The final day of tracking at Orchard... GUITARS!
Sound-wise, guitars are my personal favourite thing as I feel I can truly express myself with a guitar much more fully than I can vocally or in any other way for that matter. This is especially so with electric gutars for me, through the huge array of sounds which can be bent and squeezed out of them in all kinds of exciting ways and with their power to produce some incredible sounds that make the instrument produce a kind of super-voice or rather voices that can be screamed, squealed, roared, cried, sang, or just whispered out of them. Anyway this felt like a particularly artistically pleasing day which took me and Dan in some exciting unforeseen directions!
Dan and I played my black Strat 'Il Pirata', a studio Les Paul style of guitar, a Tanglewood acoustic and Dan also played banjo on one song.
I say "played"... I played my Strat for lead guitar parts in a more or less conventional manner whereas the 'Les Paul' and Tanglewood were more cajoled into getting lots of feedback out of them by strumming, twanging, waving, shaking and generally moving them in and out of the zone in front of the Marshal amp. Dan then did some magnificent painting with these feedback sounds through and around a song, it's going to sound amazing. For another track some harmonic sounds I played on my strat found a new meaning and almost bell-like tones which strike the right feel in a couple of places in another song.
Thinking one particularly quirky song needing something... we just weren't sure what, Dan came up with the idea of a mandolin, but couldn't find the one he thought was around so tried a banjo instead. This turned out to be an inspired unintended-choice as it was perfect for this particular song and intertwined nicely with a nylon-string guitar track I'd already put down. Mr Logan really had his producers head on, and made lots of suggestions about my approach and things to try as well as coming up with plenty of sound and thematic ideas. This was great for me as it gave me confidence in what I both was aiming for and how the songs would end up sounding.
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| Dan trying something out on the banjo |
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| Radders, as always lovely company. |
All done! Now just the mixing.
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| For another track (not mentioned before in this post). My lead-guitar sound was blended through both a Marshal & this tiny thing! (Note the size of this amp in comparison with the mic). |
Recording preparation Part 1
Recording preparation Part 2
Recording preparation Part 3
Recording Day 1
Recording Day 2
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