Pretty boring Tuesday lunch report

Todays lunch is a coffee and some granola bars. Still getting over a nasty ILI and not eating quite up to par. At least it makes for a good diet.

Lately, musically, I have finally gotten a break in the heat and humidity. This allowed me to break out the condenser mic and work on a tune that has been on the go this summer. The problem is this, I wrote it from the bass. I wrote it to be tricky, on the bass. I took maximum advantage of being all over the neck and seeing exactly what I could do. The beast is in 7.4, 6/4, 4/4 speeds ranging from 90 at the break, and 120 for the rest. I recorded about 1/2 the guitar yesterday, this is a 6 minute monster btw, longest piece I have put together. The issue is this, my ability on a bass, and understanding of how to make things work is much higher. I literally made something out of my league on guitar. I have to use all my meager knowledge of chord construction and chord voicings, just to break even on this and most of the time I am just adding ambience to some rocking bass (not that that is a bad thing, but I feel I should do a bit more). On top of that this is my first experience micing amps, so the tune is a bit quieter as I cannot get the amps to a point I want the mic to record at in my apartment. Recording at bedroom /practice levels is a bit tricky as the mixing is delicate, and I am not sure how loud the final cut will be. I suppose one way to look at this is when completed, I will have expanded my repertoire and intrinsic understanding of how these things work. Any of you ever placed yourself out of your league composing?

As far as G&L content goes, today is official day 2 of my agonizing wait. I still dream I could have just bought that nice blonde with a RW board and been done with it. Played it through a very nice little amp too, a orange AD -30. This store is a 'small' store, family owned (I talked with father and son, the rest look to be family also.) that deals G&L, PRS, Orange, drums, and some other neat stuff. The only thing that really didn't agree with me was the 7.5" radius, I have never gotten used to heavy radius guitars, even a strats 9.5 is too much for me. I feel at home on a 14 though, and don't mind a 12. Either way Approx 89 days til my baby . BTW, if you have not seen my order, although not listen on the G&L site, you can order front arm cuts on ASATs. They call it an 'arm body contour', I am pretty sure it = no binding though, just like the rear cut omits double binding options. I felt the need to get an arm contour as I do a lot of my playing seated classical.

I had a guy on the Carvin forums ask me 'why I bought the ASAT and not just a bolt', and that he was unfamiliar with G&L. I told him that the pickups are neater, the necks are beautiful and a bolt will never be an ASAT essentially. But this really brings us to brand loyalty, I don't have any. If I find a comfy guitar, that I enjoy playing and want it, I really don't care whose name is on the headstock (unless it says something like super hitler SS or something, that might work as a deterrent). I love how G&Ls play, I love how Carvins play, I don't really care for the feel of Fenders and Gibsons, nor do I like the ultra thin neck of Ibanez, or their close string spacing on 5 bangers. I feel that limiting yourself to one company is silly, as they all have different strengths and applications, what do you guys think/what is your take on brand loyalty?

Any of you ever placed yourself out of your league composing?

I think we all have, haven't we? At least those of us who record our own stuff probably find this to be true. I write just about everything on the guitar, but my problem is that the song usually requires a bass, keys, and drums. I'm generally comfortable with laying down bass tracks, but I'm only mediocre on the keys, and I do all my drum tracks on a drum machine. Although, I chart everything out before recording so that I always know where the song is going to go.....LOL. First it's the drums, then bass, one or two guitars, then keys. If I'm feeling really gutsy, I may even add a vocal track. Since I don't transpose very well on the keys, I just change the key on my digitial keyboard to whatever feels most comfortable. Needless to say, the drums and keys are way out of my league, but I try the best I can to get the point of the song across.

Regarding the notion of recording at lower volumes, if you have a guitar amp that produces some cool tones at bedroom levels, it's enitrely possible to do all of the tracks as well as the mix through headphones. While it doesn't fully replicate the sound of a room, it can come pretty close. I remember the days of home recording into the wee hours of the night without my wife or kids ever knowing that I had laid down all of the tracks to two or three songs while roughly mixing them as well. Pretty fun stuff!

My 'bedroom' level is a level where my amp starts to open up, the mark V does that fairly low, but it is still quite loud, a smidgen more on the dial and it starts to give ear fatigue / slight ringing while playing, took me a while to find that level . It is more the signals I am getting to work with and I am wondering how the masterred track will come out total volume wise.

Most of my songs have simple bass I just played under it for ambience, maybe with a few tricks/ interesting parts in my eyes, as I often focus on the guitar in composition. This makes things a bit simpler. In this one I focused on bass, and did a full chart of it. I was planning to chart all the guitar, but too much work. Consequently I rarely know what I did, I suppose if I took the time and my ear I could figure them all out again, but I do not have that kind of patience, my ear is merely mediocre. I am sure I will post it when I am complete, whether I am completely satisfied with the result or not. I rarely do vocal music, and while I do sometimes use 2 guitar tracks, I like to see if I can craft the soundscape out of 1 guitar 1 bass. More challenging, more open, less ways to CYA. I don't play keys in the slightest, and have little interest to adding them to the music, drums I do not have too much trouble with surprisingly, but the motivation to program them is generally stark. One drum part still needs tweaking as it is a pretty complex rhythm I have going. I have some FRFR headphones, and no studio monitors so thats how the mixes get done atm, I have done those a lot in the middle of the night, same with recording before I had my guitar amp/ mic, all recording was DI then. I may go back to DI'ing the bass, I might prefer the sound.

i would suggest that you try to use a guitar amp in the bathroom of your apt.
You could mike it in the bathtub, have some abient reverb and possibly keep the volume level down the acceptable level.

I don't know if that's an answer to your problem, but its worth a try.

Good luck with the recording.