Face It - 10 May 2012 - Final Recording Session?

Intro

The guys turned up (beers in hand) as normal at 8pm to put some finishing touches to their album. This might be the last session where they actually record anything.  It wasn't going to be a long session, as Chris needed to be up at 5am the next morning.

We were only going to record a few guitar parts and some extra backing vocals, so we weren't planning for a long night.  Things didn't quite turn out as they should have.

Chris brought along his trusty Marshall amp, which we mic'ed up in stereo as usual.

Technical Issues

After a quick level check, we started adding some guitar parts to 'Everything Turns To Blue', then things just went a bit wierd.

There was a 'click' on the recording.  Now this happens more than you might imagine, but most of the time, the click is only heard once and is usually attributed to someone switching on a light, or the heater in the studio coming on, or a mic is still switched on during playback and it picks up something, or some other electrical interference and is not actually on the recording.  So we listened again.  There it was, same place.  So I set about finding which track the click was on.  Solo'd the track we'd just recorded and it was on there, so I muted that track and had another listen.  The click was still there, so I solo'd the drums (which had been recorded in January and definitely didn't have any clicks on), and the click was there, at the same place in the song.  Sometimes the gear I use (a Tascam 1804) is a bit temperamental (it certainly doesn't like being cold!), so I rebooted the computer and the recording box.  Same click, same place.  So I loaded another song and no clicks anywhere.  Very odd.  Rebooted a few more times, same result.  Only on this particular song, at this particular place was there a click that hadn't existed before.  To get things moving, I quickly mixed down what we had, and created a new project and imported the mix down.  This meant we could record the guitar parts and I'll put them back in the original project on another day.  The rest of the recording went off without any more clicks.  I guarantee that next time I load that project, it'll be fine.

Maybe it was just 'wierd Thursday'.

UPDATE:  The problem was 'mixing latency'.  My PC just wasn't up to the task of mixing 24 audio tracks with loads of effects in real-time.  After 'pre-mixing' a few tracks, the click went away. Phew.

Recordings

Cheer up Mike.  You get to  record something tonight.

On 'A Minor Incident' there is a particularly good bass part which we decided to double up on guitar.  Who's the best person to play it?  Well, of course, Mike played it in the first place, so, for the first time in a couple of months, he gets to record something.  We also wanted to make the chorus backing vocals sound fuller. Chris and Jack doubled each others parts, but it was still missing something.  Adding in the 3rd of the chord did the trick.

Sometimes during recording we'll add something that we aren't sure about, so we'll put in a demonstration version and take it away from the session to see if we like it.  This was the case with a backing vocal part in 'Living On A Shoestring'.  We'd only recorded a harmony part on the first chorus and needed to put it on the other 2 choruses.  With the miracle of digital editing (cut & paste), this was added to all the other choruses in a few seconds.

Chris and Jack added some ooohs to 'Thunder and Lightening' and we re-introduced a ride cymbal roll that was recorded when the drums were done, but never seemed to fit the song.  It's a good job we kept that track because it now fits the song!  It adds a little bit of lift to the song just before the chorus. Nice.

The song starts with the sound of thunder, but the sample we are currently using is a bit naff.  My job this week is to find something that sounds like, well, thunder and lightening :-)

Jack put down some backing vocals ideas on 'These Days', but his voice didn't really suit some of the parts.  Chris did a much gentler vocal on a couple of the ideas which fitted the laid-back feel of the song. The other ideas will go on the session mixes so we can decide which ones work and which to drop.

Something I missed when recording the main vocal, was a couple of lines in the first verse. Chris didn't pronounce one or two of the words clearly in the original take, so we punched a new vocal for those lines.
It was also decided to get rid of the guitar during the solo and just leave the harmonica.

We had a listen back to 'Let Go'.  The band are still divided about whether the 'Paul McCartney' ooohs fit the song.  I don't think we made a decision in the end, but we'll need to make one soon!

We wrapped up the session at about 11:20pm.  So much for Chris' early night :-)  Was this the last recording session?  Hmmm.  Maybe.