Today was a HUGE day for recording. I managed to trailblaze through Infinite Love. It’s a bit uncanny how much I did… let’s try and re-cap! Wrote lyrics. Recorded vocals. Wrote bridge guitars/drums and recorded them. Recorded secondary bridge guitars. Mixed everything. EQd everything. Hmm… written down it doesn’t seem like much, but there was a good 4 hours invested into IL today and I thought about it every minute I wasn’t working on it. I got it almost to completion. Just need to recorded that acoustic interlude… add some balls to the ending plus overdubs on outro vocals. So that’s almost two songs in the can! We’re making some great headway. I’ve got three songs to definitely work on- Wait On Me needs to be finished + these two new songs I got. One is going to be very acoustic and indie, almost like poppy Sigur Ros and the other one is going to be a crazy cool instrumental reeking of awesome. I’m very excited for the latter. I’ll probably title that one the infamous, “Some Kind of Bullshit” I’ve been talking about for ages. I’m excited- if this album were a proper release, it’d obtain a PARENTAL ADVISORY label. Hoohah.
I’m probably going to take a break from actual recording after I finish IL. I can’t get burned out.
Ta ta!
Filed under: recording | Tags: crystals, drums, infinite love, recording, vocals
Hello! I am back and in big action. Over the weekend I listened to Crystals extensively and knew exactly all the changes I needed to make. Today I re-recorded two new sets of vocals for the entire song and picked the takes that sounded best. Crystals is officially finished minus the bass… sadly. Then afterwards I went to work on Infinite Love. Got the drums down and I’m having difficulties with the guitar parts… hoping to still get them done at some point tonight. For some reason IL is giving me issues. Some technical difficulties I ran into made me approach the song a bit differently and now it’s kind of a different monster. I’m not entirely sold on this new version I just stumbled upon… but we’ll see. I may have to scrap the entire song after pumping in so many hours into creating it. That would suck. Here are some photos for you.
Filed under: recording | Tags: cyrstals, guitars, harmonies, recording, romancing the angels, vocals, washburn
Here’s a super quick update because I need to go to class and when I come home I have to relax, workout, and study for tomorrow’s “Origins” quiz! But anyways, today was super awesome- recorded ALL guitars to Crystals, recorded ALL vocals, and decided that when it’s time to track bass for ALL songs, I’ll bring my jazzy baby up to Dwight to record them! Don’t like Erik’s bass’s tone one bit. So Crystals is FINISHED!!!!!!!!!! All’s that’s left is some casual mixing from now until the album’s release! I love recording vocals here. The natural reverb I can put on my voice is so nice and the freedom to yell and sing as loudly as I want is a plus. I made some harmonies on the last chorus of Crystals that I never would have come up with had I not obtained the vocal freedom I desired. My Washburn is also the BEST. I love him. Yes, it’s a male. It would be nasty if a girl pumped out the power that he did. He’s like a scholarly gentleman packing a super sexy punch when called upon.
Anyways, GOTTA GO! That’s day four!
Gosh, so much is going down with Progression Records that I can’t keep up!
Today I’m going to just write down anything and everything about PR I want to do and what my mission is.
That’ll bring some clarity.
Things like… how am I going to execute all my plans? What are my plans?
Alright,
I’m gonna make a quick post before school because yesterday was a nice experimental day for recording that I enjoyed immensely.
You know, people always say, “Record guitars for the left ear and the right ear.” I always understood why you’d do that and how it’d be awesome… but I just felt with my equipment it’d be muddy all the time. So I stuck with that notion and said, “Eff that, not gonna deal with something I know is gonna suck.” In fact, once I did try just like, duplicating a track, a panning the one to the left ear and the other to the right, and I didn’t notice the difference. However, that was a dumbass move on my part, because if you do that with vocals, you can’t tell either. It’s the different recordings that create awesome layers- I should have known better. Then after listening to New World by L’Arc-En-Ciel, I noticed that the guitars were in the left and right ear quite obviously- because they were the same rhythms, just, you could tell there were some discrepancies in them… yet it was fine! Sounded marvelous! With this in mind, I decided to try it out on the latest song I recorded.
Sure enough- it sounded bad ass. It was a bit bassy, but with the “Bass reducer” option on iTunes, that problem is gone. The bass doesn’t sound as intense, but it still sounds great… the overall package feels really great. What I noticed though was that it only makes the biggest difference when doing palm-muted segments. So I suppose I’ll do it that way only?
Okay, here’s a wrap-up of what I learned/did yesterday:
-When recording guitars, it’s best to record one track for the left ear, another track for the right ear.
-However, it’s best to only do this when you want to convey a sense of intensity and/or when you’re plam-muting. Like, if I were to have an acoustic song and do this, it just really wouldn’t fit that well. It’d feel so in your face and not nearly as pretty because things are a bit jumbled at times. For acoustic songs, it’s all about articulation. When recording one guitar for each other, articulation is not what you’re aiming for. Intensity is what you’re main end is going to be.
-Don’t use tihs technique for lead guitars. Unless of course you want that supreme intensity.
Final note: Only use this technique when you’re trying to be “in your face.”
From now on we will refer to recording one guitar for each ear as the “In your face” technique or the “Intensity Function”.
