Three days behind, drumtracks to nine songs in the "can" so to speak.
The recordings have gone well, no technical problems or such so far. Had some problems with my right ear one day, but luckily the sounds were checked before and it didn't affect tracking. Besides, "Pet Sounds" was tracked and mixed in mono and with only one ear :P
It's been tough tho, really tiring. Long hours, about 8-10h per day of meticulous tracking, bad sleep, eating junk, sometimes forgetting to eat. Me going "Hmm... the fill that's between the second bridge and chorus, that first snare hit sounded a little weak, it wasn't muscular PAM but a piAMh, let's do it again" x 100. But in the end it's worth being a little anal in this stage. Rather that than realizing later you've passed some poor takes though that's going to take three-four hours to fix into a sort-of-ok take, or just redo the take and have it all over in 5 minutes. Or worse, pass a shitty take and in the mixing stage realize it's unfixable. But listening so intense is tough, when the day is done, your brains is just mush and you hardly know your own name.
Some songs have got last minute changes eventhough we've done a very extensive pre-production. But it's just some things that won't even come to mind when the song is fresh and you're working on it intensively. These things suddenly comes to mind when you've let the song grow on it's own for a while. Two tracks got improved so much that all of the drumpatterns got changed, and by that one songs status was improved from "possible bonus" to the same status as all the other songs. No song is ever 100% "done", if someone claims it is, then he/she's lying. But as long as you realize when it's done enough, it's good to let the song live, not to rush to the studio soon after the song is done. Depends on the genre of course.
Did some small experimenting yesterday. In one song, a drumpart is supposed to have a low-fi sound, so I taped a piezo microphone on a juicebox and used it as a mic to get a boxy, weird ambient sound. Then I plugged my half acoustic Schecter guitar into a mic preamp with the gain turned way up, turned the humbuckers and piezo on full on the guitar, and used it as a second mic to the juice box. It sounded really, really interesting. :)
But now there's only five songs left. We'll continue today and probably tomorrow. We're expecting to get all the drumtracks ready by tomorrow, as the pace have been so far about 3 songs per day.
Then I'll start to sort out and prepare the drumtracks. I always gate by hand, so there's a lot of work cleaning up the tracks. I've still got a cast on my foot, I might get rid of it in early May, so I'm trying to leave my own guitars until then. When I record guitars I want the freedom to be able to do it myself, to be able to concentrate and experiment with different amps, settings, effects, feedback stuff etc without someone breathing behind my neck.
When the drums are ready, the next thing would probably be Tuukkas guitar or Jesses bass. The only problem there is to find a place to record, as we can't continue in the same place as where the drums were recorded. I always want to record real amps, it's actually harder for me to find good sounds on POD;s, emulators, whatever etc. So normally, we've recorded guitars and bass on our practice flat, but now we don't have one :S
Three days behind, drumtracks to nine songs in the "can" so to speak.
The recordings have gone well, no technical problems or such so far. Had some problems with my right ear one day, but luckily the sounds were checked before and it didn't affect tracking. Besides, "Pet Sounds" was tracked and mixed in mono and with only one ear :P
It's been tough tho, really tiring. Long hours, about 8-10h per day of meticulous tracking, bad sleep, eating junk, sometimes forgetting to eat. Me going "Hmm... the fill that's between the second bridge and chorus, that first snare hit sounded a little weak, it wasn't muscular PAM but a piAMh, let's do it again" x 100. But in the end it's worth being a little anal in this stage. Rather that than realizing later you've passed some poor takes though that's going to take three-four hours to fix into a sort-of-ok take, or just redo the take and have it all over in 5 minutes. Or worse, pass a shitty take and in the mixing stage realize it's unfixable.
Some songs have got last minute changes eventhough we've done a very extensive pre-production. But it's just some things that won't even come to mind when the song is fresh and you're working on it intensively. These things suddenly comes to mind when you've let the song grow on it's own for a while. Two tracks got improved so much that all of the drumpatterns got changed, and by that one songs status was improved from "possible bonus" to the same status as all the other songs.
No song is ever 100% "done", if someone claims it that, then he/she's lying/in denial. But as long as you realize when it's done enough, it's good to let the song live, not to rush to the studio soon after the song is done. Depends on the genre of course.
Did some small sound experimenting yesterday. In one song, a drumpart is supposed to have a low-fi sound, so I taped a piezo microphone on a juicebox and used it as a mic to get a boxy, weird ambient sound. Then I plugged my half acoustic Schecter guitar into a mic preamp with the gain turned way up, turned the humbuckers and piezo on full on the guitar, and used it as a second mic to the juice box. It sounded really, really interesting. I'll probably do more of this stuff on one song that we'll record today or tomorrow :)
But now there's only five songs left. Decided to take today off, so we'll continue tomorrow. We're expecting to get all the drumtracks ready by tuesday, as the pace so far been around 3 songs per day.
Then I'll start to sort out and prepare the drumtracks. I always gate by hand, so there's a lot of work cleaning up the tracks. I've still got a cast on my foot, I might get rid of it in early May, so I'm trying to leave my own guitars until then. When I record guitars I want the freedom to be able to do it myself, to be able to concentrate and experiment with different amps, settings, effects, feedback stuff etc without someone breathing behind my neck.
When the drums are ready, the next thing would probably be Tuukkas guitar or Jesses bass...
Fräss-tätätätä-fräss-tätätätä-pischhh
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