First day of recording on the new album
Saturday was the first day of recording on the new album! This time, we’re doing things a bit differently than with the last one.
First, we’re recording in the tracking room of my new studio instead of a spare bedroom in my house! So we’ve got about four times as much space as we did before! We’ve also got the guitar and bass amps set up on the opposite side of the room from the drums with baffles in front of them to try and minimize the bleed from the amps into the drum mics and vice versa.
Second, because of the arrangement in the room (and our desire to actually use a click track this time), we’re monitoring over headphones so each of us can have our own mix of what we need to hear clearly. So it took a while to get the headphone mixes set up and troubleshoot some minor technical issues. I had ordered a new headphone amp for the studio a few weeks ago, but the first one had some problems and I had to send it back. Unfortunately, the replacement hadn’t arrived in time, so I had to rig things up to use the headphone output of 3 different devices! Needless to say, that was a little tricky! Anyhow, the new headphone amp should be in this week, so hopefully that will be a non-issue next time.
After getting everything set up, we recorded a couple of takes of “Never See Home Again”. The first take was a bit rough, as we were still warming up, and I had to make a few adjustments to the headphone mixes afterwards to get things dialed in just right. But the second take was really tight! After getting the basic rhythm tracks laid down, we did a rough lead vocal track just to see how it would sound. Then, I did a rough mix so we could all have something to listen to before next time. I think I can say with confidence that we are all REALLY excited, and we’re off to a strong start on this new CD.
- Jon
