Job done
Posted on | January 14, 2007 | Comments Off on Job done
Well, I’m back from a few days helping some friends record their new album. Excellent progress made – 10 songs tracked and a couple of jams recorded too. Drums, guitar and bass all recorded. Good work. Long days and very long nights. Pretty grueling sessions. Lots and lots of beer. Late nights, no lie-ons. Well, no lie-ons for me anyway – my damn body clock wakes me no later than ten and won’t generally let me get back to sleep (it used to be even earlier but I believe it’s had pity on me since I’ve become a father).
Ten o’clock, I hear you shout, surely that constitutes a lie-on? Not if you got to bed four hours earlier after consuming a pond’s worth of Stella. It’s a young man’s game, that. A game that’s fine if you’re able to lie in the bed until two in the afternoon without a problem (as were my colleagues). Not so fine if you’re up and about at ten however.
This pattern was repeated for the duration of our stay. I wiled away these solitary morning hours before my colleagues’ rising by feeling like I was wearing someone else’s head, drinking a small plantation’s worth of tea and reading. Got to finish my book (the excellent John Banville’s “Eclipse“) and start a new one (the so far excellent “Fugitive Pieces” by Anne Michaels). I’ll long remember those woolly-headed, hungover mornings, shivering in the chilly conservatory (as it was the only sitting spot that wasn’t covered in beer bottles and fag-ash).
As to the recording, any ‘engineering’ I had was a doddle. The boys know what they’re doing so once levels were set and the record button hit, I usually had very little to do until the track was finished. A bit of rewinding/overwriting here and there. A bit of tweaking for the odd clip. A little shouting of ‘break now’ over the talkback if they weren’t 100% on the song. The occasional kicking of the Mac as Pro Tools complained about holding off interrupts or some such. Other than that, all I needed to do was press the right buttons at the right time. Easy-peasy.
And, contrary to my previous boasts, the time there was groupie and limo-in-duckpond free. The only vices on offer were beer, a little pot, some serious shite-talk and many, many cheese toasties. I’m sure Keith Richards would approve. I hear he loves a nice toasty.
Comments
Gerry Hayes
I mostly sit around all day and drink tea. Occasionally, I write stuff and send it to strangers so they can humiliate me and deride my efforts. Other than the self-harm to dull the shame of failure, it's not a bad life. Like I say, there's tea.
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