It was day three and we were ready to roll. Our start time was set for eleven a.m., but we trickled at times either earlier or later, I won't say which. Let it suffice to say that this is rock and roll, and there are no rules.
The main goal today was to get a good start on Anthony and Dustin's guitar work. Anthony took the helm first. The recording area is called a "drum riser," but it has been acoustically designed to record anything there -- guitars, vocals, percussion -- not just drums. Anthony set up in the riser and Joe double amp-ed him, set up mics on both amps, and he was good to go.
We worked almost entirely with Travis today on our tracking. It was all good, since he also seems to know what he's doing behind the board.
Anthony burned his way through a good number of songs while Nick and I filmed and took photos. Anthony began tracking probably around 11:45 this morning and, taking a rest, handed it over to Dustin for a bit. Dustin got some of his preliminary tracking done today. No solos -- that's tomorrow. Dustin knocked a few of them out of the park and Anthony took over again to finish out the night.
Recording an album seems so easy compared to some of the reading I've done on studios a couple decades ago. It's all so smooth. There's no fear of wasting tape. There's no literal cutting. We have click tracks and punching in and all kinds of fantastic technology. The only thing to waste is time.
And waste time, we did. I introduced Travis to Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg's "Motherlover" video, as well as the original "Pants on the Ground" followed by Jimmy Fallon's impression of Neil Young performing said song. I then sought out Fallon's Young performing the "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" theme song. Classic videos all.
It was all good, though. When you're in the studio from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., you sometimes need a distraction to break up the monotony. After about nine hours of recording and engineering, your brain turns to mush. But we insist on going beyond that. Because it's what we do.
We ended tonight on Anthony's guitar part for "I'm a Bad Mamma Jamma (Who Works at Wendy's)." He went through it a few times and we thought he had nailed it. Anthony really wanted to do it again, though with a tweak on the effect. So he did. Then we thought he nailed it again, but he still wasn't happy with it. We decided that all of our heads were melted and it was time to call it for the night.
So we wound down a bit by telling wildly inappropriate jokes and we put the process on pause until tomorrow.
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