Recording

Last weekend Rosetta started recording for the next full length. In two days we finished all the drum tracks and bass tracks for two songs. This coming weekend is going to be all guitar tracks (bass will resume later). BJ put up a video of some first weekend antics here.

It's a really different experience working with an actual producer, instead of just an engineer. I can see a lot of tradeoffs --- the performances are better because there's someone to provoke the best in you, but there's also less of the sense of "building" a record that you have when you do everything yourself. I think I've come to love having intimacy with the whole signal path in recording --- from fingers to pickup to pedals to amp to cab to mics to preamp to board to interface.... you get the idea. Now I'm only in control of the things that I control in a live situation. The benefit is more concentration on the performance, but it feels like we may be getting a bit more myopic about the process as a whole. It's hard to describe. There's certainly a sense that we aren't "vetting the authenticity" of the final product like we have in the past.

It's not that the producer has separate goals from the band. His job is to make sure that we're being true to our own goals. The question in my mind is to what degree it changes the authorial nature of the recording. That's not a question of real consequence, just something I wonder about. I'm having fun and learning, that's what matters.

If you're sick of the recent navel-gazing, I've got some more nerd-ball tech posts in the pipeline, since recording means that I'm fiddling with gear more than usual. There will be a TSL mods part 2, and a post on the new Electro Harmonix Memory Toy analog delay. There will also be Valve Juniors on this new record, with the Frankencaster and a gnarly vintage Russian Big Muff Pi. I will of course post all the nit-picky details.