Studio diary: day 2

Second round in the fight against musical boredom. Last night we met again at Daniel's studio to continue tracking drums. All mics were already set up, so after a ciggie, a laugh and fooling around with Daniel's Dean Dimebag guitar from hell (heavier than a bag of nails), Tobi went straight to the booth to torture his snare drum.

First on the agenda was the traditional cover. Normally, we record a cover song for each album, (last ones were "Tomorrow Never Knows" while the Allergic sessions, and "Toxic" for Not Completely Clean.) So after thinking about it a few weeks ago, I remembered a great great tune from 1982 by the Alan Parsons Project called "Eye In The Sky", which I used to love as a kid everytime it came on the radio. I hadn't heard the song for ages, and it seemed that, with the right amount of tweaking it could turn into a cool frogsong. I made a fast demo at home and it was an instant "yeah" by the band. So here we are, doing our own little heavier version of it.

After finishing that one, Tobi decided to try his luck with "Ink", which is a rather fast and ugly kind of tune. Several takes were done (I mean, very several), but Tobi wasn't satisfied with them but still couldn't say exactly why. Something was just not right, and after several several retakes, the little bulb inside his head lit up and he remembered he hadn't brought along his double kickdrum pedal. And that was why he couldn't get the heavy ending right. Phew, you kinda notice such things right on from the first take, don't you? I mean, I would notice if a string was missing on the first take. But well, drummers are a completely different and exotic species, maybe that's why love them and put up with those things... And so, after I had fucked up my voice while singing and playing for Tobi's reference on "Ink", we had to leave it until the next sessions (I hope he remembers to bring the kick next time, hehe.)

"Instead" was next. A slower but heavier number which was finished before you could say "bumblebee". Deciding on the right song speed took us more time than actually recording it, trial and error procedure ("I think it should be 95 bpm", "No that's too slow, make it a 100 bpm", "huh, I think that was a little too fast, turn it down to, say, 98 bpm", "damm, still too fast, let's try 97 bpm", "oh, that was cool, just perfect, let's do it"... and so on.) This could turn out as a very nice song, let's see if I don't fuck it up later...

It was getting late, so we just tried to finish one more, and set our eyes on "Talking To Nobody", a tune with a decidedly 60s flavour to it that we had recently done for the very first time at the HQ. Tobi didn't have a clue what the fuck I was talking about when I named the song. "Never heard that one", he said with wide open eyes. Good that I had brought the home demos with me and a few seconds into it he remebered again, "Oh, yeah, of course, let's do it". And so he did. Came out pretty good, very solid, straightforward drumming, just as the song needed. It's great to have such a versatile drummer in the band, even if he can never remember the song names and it's always up to me to start humming the melodies. But well, we've done a lot of very new songs from scratch in the last weeks, so it's understandable to mix up everything. I guess. I was never a drummer in a band, just a frustrated one.

Next session's scheduled for Friday, which means today I can rest my ears and maybe enjoy a haxe with some friends at Lemke's. Cool.

Songs recorded:

Eye In The Sky: drums

Ink: drums (unfinished)

Instead: drums

Talking To Nobody: drums