An entire week of music work consumed by the remake of "Your Idiot Son."
Four hours on Monday(and two on Tuesday) spent on a new MIDI drum track. The originial 1994 cassette recording featured a rhythmn preset, so I made up a new drum blueprint from scratch.
This song is long and full of challenges, so considerable effort was involved. In this case, it was good to have laid down a dummy acoustic guitar track first (alongside click and melody). Having done that, I listened closely to where changes in guitar rhythmn and feel occur and worked with those in creating the drum track. This worked really well I think.
A lot of last week's guitar worked out with the drum track, but enough didn't that I obviously needed to start over with my trusty mid-70's Yamaha. Much better performances, though I like the sound of last Friday's tracks better. Well...sound is easier to change than performance.
I made some edits to the new main acoustic guitar track (fewer than 10 I'd say in a five plus minute song...very good for me). Then, I used the idea from last week of putting a capo on five and playing the ending. This worked pretty well, though I had trouble deciding how to end with the other track, since the neck joins the body. The capo track (which now sounds a little out of pocket to me), piano, main acoustic guitar and drums really flesh out the end.
Listening to the '94 version again, I decided I had to add toms. I had only a floor tom and very flat sounding snare back in those days. In order to accurately hear which notes were being played on drums I had to get rid of all the bottom end and stand in the hallway and tap out the part on my hand. I think I got it. Then...using the "rock mono" kit on the Motif I recorded (ultimately) two seperate toms parts. In reality, these can be played by one drummer of course, but it sounded better to keep them as separate tracks.
On Friday morning I made sure of where the fancier bass part and harmony vocals begin and realized I needed to cut a few measures of the toms tracks. Much better. I recorded them as audio and began practicing the bass line, which I ran through Thursday afternoon.
Finally, on Friday I decided to use my late 70's vintage Peavey guitar amp to record my Fender bass. I don't have a bass amp and I'm tired of the direct box sound. I think I got a decent sound from the amp, but have to watch out for cabinet buzz, which I'm afraid will pick up. Will get back to bass recording Monday. Then....on to vocals.
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