Whatever

Another quick one for tonight. Here's an instrumental piece that I wrote on keys. A rare event by all accounts :P.

Get this widget | Track details | eSnips Social DNA

Various Recording Endeavours

I spent the whole day in bed and missed tonight's rehearsal on account of a bug. I began feeling queasy yesterday, when I took the afternoon off from work and drove to Folschette to lay down my guitar parts. I think it went down okay, although I did struggle with the solo's. It was good to have Mel up in the control room to give some pointers. Couldn't use my Fuzz Factory 'cause it picked up radio interference, which was disappointing, but to my luck, Mel brought along his Little Big Muff (I think I might get one... :P). That's the only effect I had. It sounds really meaty and seems to cut nicely through the mix. I didn't feel my playing was stellar and didn't have a chance to hear it afterwards. Zsolt was already there to the basslines another shot and I was already unwell... I just remembered that I recorded some short video on my phone the first time we were there. I might put it up on you tube tomorrow, as I won't have much else to do. Anyway, I still can't see the end of our little sessions up there. Mark still has to do his keyboards and then come the vocals, mixing... It's going to cost us ;). [edit] I almost forgot to mention this: remember that I said Jacques' drumming on Sunday Driver was uneven? Well, it seemed to be gone once Mel put down his guitar. I can't trust my senses anymore :P.

On another note, I also finished off a song that I began recording sometime last year, using my little Fender Champ. It's a knock-off of 'Green Onions', I just love that riff to death. I now added drums and a Rhodes track (including a cheeky solo) to the two guitar tracks and bass that were already done. I'm really pleased with the overall sound of the result, it's really raunchy. Check it out:

Get this widget | Track details | eSnips Social DNA

I'm also working to finish some other stuff. Watch this space... Toodeloo!

Studio D

We spent Saturday up in Folschette with the band recording our demo. The studio itself is a cool place, set up in an old farm building in the village. The room has a good sound, as far as I can tell. Yves Ditsch, who was manning the console for the day was very helpful and friendly, we got good coffee and such. Two thumbs up for the facilities and service. We went in to record 4 songs: 'Let's Pop', 'Oceanbound', 'Sunday Driver' and 'Too Much Room'. The drums went down real quick, kudos to Jacques for that, although his playing on Sunday Driver is a bit uneven. We were done so fast that we decided to lay down a fifth track, a cover of 'Psycho Killer' by Talking Heads. However, we hit the big hurdle when recording the bass. [edit] It really is too bad, we got off to such a good start. I decided to put down two rhythm tracks before we left. I was pretty happy with the one I did for Oceanbound and Sunday Driver was okay. (Before anyone accuses me of being too hard on the others and not being as critical towards my own work, I only recorded easy-peasy things that day, we'll see how I will fare with the hard stuff, like the vocals and lead lines...) At least I didn't bring all my stuff along for nothing but on the whole, I was pretty disappointed with what we achieved that day. On the up side, I was really pleased with the sound I got out of my amp (a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe). I used the "clean" channel. With the volume up about half way, I got a nice, well defined, crunchy tone. Too bad I can't have this setup live right now, it's just too loud. I'm looking at attenuators, but I'm not sure if they're worth the investment. After all, I can use the "drive" channel or my DS-1 and get close (kind of). I've been looking at the THD Hot Plates and Bad Cat's 'The Leash'. I hope the shops here in Luxembourg have something. I want to try before I buy. That's one of the downers in living in a small place like this, it's often hard to find the gear you need (want) without resorting to extensive travel or the internet...

"October"

October (1st mix)....

I uploaded this one more than a week ago, but I wasn't really sure if it was good enough to post here. I got a couple of very positive responses (which, to be honest, surprised me a bit), so here it is. It's a song that I put together real quick, just to keep busy and maybe to see how far I could get with a simple idea. BTW, this is the first time I used Guitar Rig 3 on a recording. Hope you like it too.

Mice

Mice.mp3

I spent most of Friday afternoon recording this track. The song itself is something I've been playing around with for quite some time now. It's been recorded during rehearsal by Szegényanyámhalátna. At that time our drummer was away on a scholarship for 6 months, and we had a guy fill in for him who just got back from Canada and was trying out for orchestras and stuff, so he was pretty good. Anyway, I used the bassline that was on that recording as a basis for what I do here. I also recorded an acoustic version about two years ago but that was very uneven.

The bass became the lead instrument for the first two verses, so I reverted to playing chords on it so as not to overshadow the guitar solo at the end. I must say that I'm really happy with the way my bass guitar sounds. My playing is still a bit sloppy, so it's nice to have that compensated by a pleasing tone.

The drums are made up of a backing loop (dnb 156bpm) from Guitar Rig 2 and some added accents from the LiViD synth. Again the LiViD patterns were manually modified in the sequence.

I used my Telecaster for the comping right up to the solo. I made several attempts at recording the lead with that guitar but it always came out too clunky. The Les Paul's P-90 at the bridge was the answer. Since I had about 30 shots at recording it (no kidding), the solo came out more structured than usual. The section over the verse riff was fully mapped out by the time I recorded the final version, the rest was pretty much improvised on the spot. I feel I'm stuck in a rut with my lead playing. I have horrible difficulties coming up with stuff that sounds original and isn't too repetitive... Anyway, both guitar tracks use GR2's "Hall Warm FX" factory preset.

Kitchen Groove

This one came along as a series of accidents. I initially wrote the underlining bass groove in 4/4. As I was setting things up to record it, I accidentally set the metronome to 7/8. I tried it that way and it worked out, so I kept it. It then took me a good couple of days to figure out the guitar parts. I accidentaly stumbled upon a video review of the Roland JC-120 amp on Gearwire. The guy was playing those jazzy arpeggios between chords, something I still couldn't get my head around after all these years. I saw that he was pretty good at responding to questions posted on the site, so I asked him how that works. He told me to check out diminished chords and scales. I googled it and found a website with a basic introduction. Reading that article, I realised that one of the riffs I'm playing on the bass in this song actually matches the "whole-half" scale. That's how I ended up playing the corresponding diminished chord over that part. Recording the lead part there was pretty uncomfortable, my left hand is locked into the pentatonic box thing. It took me about 10 takes to get an acceptable result.

For the recording I used my Magix Audio Studio software. I built the drum track with "LiViD", a synth that is included in the DAW and did some manual editing to fit the bass track. All bass and guitar parts were done with Guitar Rig 2. I used a Jazz amp with a Psychedelay a synthlike effect on the rythm guitar. The main bass groove uses my own preset, all the others are stock, namely "Vocode Bass" for the bass solo, "No Holds Barred Lead" for the cleaner lead guitars (the distortion is turned off), "Stepping Gates" for the parts over the diminished chords and the lead guitar following the bass solo (the tremolo rate was adjusted to fit the song). The latter part is doubled on another track with the "System of a Crown" preset from the Metal & HiGain bank (wah pedal on, controlled by the input level modifier). Enjoy:

Kitchen Groove.mp3

So Easy v2.0

Here's a new version of the song I did based on comments I got on various forums. There still might be some room for improvement...

So Easy v2.mp3

So Easy

Yeah, right! I spent the better part of three days putting this thing together and I'm still not entirely happy. But I guess this is as good as it'll get without starting over from scratch. Check it out:

Get this widget | Share | Track details

Tapedeck

This is a little something I recorded tonight using the tapedeck in GR2. I've been playing around with the software, creating new presets. I was aiming for some old school blues/rock overdriven sound and what you hear on this recording is what I came up with.

Tape Deck 2 Apr 01...

A 3rd One

Here's the last recording for this weekend. It's something I came up with Sunday morning. It seems I'm kind of stuck with slow minor progressions for now... This is just one acoustic track with some nice stereo reverb. I spent 2 hours trying to come up with a second guitar track, but in the end I just stuck with this. It sounds full enough to stand on its own, and everything I added seemed out of place. Anyway, have a listen:

B minor song.mp3

Another Acoustic Demo

Here's a new one I recorded 2nite with my acoustic. This is a song we've been working on for the last couple of weeks with the band. The main riff and chorus are from our keyboard player, to which we added stuff during rehearsals. The arrangement is (hopefully) the one we came up with last Tuesday. I recorded this demo on 3 tracks panned left, right and center. The guitar on the left has a capo at the 8th fret and plays the basic rythm part. In the center I put another rythm guitar, this time playing the chords at the lowest possible position (even adding the low 5th if the root falls on the A string) to add a bit of dimension. On the right, I'm playing the main synth riff with a slide (standard tuning) and adding some other elements just to keep it constant. Check it out:

Mark's Song.mp3

PS: I did screw up a bit towards the end, falling out of tempo on the last couple of chords. Being the lazy bastard that I am, I just faded the whole thing out before it got really nasty ;)...

New Song

Hey, I just came up with a new thing on my acoustic while I was noodling around. I recorded it using my Samson C01U condenser mic. I haven't got any lyrics yet, but it's the best thing I've come up with in some time. Check it out:

D minor song.mp3