Coming back from the warmth of the sun in Gran Canaria, it is very hard to return to Berlin 's coldest winter in years. Everything is white, it's freezing and the whole city is an ice hockey field. You have to be watching your step all the time and treading slowly. It looks like an expanded version of Monty Python's silly walks.Anyway, here I am again, and ready to return to work.Yesterday Daniel and I started tracking electric guitars while we wait for Timo to come round next week or so to finish basses. First stop was the froggy HQ, where yours truly was lumped with heavy amps, flight cases and such to be loaded into the froggy mobile and froggy taken to the froggy studio. Yes, my froggy back was froggy fucked after that.
Most of the session time was spent setting up the amps and the microphones, checking distances, cables, signals and all that crap I could easily live without. I brought a lot of pedals and my new R0 Les Paul, which I must say, sounds like a fucking bell. Biased opinion, there you go.
This time around, I chose to record in the control room instead of the recording room, as I have always done. Although you don't get your hair combed back with noise as you'd have recording right in front of the amps, it makes tracking much easier, as you can speak to the tech directly and watch everything on the monitor (no more tape machines these days) and don't feel so isolated. On the other hand, if you need to teweak the amp's settings, someone has always to go in and try and listen back, and tweak again... I'll just try a little more to see if it's more confortable or not.
We started with the crunchy rhythm guitars for "Seattle Girl", we double-tracked them (as I do with mostly all my guitar parts, makes a bigger, fatter, meaner sound... and well, it also helps disguise the mistakes, haha!), and then did some clean parts for the middle and final sections. Came out pretty well, but I must admit it took me more takes than expected. It's always like that with me on the first day of recording, until I loosen up a bit. At first I can't play at all, later I still can't play but make a lot of noise. While recording, Daniel & I have to keep in mind that Jorge is going to record some overdubs later, so I have to restrain myself from tracking endless parts, something I tend to do.
As it was quite late already, we took a try at the faster middle part in "The Wounds Inside", which took less than its predecessor. The always reliable Classic 50 was put in evil mode, the horns were raised and froggymetal was made. I'm looking forward to the finished song, it's quite a schizophrenic tune, a sort of musical Jekyll & Hyde. A bit like me, I guess...
Around half past late we turned out the lights, closed the door and let the beast sleep until this afternoon, when we'll return to our personal Church of Noise . Until then, take care with the ice out there.
Stone
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