After inspecting Jürgen's copy of The Beatles Complete Recording Sessions: The Abbey Road Years by Mark Lewisohn for a while and desperately wanting to take it home, tapes were ready to roll, and nothing better than starting a fresh new song, "If You Only". That's when Timo, casually passing by, suddenly asked "What?? Oh please don't tell me it's actually a G#... Shit!!" So, well, yes, we wouldn't argue over half a note, so he had to re-record the song again, this time with the right note on it.
We did several takes of the main riff guitar with the Les Paul and redid them again just to be sure they will kick ass when we double them with the mighty "riff-machine" Explorer. It didn't take that long, so we decided to start and finish a complete song, and the choice fell on "1976".
Wow, that was the beginning of the amp parade... the cool thing about Jürgen is that he really loves to experiment with different combinations of amps, boxes, guitars, pedals, preamps, more amps and a lot of crazy shit you wouldn't believe. You can see he loves that adventurous spirit of those Beatle sessions back in the day when he searches for sounds. He won't just settle for one or two cool sounds and use them for the whole record. Instead, every song has got to be a little gem with recording tricks and special touches. Not bad indeed.
Anyodds, as I was saying, we started with '76, tracking clean and "not completely clean" guitars with the ES-333 and also the Les Paul for the dirtier parts and the metal frenzy at the beginning and ending of the song. Timo and Tobi, who had arrived by that time, probably had a good time laughing at my faces when I turned up the Rectifier full to the right and at completely insane volume. True metal never dies, baby! After the take my hair was combed back from the wind and I had the face of someone who has seen the other side and has returned. Amazing. About five different amps used for the song, how cool is that?
Listening back to the track we were all grinning silly for a while, but before going back home for a break until next Monday, I just wanted to finish "Voltage" and get the solo recorded so that at least we had two full songs in the can ready for vocals next week. A quite "creamy" solo, you will hear...
So, first week finished, a LOT of the work done, and now over to three days of rest for our ears. Time to change strings to the SG and Explorer to bring them in, time for Jürgen to get a few other amps (!), time to disconnect. And mostly, time to sleep.
Songs done:
"If You Only": rhythm guitars, bass
"1976": all guitars
"What's The Voltage William?": solo
No comments:
Post a Comment