ADAM N. COPELAND
August 2, 2009 at 3:27 am
filed under music
Recording again soon. The waiting is what is most painful.
Lloyd has all new drum heads coming in the mail. Clear acrylic. Boom. Thwack. Etc.
I have a few new microphones coming in the mail. 3 Sennheiser e604s. 2 Audio Technica AT3035s. Sizzle. Crash. Boom Boom BOOM.
I tend to be a bit obsessive about how things sound, even in the earliest phases. I’m rather glad to be working with two musicians that understand and occasionally encourage this compulsion. I have never gotten good results in my life with anything by rushing through. This is not a criticism of others, as this tactic works fantastically for some people (eg. Jay Reatard, The Cure back in their early 80s heyday).
I would love to just go into a studio and pay someone else to record us - it takes your mind off the technical aspect and lets you just perform. Yet, it has become clear to me lately that none of us are really comfortable in someone else’s digs. While the recording itself may come out sounding great, the performances are likely come out a little cardboard and formless, as it were. This is doubleplusnotgood. To properly record music you must gather and capture the stray demons in the room. You must feel it from you toes to your fingers and back again. You must catch it by the tail as it runs fiery loud screaming from you.
Recording yourself also has a few drawbacks. First, someone in the room has to engineer the session and therefore take on all the pain and tears of which that entails. Also, while I have managed to amass a respectable collection of mics and equipment (for an amateur), it pales in comparison to what a properly equipped shop would have. Third, I am not a professional engineer. Try as I might to religiously read Tape Op or Sound On Sound - and all that good web stuff - there are some holes in my game. I admit there are a lot of things I don’t know about The Black Art.
Yet I hope that the pros outweigh the cons. The pros being a more relaxed atmosphere, not being on a clock, being able to really screw around and seek out some new sounds. I’m of the opinion that songs are never really done being written and it’s worth it to rework them as many times as needed to get the right result.
It may take a couple months. It may take the rest of the year. It may take until next year. We may change our name three times in the process. But God Willing Man We Will Have An Album.
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