Studio diary: day 9

With the bass tracks finished the day before, it was again guitar-time. Thanks god. I was anxious to play some crunchy riffs at full volume!

We arrived early on in the afternoon and started playing around with an old Laney 100-watt head from David, Daniel's partner in the studio, plugged into a 4x12" Crate box. Very nice overdriven sounds without sounding too dirty. Perfect for the day's first song, "Don't Lose Your Head".

After setting the amp and the mics it took no time at all to get the parts done. Timo was there too and we tried several different intros, but decided that keeping it clean would be the best, at least until we think about something else to start with...

"Ink" was next on my personal list, and being one of (if not the) favourite songs on the bunch, I spent some time getting just the right sound for it, a dirty, in-yer-face, heavy kind of sound. I think I found one that suited the song well, so we went into recording mode. Funnily, for this song I needed to feel the air moving and the blast coming out of the amps, so I left the coziness of the controol room for the dark, loud and definitely more RnR recording room. With me, the best way to record stuff like that is loud, very loud. Extremely loud if possible. So, armed with the Les Paul and the headphones I did a few takes, which I fucking loved. A great, great feeling. Unfortunately, when in "blow-your-brains-out mode", you tend not to be as precise in your playing as you should, and some details tend to be overheard. So after listening to the playbacks, I had to concede and accept that maybe I play much better and might need less takes when in the control room. OK, less power, but more precision. At least I had my headphones to turn up the shit to deafening levels without actually making the other guys deaf in the process.

With "Ink" in the can (in the hard disks rather) and a huge silly grin on my face, our 80's cover needed some love, too, and so we tracked some angry guitars on "Eye In The Sky" (or as Timo calls it, "Ei Im Himmel"). We used my brand new Telecaster for the first time, and must admit that it blended really well with the thick sound of the Les Paul. A lovely combination, indeed. So much did we like the result that we tried it again in "Vertigo", with the Tele on the spotlight during the verses and the Les Paul in the choruses. So much for the "one guitar, one amp" approach. We reverted our own rules once again, haha.

Now a little break until next week, where we'll be doing more guitars, and (hopefully/hopefully not, I can't decide) some vocals. Thanks for watching. FrogTV will be back next week.

St

Songs recorded (Feb 3):

Don't Lose Your Head: guitars

Ink: guitars

Eye In The Sky: guitars

Vertigo: guitars