For a while the band have been feeling that our demos are sounding a little stale. With the exception of my contribution to the production of one of the tracks, I’m not on them, and they’re now approaching a year old and don’t really reflect how the sound of the band has changed since then. So, we’re currently in the process of recording some new ones. It’s very much a ‘homebrew’ affair - no expensive studios for us!
The four tracks we’ve chosen are the pick of our live set, based on our own feelings about the songs and also feedback that we’ve been given by people at our gigs. At the moment we’re working on the first two of those: Clockwork and Against the Grain.
The first step was to get the drums down, and after an abortive initial attempt we got a pretty good sound using four inexpensive mics. We had to use a bit of ingenuity as Russell’s trusty Tascam Minidisc 4-track recorder picked its time to expire - we’d intended to use it to record four tracks and later transfer them to my computer. Instead, the whole thing had to be mixed on the hop and recorded to stereo on location. We even roped in the main and monitor channels of the rehearsal studio’s PA to use as mic channels!
Afterwards, the stereo drum tracks were transferred to Garageband and aligned to existing MIDI guide tracks just to check them in context. Next on will go the bass and guitars, and then the vocals, hopefully in a slightly more organised manner.
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