Vamika - 12th December 2012

Session times: 8pm-10pm

Damien (bass guitar) and Dave (lead guitar) from Vamika  came along tonight.

Weak To The Beat

We had recorded the drums at the second session back in July and this was the first time we were laying any tracks on top of them.  Damien set up his bass and amp and tuned up while I placed the sE2200a on one of the speakers in the bass cab.  I also took a line out from the amp as this can sometimes give a clearer 'toppy' sound when mixed with the signal from the speaker.  Of course both signals are recorded on seperate tracks so I can decide on the particular mix at later sessions.

There was some talk last time about playing fret-less bass on this song, but in the end Damien brought his usual (fretted) bass guitar along.

Damien played along to the backing tracks whilst I got the levels set correctly, then we started recording.

When the drum track was originally recorded, due to the fact I could only record 8 tracks at once, the guitar and bass shared a track.  This meant that after the intro, Damien could only hear the drums and vocal in his headphones.

At around 9:50, we had just finished recording a snippet, when all of a sudden, Damien's amp turned off.  We checked a few connections and couldn't find anything wrong, until I remembered my Christmas lights!!

My outdoor Christmas decorations (of which there are many) are on a timer and Damien had plugged his amp into the same extension power socket that was also powering the lights.  I had set the lights to turn off around 10pm. Doh!

At this point, we could tell Damien was beginning to tire from all the concentration.  He tried to get a good take on the final chorus, but it wasn't to be, so we decided to call it a night.  Of course this meant we had to commit a recording cardinal sin, move the gear before completing the whole track.  I copied down the amp settings and drew pictures of where the mic was positioned so we could make sure they were identical on the next session.