Recording things “properly”
It’s difficult to know what to write when coming to the subject of how to record things “properly” after having blogged about the amateurish, and yet satisfying and sort of “Aw, gee Ma” feeling of recording at home. The main reason for this is, well, it’s kinda boring. Don’t get me wrong, it has a lot of merit, especially when doing it with a good mate doing all the producing, and thank god I have one, but in actual fact, there’s a cleanliness and surgical feel to it which does take away some of the manual dexterity, reaching in and getting your hands dirty air of my old style of recordage.
Like I mentioned before, there’s something about the feeling of having to play every last keystroke yourself that gives it a real home-made and idiosyncratic feel. For example, on the demo of one of the new songs, “Tori”, there’s a drum pattern that I played in live myself. Not on the drums, but on the drum synth on my keyboard. Now, the bad thing is that I had to play it over and over again until I got it basically right, and it wasn’t programmed with clinical fidelity to the beat. Despite being good at music, and having a fairly accurate sense of both rhythm and time signatures, I’m not always absolutely bang on. But, I’m good enough for it to be good enough, you know? By the fifth or sixth time of playing it in, there were a couple of mistakes, but they were very “background” and in fact, the odd mis-hit cymbal strike or slightly out of time snare roll added something individual and quirky to the song without spoiling its overall aesthetic. When we came to record it “for real”, it was much quicker to do the drums. I said to Paul, “basically mate, it goes ‘boom-boom-ching’ and there’s a kind of ‘pish-fsss-pish-fssss” in the hi-hat, and it goes right through it.” Paul clicked a few buttons, and bang, there we were. Of course, this wasn’t right. I mean, it was, but I missed those little personal touches that made it sound less like a programmed pattern, and more like a real person was playing it. So, we got to work putting them in, but of course it’s quite hard to recreate something spontaneous and still make it sound spontaneous. This was a problem we fought quite a bit, and I’m pretty happy that we overcame it in the end, but it wasn’t easy and of course, the more and more you work on something “spontaneous”, the less and less spontaneous it both sounds, and basically is.
Overproduction is a real problem if you want to make fun sounding records. The Eagles struggled badly with this on “Hotel California” – something I touched on in an earlier blog – and I was extremely keen to avoid it on this album. Of course I wanted it to sound more professional than my home recordings do, but at the same time I didn’t want everything to be so clinical that there was no personality left in it. With this in mind, I purposefully tried to limit the number of takes I would do on any given part, and occasionally left mistakes in (so long as they weren’t big ones, obviously) to keep a sense of enjoyment to it all. I’m really proud that this has worked, because at no point of any song do the mistakes sound like mistakes to the untrained ear. Well, I say untrained, I mean “ears that aren’t mine or Paul’s.” The drums, though, are another kettle of fish. You can’t make mistakes on a drum track that you’ve programmed in, so you have to put them in on purpose, which surely defeats the entire point of it, n’est pas? To avoid this, and give a sense of freedom and occasional randomness to the percussion tracks, we would leave bars that needed a drum fill in, and I would instruct Paul to simply click on whatever note he wanted for x number of beats, to make the fill genuinely random and completely mental in some cases. The song “Talk No More” is a perfect example of this, I absolutely love the drum fills on it, probably more than any other song on the album, because we did them ourselves and they are done at random and for fun.
You have to pick the things you’re going to take seriously in life. Personally, there’s nothing I take more seriously than producing music of which I can be proud. That being said, there’s nothing I’m prouder of than my strict belief that you should take being silly and having fun extremely seriously. So, when we’re sat around discussing what best to use for a solo on a track, I believe firmly in looking up the requisite instruments for a symphony orchestra on my phone, and picking the one that feels the most random. In this case, a xylophone. How often do you hear xylophones on pop records these days? Like anything in my life, when I want it done a certain way, it has to be that way or I will get cross and probably throw a strop, BUT if I don’t have an extremely specific vision in my head of what I want, then what I want is something interesting, something different, something that I haven’t done two hundred times before. This is why I like writing songs more than I like videogames. Once you’ve played Fifa once, let’s be honest, you’ve played it a million times. Not that it doesn’t have its place, but it’s not the same as writing a xylophone solo, or even discussing whether or not it would go well with a flugelhorn counter melody.
This, though, brings its own problem. It’s not really a problem, or at least it wouldn’t be if music was my actual job. But, as it’s not, it does throw up something of a conundrum. Now, my keyboard at home has a set number of instrument synths on it. For example, it’s got about 6 drumkits, 3 different good piano sounds, and some other things. At any rate, they have a finite, and usually single-digit number of options available. If you can’t find the sound you want, tough shit. Use what you’ve got, or don’t use anything. Yes, it can be limiting, but at least you know what you’re working with. But, on the professional equipment that Paul uses, they have data banks that just list thousands of options. For example, Paul has access to over 6GB of piano sounds. That’s just outrageous. For drums, you can select each individual drum and cymbal from about 4 different kits, and then you have the choice of probably 200 different drum patterns, each with about 15-20 fills attached that you can choose from. On guitars, there are maybe 25-30 amp/pedal setups you could use in differing configurations and the differences are often subtle but undoubtedly there. So, when I wander in and say “I want a piano and a guitar”, I think that’s easy, because when I want that at home, I know what it’s going to sound like. But it’s a very different story when recording “properly”, because now a whole world of choice is opened up to me. While that’s creatively very rewarding, and we have come up with some really good sounds because of it, it also means that you can spend an hour and a half finding a cymbal sound you’re happy with. Too much choice sometimes feels like a bad thing! And, like I say, if I had nothing else to do but scroll through the cymbal noises to pick the one I wanted, then that would be a bit easier, but I’m just not used to that kind of choice on my kind of time budget. I’m hoping that the next album will have a much more varied and interesting sonic landscape, but I’m not promising anything, because I’m just not sure that part of my personality can bear the thought of scrolling through 40 electric guitar sounds finding the one that’s just right.
BUT, there are benefits to recording this new way that outweigh any negatives by about 200 to 1. First and foremost, I HATE producing. Playing things is what I do. I can’t produce anyway, I can just about shine it up so it doesn’t sound too turgid, but it’s never been my strong point. I’ve recorded countless songs that are good, but sound terrible. Now I have someone else to do that bit for me. Not only that, but he’s a great mate, so when we’ve worked on something for a while and need a break, we can watch TV, or play video games, or basically have a laugh to break up the monotony of playing the same bass line 6 times. ALSO, he’s not only a great mate, he’s a great producer. He has the crucial things that any good producer would need. He’s brilliant, for a start, and makes it sound like a proper musician recorded it, and not just me. He has real patience with his artist and an extremely keen ear and eye for finding the right sound at the right moment. I’m no good with sounds. I have come to him and said things like, “I want the top piano thingy bit to sort of twinkle a bit, sort of on top but like a sort of icing on a cake thing.” This is akin to basically being retarded. However, Paul has – either through instinct or trial and error, found what I was looking for. He’s also very musical, so we can discuss at length the appropriate depth of string quartet or arrangement of guitars, or dynamics for a ride cymbal, or tambourine patterns. This is crucial, as I’ve always believed that any artist needs to be reined in sometimes in order to produce their best work. There’s no better example of this, in my opinion, than Paul McCartney. Now, I’m not the songwriter that McCartney is, for sure, but the rules still apply. How many bands can you think of that produced their most focused, artistically interesting work earlier in their career when they had someone at the helm to just curb the furthest reaches of their whims? Queen are a great example, if you compare “Sheer Heart Attack” with “A Kind of Magic” or “The Miracle”, the relative artistic merit of the two albums is clear. The Beatles don’t fit this mould, but then they didn’t fit many moulds, and even then – they still produced much better, more focused work when under the tutelage of George Martin. Listen to Revolver, Sgt Pepper and Abbey Road (which Martin produced) vs The White Album and Let It Be (which he didn’t) – it’s a clear demonstration of the importance of a good producer.
Secondly, if I mess something up (which you might recall me saying I do, a lot) then I don’t have to re-do the entire thing. I can start from where I went wrong, and it still sounds like a smooth take and while I do consider it cheating, I also know that I’m someone who gets very angry with himself if he has to play something more than twice. It’s an ego thing, I think. Well, let’s be honest, it’s a definite ego thing. And a lack of patience. Both things I’ve struggled with my entire life, but have decided recently to just give in to. I think I must be inspired by some of the kids I teach. After all, if you’re not great at something (in my case, being patient, not having a big ego, and many other things) why not just say “screw it,” and give up? Score.
Anyway, that’s a bit of an insight into how we’ve recorded this album. It’s been a lot of fun, given how fraught recording sessions can often get, I think we’ve not only produced a really good piece of work, but also stayed friends throughout! Well, I say that, I still like Paul but I wouldn’t bet the farm on him still liking me! There are one or two songs on there that we really went through the mill for, basically involving me saying a lot of things like, “Well, it’s still not right, but then I don’t really know what I want it to sound like.” Which is not, let’s face it, even slightly helpful. But we got there, somehow! I can’t wait to release it, I’m so SO proud of what we’ve done together, I just hope people like it now! But then, by the same token, I don’t care all that much. That will be the next blog though, I’m tired now.
Px
