-strum, but Greg (drummer) had been saying lately he felt I should texture it more to give it some “float”. I’d done that when we recorded his drums. After hearing it tonite, when all was said and done, he was totally right. It took so much of the edge off of it and now it sounds both hard and pretty at the same time. Something I love the sound of; pretty punk rock. B’s voice will push that even further.
Some other notes:
‘Radio’ just gets better and better, every time something is added to it. I hope this continues… ‘Seamless’ is doing the same thing. I don’t know if I made it better per se, but I definitely kept it on the right track… ‘Heartland’ was probably the one I was most impressed with my playing on. I worked out some new strumming patterns that sound a lot better. We may add a new rhythm track on a guitar with the high B & E string tuned up an octave… ‘All These Things’ I don’t really remember how I felt when it was done. It was in the middle of the session and all I really remember is that there were some great finger slide sounds on the track that everyone seemed divided on. I personally love that shit but the counter argument is that it had “no musical significance”. We decided to put it off until there was more on the track to see if it fights anything… ‘Wait For You’ went far better than I’d thought it would. The tempo is slower than I’m used to and the strumming minimal. I remember recording ‘Light Bright’ and it caused me all sorts of fits. I must have learned from that experience though because I had no issues with ‘Wait For You’. Mind you, listening to it afterwards I feel like I started to push the tempo at the end. I may revisit this one later… ‘Back To Me’ was easy. A couple of rhythm surprises but its on track. I think it may be a bit fast, but we won’t really know until B tries to sing on it… ‘Curve’ may need a re-look as well. It sounded good to me but not great. It was the last one I did today and I think I was a little tired. The takes themselves were good, but because I was coming up with some of the parts on the fly, I don’t know if I tracked them well. Because ‘Curve’ was our most recent write, the drums and bass weren’t fully ironed out until recording so I had to rework some of my rhythms. It will sound good; I just need to make sure the tracks line up well.
Well I did it. Some may need some revisiting but all in all, they sound solid. Gregg worked out some mixes after we finished so that we could “study” while he’s off to finish his business with Greg Moore. Hopefully he’ll be back in a couple of days. Francis gets home from Norway tomorrow so I’m sure he’ll have his own view of what we tackle when Gregg returns. As for us, its hometime and tonite the drinking has purpose… well for me at least!
