Technically, today is the First Day of Recording, because we have a long uninterrupted period in which to Get Shit Done. Of course, we're not completely ready to get shit done today because there are still a lot of preliminary things to sort out.
Dan has hired Crusher Mike from the rehearsal studios to repaint the studio a cheerful custard yellow, which you will see a lot of in photos from now on, although not quite as much as I'll see of it. It is quite friendly though, and feels lighter. It also complements Dan's pastypastry complexion.
Crusher Mike has been constructing some spongy sound-absorbing panels to address Dan's problem areas. They look like big notice boards to me. It helps it to look more like a studio. It will be even better when he's actually attached them to the walls. But things rarely get done on time, do they?
The first thing we have to do is load all Matt's demos into the computer, as they're going to be the skeletons for the finished versions. For this to work, we have to duplicate Matt's computery setup on Dan's computer. I say 'we' - there's a limit to the number of people who are committed enough to go grey and start crying as the authorisation of the 50th pluginglossary of 250 fails for the 15th time. Besides, there was still some vacuuming to do.
While blue progress bars snail along their little grey tracks and more and more pretend instruments get loaded, we decide we're going to do something productive, and listen through all the songs to get a feel for the shape and tone of the album. Naturally we've all had the demos for a while, but until now they have existed in a rather hypothetical place (a hypocathery!). This feels like the first time we've sat down and talked about how we're actually going to do it.
This is the kind of activity that really requires a big wallchart or whiteboard so that we can have a Big List to refer to when we're wondering what to do. Unfortunately all we have for paper is a few thousand Aqualung notebooks (an unpopular merchandise line that has hung around with our equipment for a few years). They aren't really practical for the kind of thing we need. I say 'we' - it's quite clear it only matters to me, thereby somehow giving the impression that I am the nitpicking obsessive middle-management type who's only one sniff of permanent marker away from drawing an organogram. So I rush out to find some large paper.
There isn't any within 2 minutes, which is as far as I am prepared to go. However, the newsagent does stock rolls of wrapping paper. In a flash of inspiration, I grab a roll (spangly gold stars), remembering that the reverse of wrapping paper is often purest white. Sadly, in this case the reverse of the spangly gold stars is spangly silver stars. Undaunted, I stick up a length of the silver side on the booth door, and without hesitation write up the first song, 'Human Shield', except I spelt it wrong.
After listening through all the demos, and writing up their names importantly (apart from 'All Right', which definitely won't be called that when it's finished), I was surprised to find it more coherent than I had thought. The extremes are still fairly extreme - the chunky openness of Rolls So Deep to the cold logic of Black Hole, but you could at least hear some stepping stones between them.
There was also a little more continuity of sounds and arrangements, a lot of songs with a blend of drum machine and Matt's programmed virtual drums. You may have detected my agnosticism about virtual instruments. My problem with them boils down to their inherent second-generation-ness; they replicate the instrument according to a consensus of what a well-recorded instance of that instrument sounds like. That consensus is based on generations of record-making and trial and error, and therefore saves you a lot of time if you want to sound Officially Excellent. However, there is no creativity involved in this. You are dealing entirely in presets. However editable your virtual instrument is, there is no random factor like there is in real life between your real Thing in a real room in front of a real microphone, and these are the criteria for unique sounds. Virtual amplifiers, for example often feature settings for famous sounds from famous songs. We should be aspiring to create sounds that become presets.
I didn't get to make this argument, though, because there was no dispute about recording actual drums, and recording Real Things in general. The only question that remained was how well you could do that in the foamy blackness of the booth. It would make quite a useful cupboard.
Matt's main production note is that he wants everything to sound brown. This means 'dark and warm' rather than 'shiny and bright'. We nod.
We look at the calendar and conclude that since we want to deliver the unmixed album at the beginning of September, with some touring in July, we can probably fit everything in with a bit of jiggling timeNot a technical term, (except perhaps in Dance) just meaning Time To Mess Around With The Songs Until They Are Broken. if we work four days a week, say from 10ish till oooh, I don't know... 5?
Just before we leave, the smaller of Dan's two mixers starts exhibiting Strange Behaviour which means you can only listen to the left side of things. Thankfully it isn't as essential as the other mixer and so Dan takes it away somewhere for a quiet chat and we don't see it again. I hope it's not an omen.
