As I suspected, yesterday proved to be a bit chaotic. Much of the day was spent getting the drum sounds, which is probably the most mind-numbing, peace-of-mind-shattering activity of the whole process. But you have to do it. We "got" some rather good ones, as it happens. Towards the later part of the evening, we even started tracking, and ended up with pretty great-sounding basic tracks of three of the songs, which is two more than I had expected. "London" was the most complicated, since I wanted to preserve the option of using some of the back-up vocals from my demo, and we had a bit of trouble getting it all to synch up. (Did you know that the beats-per-minute vary slightly, but enough to swim, from drum machine to drum machine? They do. I did my demo at 130, which ended up being somewhere between 129 and 130 on the studio's identical model. Or maybe the time code on my ADAT was to blame? Whatever, setting it up was a challenge.)
Playing along to a previously recorded track, especially one of my idiosyncratic, semi-retarded ones, is really tough, but Jym is very good at it. He ended up playing to the demo's lead vocal, which worked out well believe it or not, though it caused some embarrassing moments in the control room as (of course) my ungainly home-recorded "vocal" was blasted sans eq or effects through the Genelecs. Engineers love to do that kind of thing. Anyway, the drums sound great, and when we played back the whole thing (essentially, the demo with real drums instead of the machine) it sounded really beautiful.
The two other songs, including "Sorry for Freaking Out on the Phone Last Night", were recorded live in "the room," though I'm not sure how much of the guitar we'll end up using.
Anyway, so far, so good. The plan for today is to get the basic tracks for all but one of the other songs. That will be a challenge, but at least theoretically possible now that things are all set up.
More later.
I know it's generally considered a Bad Idea (along the same lines as a double album), but, even still, have you ever considered a concept album that takes the listener through the various stages of a relationship, in 12 easy songs?
I ask as (based solely on the title), "Sorry for" sounds a bit like a follow-up to "Jill".
Posted by: Dave Bug at July 23, 2003 09:21 PMI always felt Alcatraz *was* looslely based on that idea.
Posted by: Bobby J at July 24, 2003 08:59 AM