Recording complete!

Well, just got back from the recording session with Joost. Turns out the local high school in Thatcham has quite a music facility: a touch better than what I remember at Madras, where the height of expense was a drum kit :) Mind you, it was 1988 when I left.

Good 24 channel desk, with 8 subchannels (a spirit folio), and a 24 channel tascam hard drive recorder. Good separates, and Joost's drums had some good mics doing their magic! I brought the Pod and the Warwick CCL, but in the end it proved better to just DI the pod in AIR speaker emulation mode - sounded great. The stock electronics in the 5 string aren't as bad as I've read on some websites, it had jsut the right amount of mellow bass plus a little bit of treble from the newly-boiled strings. Actually, that bass sounds best with "used" strings.

I added some white wine vinegar when I cleaned them this time as well, seems to have made a bit of a difference. They lasted beautifully, despite us having a couple of run throughs as warm up and then 4 takes. We forgot the middle 8 scat solo on the first one!

I must try to remember that a whiteboard is an excellent idea when recording - I scribbled up the dynamics of the 2 bar sections played after the chorus, and then we aced it no problem. Probably a good idea to do that in advance...

I think I might have a talent for recording like that - just bass and drums - it felt really natural, I wasn't panicking the way I thought I might when you don't have any other melodic counterpoint to work with. I was actually much more nervous yesterday evening when I had another couple of run-throughs at 12:20am(!)

yawn... and I wonder why I'm tired!

Wierd day though. Now I've got to get off home so I can drive down to close to folkestone(!) for the ATP festival (Their site gives good details) which it turns out is in a pontins holiday camp! Smurf's coming down there with me, he's bringing his acoustic, etc.

Wish I'd got more music on the iPod, the iTrip will come in handy, no doubt. Still no ChiliPeppers on there yet! Grrr... this is whap happens when you don't get around to finishing the MP3tag checking on your MP3 collection. I think I'm part-way through one of the folders... I still haven't even installed Steinberg's "clean" software to get all the vinyl and tapes turned digital... I want Snuff on the iPod!