Recording actually went pretty well this week. As previously stated, I worked on Defrost Nixon corrections, mainly three tracks that have been giving me issues for the past 12 years. One of them ended up being a fairly simple fix but the other two took some time.
I spent a heck of a lot of time just working on guitar tone, something I haven't done well in the past. I have to say that guitar tone does seem to be key in many circumstances, with the old "if it doesn't sound good going in, it's not going to sound good coming out" perspective. You can do a lot with EQ but you can't always fix all around bad recordings, apart from re-recording, which is of course how I even got here in the first place.
"Usurper" happens to be the opening track so it's pretty important, of course, and it's a song I really like and always have. We used to practice this one a ton and it always sounded good live but getting it to sound full on the recording has been a real challenge. I decided to try something new...using the compressor in the guitar chain, thinking that might help, and so I went with that. It's still TBD if that was a good choice or not. From here, I need to work on adding keyboards because I think that's the missing element.
Next, I turned to "Never Say Never", what I'd call one of the "singles" on the album, so again it's a fairly important track. This main guitar part has been a mega thorn in my side for years because I either a) don't get enough power from it or b) the riff gets lost in the distortion on the guitar. I tried different settings, different guitars, and on and on. What I ended up with after all of that testing and such was a wall of distorted mess. More on that later.
"The Worst Salesman Ever" was the easiest re-record since I knew exactly what I was looking for. One key element, though, was that I quickly learned that I can NOT use the compressor in the chain since the dynamics get lost. Whoops! Well, I always learn the hard way, of course.
I also did a bunch of mixes and some minor riff work on "The Effects of Connection", the damn EP song that was supposed to be out last December that Peele initially was mixing. I'm happy to say that I think I finally got it, and I'd dare say that it sounds way better than Peele's last mix. Hold on to your hats...but I probably will have at least one minor release before the year is up.
After listening to these songs quite a few times, analyzing them, and so on, I finally realized that I needed to re-record the guitar on "Never Say Never" yet again. I think I'm up to maybe #5 now? Yeah, it's that ridiculous, and even worse I ran out of time and had to do it on Thursday just before heading to the airport in order to head to MN. Talk about pressure. I simply carved out an hour's worth of time and ran through it cold. Hell, I can play the part in my sleep at this point...
After that, I quickly packed and headed to the airport with the intention of letting all these songs just sit over the weekend and revisiting next week. I think I might have gotten a good enough sound finally for "Never Say Never" but who knows. I guess we'll see. Regardless, it was a fun recording week but very stressful due to time constraints, and unfortunately I wasn't really able to see any of the US Open in a comfortable manner. Oh well...
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