More musical stuff, with interesting recording details from this week's session again

Hi.  So the music I've been working on recently has brought me so many thoughts.  It's funny how it can do that, and in a way because it is actual new music, it has that thing to it that makes it more interesting. If you think about it, it's easy to see where that comes from.  Sometimes songs can take some time to get from the initial idea to a finished product.  In those instances, I can sometimes lose interest in the song.  I do get the interest back enough to finish the song, but I don't keep that initial interest for long.

When I started work on the One Day set, all the songs were started at the same time in a way, because I had either the entire music on demo tapes, or snippets of ideas.  Those first couple of sessions were basically spent sifting through the material that I'd got on the tapes (around 4 hours worth of ideas), where we basically went through and every time we came across something that sounded interesting, we transferred it from the tapes to their editing software.  From then, songs were worked on in bits and pieces, based usually on what instruments I showed up with, and who turned up to sessions as well.

This means that songs were sometimes worked on a little, and then not touched again for months (or a couple of years in a few cases now).  But I am adamant that I'm going to finish the One Day set off, because I really want to get this new stuff out and play it live.  A lot of what I'm writing at the moment is much more rock related, for the most part.  There are some other songs that I'm writing, but there's something dramatic and attractive to the rockier numbers that I've been writing and coming up with.  I like the whole thing of surprising people in music as well lately - tempo changes, key change, a chord progression that shouldn't work but does, and that sort of thing.  It's almost like the song Good Morning World from the new set has given me a new thing to play with, because that has all the changes there, and plays with them really well.  Basically it's made me think more about creating contrast in music, and I'm playing with it, by trying to see how far I can take that.

In essence, it's the ultimate thing of what I'm trying to do - take from all styles of music, of performance, and everywhere, and mix it up.  Before it manifested itself as being songs that were all different styles on a set, but now I've taken that a step further, and I'm starting to understand how that can work.

But, I have to admit, that's still probably just the odd one off song that is like that.  A lot of what I'm writing is still very much standard-ish, but there is a lot of riff related rock material at the moment, which when I get into the studio to record them, I think will be relatively quick recordings.  I think I'll go more for starting and finishing work on songs quicker, so that there's no chance of getting bored of something or getting bogged down in, "could we just put a little of this or that in there."  In some ways, the longer you spend on something I've realised that you can always think of things that you could add to songs.  What happens is that until it's finished I'm constantly listening to the songs and thinking "what does this need for it to be finished?"  If the songs are worked on quicker, then I'm not constantly wondering that, because they are already finished and I don't need to worry about that part of it.

Also while I was in the studio the other day, it was invigorating in so many ways.  I felt that excitement of playing with someone again, and that is always exciting when you're working with other people, seeing the way that something gets shaped into a full performance.  I mean really I sort of write the songs, but they aren't complete effectively until everything is put down and a recording is finished.  I agree that the art of a good song is that when it's pulled back to it's basic parts you can still have a good song.  However, when you hear a record as a whole, you hear the little bits in the background.  You hear the twiddly keyboard and guitar runs, you hear the fills on the drums that make you want to air drum to them, you hear the harmonising in the case of acts like The Beach Boys, and all of those things.

Sitting there and watching Rob put drums down was like a wow moment.  Even though it was just the two of us, I still only went in with the basic one guitar and vocal that I came up with writing it.  During that day the song was built up to become what it is.  I wasn't initially going to use the acoustic guitar on the song at all, but we both said that it would be good to put down one, even if it never got used in the final master, which is actually a good idea.  I've never really thought of things that way.  He was of the mind that if you come to the final mix of a song and you're there thinking "ooh that needs something there", then you actually already have it because you've recorded all these things that were germs of ideas that you weren't sure you would ever use.  They are there then, whether you use them or not is immaterial.

So, we set click tracks up for each tempo of the song.  A tempo is the speed that a song is played at.  A click track, as virtually every musician in the world must know, does exactly what it says basically - it has clicks on it that are timed to count the length of the bars at the same tempo (or speed) of the piece.  We sort of cheated with this in a way, because a couple of sections are at 96 beats per minute and another section is at 150 beats per minute, which is quite a drastic tempo change let me tell you.  Because of this, it was easier to just treat them as different recordings.  That's really a digital record era trick either - a lot of bands in the old days have used this same trick by recording songs as their separate sections, and then they spliced the tapes together to make a whole song.  Nowadays it's just easier to do because of the whole digital thing of having the pieces there on a computer to basically copy and paste together.

To this I put the acoustic guitar part down for the first section of the song (double verse, chorus, single verse, chorus), and then a clean electric guitar (just through an amplifier without any effects).  Then Rob laid the bass guitar down to it, which both of us added slight bits to such as some "pops" and fills.  After that I added volume swell parts on the electric guitar (you play something on the guitar with the volume down and then turn the volume up to create an almost organ feel to the part).  I make this sound like it was all done so quickly, but really it took a lot of time, because the fact that you're basically making it up means that you have to find the right notes for the part, the tone of the instrument, and how to use the effect, because there is a rhythm and timing aspect to the way you use any effect.  If someone plays a part that is basically a run with a specific rhythm, and then a second guitarist comes in and supposed to be doubling that, it sounds awful if that second guitarist plays a note early or late, for too long, or not long enough.  It is exactly the same with when you're using effects on instruments and parts.

There is one thing we didn't put down, because I forgot to take a "wah pedal" with me.  But, hopefully I'll remember that for next time as something I put down while on a break from recording something else.  After that, we put all these bits together so that this section had all those parts together correctly.  After this came the time for the drums to be put down for that bit.

This was done very quickly I think, considering that neither of us had talked about the song or anything before that day.  I think there were three takes before we got the finished drum tracks for that.  When I say drum tracks, what I'm alluding to is that a lot of the time nowadays there are a lot of microphones used to capture the drum kit's sound.  There are some recordings where people still use minimal microphone techniques, but they are few and far between.  In this instance we had so many microphones on the drums - two on the bass drum (one in front and one behind), two on the snare drum (one on top and one underneath), one on each of the three tom drums, one on the "hi-hat" cymbals, one on the "ride" cymbal, and two 'overhead' mics - one over the left side of the drum kit and the other on the right side of the drum kit.

After this, we started on the 150bpm section.  Andy Dawson from Savage works in the same building as the studios, and I used his gorgeous Fender Telecaster to lay down one distorted track using a different amplifier set-up.  Ask Rob for equipment details, because all I know is if I like something then I like it, I don't really remember the names and numbers and things.  Actually, it would be helpful if Rob responds to this with some more details if he could as it might be helpful to people.

Then I did a second distorted track (double tracking), but this time playing my own Ibanez guitar (that is a Gretsch copy I think).  Double tracking is when you technically do the same thing again, which brings the part out more.  A lot of people use it when they put vocal parts down.  In this case, it was all that was needed to create a BIG DISTORTED sound, especially when I then added the bass guitar part into the mix, which used chords as well, which is rare on bass parts.

After that, we fixed the arrangement of that so that it comes in with one guitar for a couple of times through the riff, and then the bass and second guitar come in at that point.  Then Rob went in and played the drums to that section, with the drums coming in at approximately the same time as the bass and second guitar.  I say basically because he does a drum run to lead into that.  That took him three takes to get the drums down, and that third take is what makes up the finished drum tracks.

After that I went in and put double tracked vocals down for the first section, and had a try at the second section vocals, but felt it wasn't right.  Not that the notes I was singing were wrong or anything, but I think it just needed something else, and Rob too must have thought the same because he asked me if I thought they were right.  I said I wasn't happy with them, and he said that the part worked to his vocal range perfectly, so we swapped places and he sane that section of the song, and his voice was so very right for it.  This was double tracked as well.

While in there, Rob added claves to the first section of the song, percussion instruments, and I added some shaker percussion instruments.  Finally, I then went back in again with the acoustic guitar, played the verse section again for the ending, and then added a single vocal.  The reason for not double tracking the last bit was for dramatic purpose more than anything, because it was basically saying, "look, this is where I am, I'm on edge and worried about things, but hopeful at the same time."  An honest feeling and emotion, to complete an incredibly emotional lyric, which unfortunately I still can't think of a title for because each of the two choruses has very different lyrics.  The whole thing does tell a story though.

Oh well, that is so much information.  I know that I so want to get myself a Fender Telecaster now after playing Andy's on this song.  It is a fantastic guitar!  I'm also thinking of getting rid of my 5-string bass and replacing it with a 4-string.

There we are, that is today's blog, and a very detailed one at that.  Surprised I remembered that much.

Thank you for reading, I hope it wasn't too boring.

Marv - 27th February 2011 (40 years, three months, and one day old)