Some Things You Never Wash Away
Most of this record has been quite effortless. Many of the tracks are single takes on the drums and bass... most of the guitar tracking just flowed off the neck. Some Things we've been wrestling with a bit. You've read in previous posts about the rewriting of the tune. We landed on an arrangement we really liked and decided this would be the next track we'd lay down.
All tracking for this record starts with laying down a click. I decided to lay down a 1/16th note click as the head riff tends to get away from a little. The more subdivisions one has in the click, the easier it is to hold to it. Once deciding on the click, we programmed it into the computer and let it roll for about 8 minutes. As I was laying down the click, I was noodling and chatting with the band Only after laying down the scratches did I realize that the mics were live and bussed to the same output as the click... so the click track was blended with my non-diatonic bends and such. At that point, we needed to start over.
Within an hour, we'd recreated the guide tracks and moved into tracking the drums and bass. Tyler and Scott worked their magic as they are known to do! Within a few takes, they'd created a groove. Scott added some new fills that really spiced up the track (see the turnaround into the third verse) and Tyler accented his outro groove with some excellent ghost notes.
But, here's the part that gets me all hot and bothered. Punching drum tracks is extremely hard to do. One has at least 11 live mics live, all of which need to be picking up any number of cymbals and drum hits at the same time as the take one is punching into. Doing so is very difficult, both as an engineer and as a drummer. I'm proud to say we successfully did it in three places :)!!! My ego's still huge around it. Normally, Scott's tracks are a complete take. That keep take is commonly take 4 or 5. This time out, Scott his a killer take... all of which was inspired save about 8 bars. A few punches later, and the take is clean and clear.
"Where are the cool studio pictures?", you ask. I'll have pictures posted in the next entry, along with an updated photos of the all-knowing white board.
For this tune, I won't post an MP3 until the guitar tracks are down... then we'll play "spot the punches".
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