Today was our first day tracking. We spent the morning selecting equipment, ending up with a mixture of 60s and 70s gear that sounds much fuller and richer than a lot of the stuff we can personally afford.
We set up so that we all played in the live room, but placed the amps around the studio for separation - bass amp in the vocal booth, guitar amps in a stairwell and a utility room, and drums behind a heavy door. There was very little bleed between any of the individual elements which allows us to cut or overdub later if we need to. And probably we will need to.
It was a long day. We started around 10am and finished about 9, and after around 3 o'clock we were doing solid live takes. We changed the key of the song halfway through, after I recorded a guide vocal; and then pushed through fatigue to get a useable take that would provide a solid base for overdubs and vocals. It was exhausting, and after a while it was hard to tell good takes from bad anymore; but being exhausted also sometimes tricks you into going into a kind of trance where the work flows naturally and it less about concentration and effort than instinct. With live recording you are constantly aiming to be somewhere between conscious effort and unconscious effortlessness; not too far to the former that you play like a robot, and not too far the other way that you are sloppy.
Afterwards, it was still just light enough for us to go for a beer with David, our producer / engineer / studio owner. It was very nice to sit down exhausted on a plastic chair at a plastic table on the street and order up beers and tapas from a small cafe. We walked home and bought a bottle of wine. Tomorrow we're back in the studio to do it again.
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