1st Recording Session - 17 January 2008, Thursday (8.30pm – 10.30pm)

Session 1
Alright, I guess we've delayed this for too long! Its been a month since the first recording session and here we are blogging history (not really what blogs were meant to be used for). Just to be clear on how this blog would work, its going to be like the blogging of every recording session. We start with a little introduction, followed by the two songs we recorded and the instruments! Here goes.


Songs – News, Astray
Instruments Recorded – Drums and Bass

Recording Process
Next, we talk about what we did. For the first session, we chose two songs, the first was "News" which was the first ever song we wrote together, and Astray, one of our less played songs (still rocks like a S.P.O.N.G.E). Mr. Q began the proceedings for the recording to start. Here's the drumset (without him).


I'll get him to elaborate on the set up once he's ready to talk.

Syai ran his bass through a Hartke amp (HA3500 Head and a VX410 Cabinet) Syai will elaborate on what he likes about this amp in future posts. Meanwhile, here's what I like :) I like it for its slight warmth and punchiness. Apparantly Hartke is rather famous for being a "rock" bass amp. I guess that's about right and that was the sound we really wanted for both songs. News required a more punchy bass sound and Astray, I would say a more traditional rock bass tonel. Here's the Hartke.

I would say... it wasn't a really eventful recording session besides the fact it kicked everything off! But maybe that's cos I forgot lots about it... Opps. Anyway, 2 hours and 2 drum tracks and bass tracks? That's really quite a good start.

End

Finally, at the end of each blog of every recording session, we'll end off with something that perhaps future bands can use. We call it "End" to make it sound better than... "conclusion" or "summary"...

Anyway, here's the short takeaway. Before we actually began recording, we had played through all the songs with the metronome, noting down the exact tempos we wanted for each song. (Note to new bands: A metronome is very important. Despite the difficulty and all the easy excuses about the lack of "feel", it makes you a better band. Honest. Even we hate playing with it and we often don't... but oh well).

Quite strangely, we do feel that Astray did end up a bit slower than we wanted. What we found useful was to sing along as parts were recorded so that we knew exactly how it felt and could correct it if necessary. This is why its important that most of the band members have to be present even if they are not recording (Yes! The vocalist should be around when recording drums. How would anyone know that???)

Yes. It does get a little boring sitting around doing nothing but listening to the same instrument being recorded for about 4 hrs. But it definitely beats a lifetime of listening to a mistake which could have been corrected easily. So our advice is (as indirectly said by Nick) is to be patient, especially with each other. Practical advice would try not to be too stingy with the retakes. It doesn't help to be stressed about getting each part right one time through. Like we try to convince ourselves, its really better than listening to a lifetime of bad takes.

Anyway, in the next post, we'll be talking our 2nd Recording session. It involves guitars (my faa-vourite). :)