5/6 June 2006
I don't drive, which means I get to do a lot of carrying stuff on the train. Today I'm bringing in my small Fender amp which fits nicely into my wheely suitcase. Sadly my wheely suitcase has had a lot of this kind of abuse in its life and after a few hundred metres the wheels start sinking into their mountings and emitting a piercing squeal. Dogs keep bringing me sticks.
I get in to find we have an enormous new pair of monitors. Dan explains that the manager of one of the other bands he's working with claims to have found them in a spare room in his mansion, and would we find them useful? Perhaps he was concerned about the bass sounds they were getting. Anyway, they certainly don't fart as much so we are grateful to have them.
Bass is the first thing today. Matt seems to be especially intolerant of errors this morning, which is a shame because there are a lot of them. We start with Rolls So Deep. The challenge is to introduce some slightly 'tougher' elements into this very open song, to take it away from Toploader territory. The bass part I played on the demo was very Motown, but we also want to steer it away from pastiche. This song means a lot to me and I wanted the bass to be exactly right, and sound like proper bass, so there was a lot to think about. Luckily, we were able to record the results, so you will one day be able to listen to the bass and judge for yourself how successful we were.
Then we did bass on Glimmer with a teatowel taped over the bass bridge so it went 'dunk'.
Now we're going to do some electrical guitar on Rolls So Deep. Matt has recently been playing guitar on his demos, so there are some parts that he really ought to play, such as this one. He does fine. There is a small satisfaction in forcing him to keep tuning up to see how he likes it. Keyboard players - they're so fucking sanctimonious about tuning. It's the very essence of guitar that at least one of the notes in any chord is a bit awful. Do you think the Sex Pistols kept tuning up all the time?
