Redos

This weekend is all about redoing the main guitars on 2 songs from the Defrost Nixon album, namely "Marooned (Not Lost)" and "Semaphore on all Fours".  These are the only two tracks that I've really been struggling with the main guitars on when it comes to the mono mixes.  After doing a bit of research, I found that "Marooned" is one of the tracks way back when that I had made the poor choice to attempt to record the guitars in stereo, meaning splitting the output from a delay and/or reverb pedal and then shooting it to two different amps...in the same room, mind you.  You can probably imagine what that gets you...a literal mess of sound and phase.

"Semaphore" on the other hand has a very strange main guitar part that more or less needs a bit of delay, and then it needs to played in a very specific manner.  I think what I had recorded would have been fine if only I had also recorded a direct signal pre-pedal.  That's where I shot myself in the foot.  Because I don't have that work with, it also just fades into a mess of phase via the mono mix.

I've not historically had very good luck when trying to rerecord main guitars.  In fact, I would say that I've been batting around a 60% failure rate; possibly higher.  It usually stems from not being able to exactly replicate the same sound, and because of that the rerecorded part is more or less useless to me.  Knowing this, I went into today fully prepared to spend a ton of time just making sure that I've got a workable sound and tone before ever actually laying down a real track.

It took me over 2 hours to finally get to a point where I felt I had a decent sound to record.  Then, the actual recording began which I only intended to do 3 takes, my usual amount, but ended up doing 5.  I was having issues with the beginning of the track so I recorded about 5 more takes of just the first 30 seconds or so.  It gave me enough to work with where I could compile something together.

Overall, I think it worked.  I never actually celebrate until I hear something the next day since there have been countless times that I think I have what I want and then hear it the next day, wondering what the hell I was thinking.  So, I guess I'll reserve judgement until tomorrow at least.  I will say that what I got this time around seems to be cutting through as hoped in the mono mix and much to my surprise doesn't deviate that much from the original.  It also doesn't have the annoying grindy noise that the original had, something I think more or less came from a bit of unwanted distortion from the preamp back then.

I'll be working on "Marooned" tomorrow.  I expect that one to be slightly easier but I also need to work on the refrain guitars, possibly the last guitar parts that I need to record.  It would great to put this behind me at long last although it has been kind of fun to work on.