Studio diary: day 5

First things first: today it's fucking freezing. On the way to the studio, the thermometer marked -12ºC. I had the acoustic guitar in the trunk of the car, and was expecting it to break at any given moment. But it made it to our noise room for today's session. It was the last booked session of the year and it was going to be a relatively short one, just four hours. And as our bass player wasn't available today, I decided to do a few acoustic guitars here and there just to get a few extra things done before the Christmas break.

After setting up the mics and balancing them, we started with the almost full-acoustic number, "Twelve Years" (for lack of a better title it looks like we're sticking to it), did a few takes, double-tracked the best one, a little solo part and that was it. Well, not really, Daniel came up with the idea of using an old, dusty and battered Spanish guitar he has there for the outro lick. It had a very alternative tuning, that guitar. In fact, it was tuned in microtone steps so impossible for the human ear to distinguish that, for a moment, I almost thought that was just a piece of crap completely bonkers and ready to smash. But no, it was just waiting for a loving hand an iPhone tuner app to return to the wonderful world of the standard 440 tuning. It took some time to show her the marvels of staying in pitch. It took a lot of fucking time, more than actually recording the part.

With the first one in the can, we directed our energies to "The Wounds Inside", which was done in nearly no time at all. Same with "Vertigo". "Talking To Nobody" took a little bit longer due to the strange drums reference I was listening all the time. Don't ask me how, but drums and click were coming and going all the time making recording nearly impossible. So after a few hits on the recorder with a hammer (courtesy of Maxwell Silver) everything was again spot-on, and recording could be finished pretty quickly. Stll half an hour left and the last one for this year, "Don't Lose Your Head" found its way onto tape (well, hard disk) just in time to wrap it up and call it a day (a year, rather).

Next sessions will be in the second half of January, where we'll be finishing the basses before entering my favourite part, the electric guitars, which precedes my least favourite part, recording the vocals. But let's not think that far right now, I want to have a happy Chrimble. And to you all as well, dear readers (is there anybody out there by the way?)

Songs recorded (Dec 18):

Twelve Years: acoustic & classical guitars

The Wounds Inside: acoustic guitars

Vertigo: acoustic guitars

Talking To Nobody: acoustic guitars

Don't Lose Your Head: acoustic guitars