10th Recording Session, 28 February 2008, Thursday, (7.30pm – 11.00pm)

Unusually, this recording session was not on the last day of February but the second last day - A leap year. An extra day every forth year to compensate for each of the 1/4 days which should actually be at the end of every year. Its weird when you think about it. Did you know that a year which is not a leap year is referred to as a "Common Year"? Guess that's how normal life can be. Oh well. For more S.P.O.N.G.E unrelated info on leap years, head to (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_year). Anyway, just a little note. I will unlikely be writing on future recording sessions as Syai da man, will be taking over from the next post on. But hey! I promised to comment on a few things on this blog, so I will definitely do so in the future (once I have the time). These will be short little posts which won't have much to do with the recording sessions though. Hopefully interesting and related enough for you gals/guys! Anyway... back to serious business.

Songs – Today, News, Fortify
Instruments Recorded – Guitar (Kenneth), Classical Guitar (Kenneth), Vocals (Rahmat, Qader and Fiq), Shaker (Qader)

Recording Process
The Fender Bassman had returned (only to be taken away by "Electrico" the next session. Syai will let you know more in the future post. SYAI!) and the guitars for Today could finally be completed. I had only used the Bassman for the verse and ending chorus though. The rest of the guitars (including the distorted portions in the verse) were recorded using the Vox amp as we felt that the Vox sound "set" itself into the mix much better. Anyway, for Today, I had suggested adding a classical guitar to the mix. Glad that the band endorsed and liked the idea, more or less (Maybe they just didn't really care!) Anyway... Yup! There is a classical guitar being played in the song. I won't really spoil it for anyone, but once we have some clips... or the record gets out, try listening for it. Hehe :). Its in quite a few places. I liked that it wasn't too obvious. Still it was definitely worth the time.

Rahmat, Qader and Fiq did some of the vocals, redoing certain parts of the song. Hmm.. anything interesting about recording the vocals this time? Not really. Here's a picture of Syafiq pretending to record vocals though. He's just posing like this with his mouth open cos we wanted a "handsome" shot of him "recording vocals". ;)



Honestly, this photo wasn't even taken during this recording session. Haha! Oh! Once the song's out, try listening and see if you can identify where each of the 3 singers sang! :)

So next up... that box of percussion stuff. Man. I don't even want to begin saying know how many forms of percussion instruments were in that box. We'll try to take a photo and post it up for everyone to see. Its madness. Anyway, for Today, we used a plastic cylinder filled with rice, which you quite clearly hear in the last chorus - Gives the ending of the song a nice beachy (not bitchy) feeling. Ah... just listen to the song at a remote beach... and let your troubles float away...

End
Today's advice is on percussion! I am definitely not the expert here, but I think its worth learning how to use shakers properly. Apparently, there are many ways to shake a maracas (is this even how its spelled??) and different feels and sounds can be created. So. Yup. Definitely something worth learning for all percussionists. :)