I have just spent two days in a recording studio in Lund with Keyo Ghettson, laying down guitar for his songs. On the first day, I did all the basic guitar tracks – nine songs in eight ours including lunch break. For those of you who have not recorded in this tempo, let me tell you it is absolutely grueling work! The best parallell I can come up with is writing an exam at and advanced level (university level) for eight hours. Constant focus on keeping to the tempo of the click track, on playing the music without any mistakes, on playing cleanly without finger nail scrapes, chair squeaks or clicking toes (!) – and so on. It is quite a challenge, but we got it all down.
On day two, we revisited a couple of the songs with a few ideas for rearranging them with proper guitar solos instead of the bass figures I play live. I did one I was especially happy with, and then Keyo realised that the tempo did not feel right. Argh. I re-did the track with a slower tempo (and yes, it was better) and the engineer actually managed to move the solo to the new tempo in ProTools. It still sounds good, but not quite like it did in its own proper tempo. Oh well!
How finished the songs are is up to Keyo, I feel we have at least two to four of them down now. The next step is probably to do final vocals on as much as we can when Keyo is ready and rested, and then maybe sprinkle some decorative guitar and effects on top. My feeling is that the core is done, but obviously the last word is Keyo’s.
Photo from the control room of Studio Bengt by Mattias, our engineer. No actual bass guitar was recorded, but there may be some on the final product.
kbospeak 