Josh Watson

0 2nd Album Recording Diary – Part II

4th-10th September – Drum and Bass + Vocal recording/Laying the keel

Mics and Mics!

I’m buzzing round like a toddler who’s been given too many sweets. DRUM RECORDING IS MY FAVOURITE THING. BASS RECORDING IS MY FAVOURITE THING. STUDIOS ARE AWESOME LOOK AT THE MICS NO LOOOOOOOK!!!!!

Seriously, I’m sure I’m particularly insufferable when I’m that excited. But it’s fun. We’ve hired a studio for 7 days to lay the drum and bass tracks. We do them together because it’s more fun and there’s something tangible about a recording where people are actually playing music together.

7 days may seem like an age to record maybe 70 minutes of music but trust me, it really isn’t – it’s an intense week. Because you’re not just playing the song once, and you’re not even just playing. You’re changing heads, tuning kits, playing the song once, huddling round and talking about parts, performances, sounds. I’m constantly vigilant for the sound of a drum starting to warble out of tune, a mic being knocked out of place. Some songs are easy – a warm up take, then a keeper. Then another just to make sure the keeper can’t be bettered. Some songs are not easy. A warm up. a discussion about changing part. Another warm up. Three takes. “Come through and listen”. What’s working? What’s not working? How do we fix it? Is the sound right for the song? Ok, let’s try it again. Two more takes. In the middle of third take, someone audibly farts and the room mic picks it up. Hysterics ensue. One person laughs a bit longer than is sane. Hmmm. Coffee break, let’s get our heads reset. The next take is the keeper take. All the while, the clock’s ticking.

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Mez and Alex

Once we have a keeper take, we listen through and make sure we’ve captured the magic. Sometimes Take 5 is the keeper, while take 3 will be terrible except for one amazing drum fill that could never be beaten, while take 1 has a really cool groove in the last verse. We’ll edit those bits into the keeper take if we think it’ll make is better. Also, with the keeper takes I’ll usually let little bits of bass fuck-up slide in favour of an overall feeling of awesomeness, so once we’ve got the keeper Alex goes back in to punch the odd bar here and there.

In the end, 7 days is about right. On day 1 we get the studio set up, re-skin and tune the drums, try a few mic setups to see what best captures Mez’s sound. Alex comes in, we sort out his bass rig and get recording. By the time we leave, one song is in the bag and another, probably the most tenuous of the 16 on the list, is scrapped. It’s just not going to work without more time. Now we’re down to 15.

Then we get on with it. ~3 songs of drums+bass a day, and Whitty comes in the evenings to lay vocals down. We’ve rented an awesome old vintage ribbon mic, his voice sounds awesome. On the last day we do some acoustics, congas, and some backing vocals. Truthfully, I wouldn’t have wanted day 7 to be particularly intense. It was a long week. Much coffee was drunk. Many flying saucers were consumed.

0 2nd Album recording diary – Part I

Here’s a glimpse into what we’ve been up to. I’ll liken each phase to building a ship, because that’s an analogy that surely won’t have to be stretched to fit into the beautifully convoluted recording process.

July August ’14 – Preproduction/ Dry dock

We have some songs. This is the vital bit. Recording sessions run much more smoothly when you actually have a song to record, this much should be obvious. But more important than that, sessions run more smoothly when you know what you want said song to sound like. The more decisions we can make now, the better the album is going to be. This can be pretty general (How long shall we play this bit for?) or very specific (If I’m going to use this amp for this part, should the bass be bright or thunderous to support it? Should we tune the drums high or low?). We play the songs in the practice room, we make decisions. Things are slightly rushed due to our oncoming tour of the north with Diatesseron, so I feel a little bit of pressure.

Josh working on pre-production.

The work gets done though. By the end of August we’ve got 16 songs ready to go – I have much fun recording guide guitar tracks at home, and thanks to the door of my little study not closing properly at least two of the songs feature cat noises. Underrated, IMO. And probably the first recorded sound that’ll actually be heard on the final album.

I’m pleased we’ve got 16 songs at this point. At the start of the year it felt like we had about 5 that weren’t dreadful. Then it went up to more than 20 that the band was tossing around (plus a few more that I demoed but didn’t feel right for CH). Now we’ve whittled it down a little to the ones that seem to make most sense together. The age of the album might be at an end but society can screw themselves, I want a shiny CD that means something to me.

0 Runnin’ Down a Dream

They say a mix is never finished, simply abandoned. I can relate to that.

It’s a strange thing to spend months working on a song, only to get to the point in the mix where you say “enough’s enough, let’s move on”. Then it gets mastered and put on a CD and people buy it and listen to it and you’re left standing there looking worried, grinding your teeth and telling yourself that you did the best you could. Sure, maybe that guitar note there could have been tucked in, maybe that extra synth was a bit superfluous, but hey – hindsight’s a wonderful thing, right?

You have to tell yourself that yes, it’s great. You move on and when people compliment it you say thanks, and when they criticise it you spend a minute trying to be objective.

That’s how it was for me with the release of the Lights of Distorted Science. Once my work was done I didn’t listen to it for a few months. Then when I did, I thought it was shit. I heard every single problem, no matter how minor. It was all I could focus on. OUCH! That harmony is out of tune. OUCH! The guitar sounds like a vacuum cleaner here. OUCH! WHY did I put REVERB on THAT!? WHERE ARE THE GOOD SONGS? WHAT IS THIS TOTAL BULLSHIT!? I therefore came to the quite sensible (IMO) conclusion that I shouldn’t ever listen to it again and for 18 months I did a pretty good job of sticking to that rule.

It’s a strange thing when I make music. The best it ever feels is the first time it happens, even if it’s massively shit. Even after all the work goes in and it becomes a complete song, the excitement will never match the first time I strung the two chords together, wailed a few notes and proclaimed it a Song. Bridging that strange gulf of cognitive dissonance is tricky. It would be awesome to finish working on the song then totally erase it from my mind, listen to it fresh and get that excitement.

Over the weekend I went to a friend’s house with my partner. We watched a movie, started chatting and before I knew it someone had put The Lights of Distorted Science on the hifi. And this time, I didn’t hate it. Maybe it was the beers. Maybe it was the nice company. Maybe it was the guy who worked for years installing sound systems telling me it sounded good. Maybe I just needed time away from it, but whatever the reason I could see why some people might not be offended by the music on that disk.

All this rambling musing is pertinent, because we’re in the middle of pre-production for the follow up album. All the songs sound exciting now, and when we get to recording them proper they’re going to feel like the best things in the universe. Once it’s all done, I hope to remember some of that excitement. Also, it’s my intention that this album will Smash The Shit(tm) out of the last one. Bigger production, better songs, tighter arrangements. I want it to be so good that people feel ill when they hear it!

I’m looking forward to the challenge. I guess looking forward is always going to be more exciting than revisiting the past.