ťOut Of View

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I started off the recording session wanting to do a cover of Night of the Vampire. The song by Roky Erickson has already been covered by Entombed, and they played the song in C. I abandoned the cover when I got bored recording guitar parts and couldn't think what I could do to the song so it wouldn't just be another cover-of-a-cover.

The song probably sounds a lot like Portishead. What can I say, I've become a total cockrider for Third (2008). Yeah, another party I'm late to. There was a conscious effort to make the guitars sound kind of 'retro' with all the reverb and rotary effects I piled on. Another way I attempted to rip off the 'head were in saying 'fuck it' to song structure and sticking that completely different outro on the end. Success? Oh yeah, and I managed to incorporate the ukulele into something which wasn't a joke or a goat!

It's been ages since I wrote any of my own lyrics. I don't particularly like writing lyrics. They look alright at the time but afterwards just look lame. When combined with my own vocal delivery I end up with something I can barely stand to listen to. This is usually why I don't bother with my own lyrics. Maybe I'll soon come to regret these vocals as well. I think the last time I did any of my own lyrics was way back in 2009 on 'As The Omens Forecast' back when I thought I could write, play and record metal. The vocals probably sound like Morrissey or something.

The rest of this is going to be production notes. You were warned.

The guitars were all tuned to C, which is ridiculously low compared to my usual Eb. As it turns out the strings on my guitar could just about handle C-tuning, but the bass totally couldn't and ended up all rattly and shit. C tuning made the singing much, much easier. Fuck all those other girly male pop singers with their tenor voices, real mean can't get above G4.

I made an effort to gain a greater understanding of the Pod 2.0 pedal I recently bought. So I swallowed my pride and submitted to the manual. This turned out to be a good idea because I had a much better time in setting things up and actually gained a better understanding as to the significance of the amps modeled and how to get some decent sounds out of them. 'What the hell is a Black Panel? Aah.'

The sound that plays at the beginning of the outro was produced by accident by sticking one of the electric organ sounds on the Privia through the fuzz box model on the Pod. It sounded bad ass, so it stuck.

The drums and probably some other tracks were put through the pre-amp model on the Pod in an attempt to 'warm up' or 'tube up' the tracks etc. It basically resulted in a slightly different distortion sound than I've used before.

By the time it came to recording the vocals ('[sigh] I suppose I should add some talking or something before I inevitably stick some samples on top.') I was in a total fuck-about mood and semi-deliberately went looking for the most arcane mic setup possible. What I ended up with was attempting to use the Pod's pre-amp again on the mic, but I had to use cheap Yamaha mic since my Pod 2.0 doesn't have an XLR input ('Why would I ever need one of those on the Pod?!?') Since I didn't want the SM-57 to feel left out I hooked that straight up to the mixer, panned each mic a little and then sung through both mics simultaneously. The sound was pretty cool and the vocals ended up sounding okay with just two takes as opposed to the usual 8+. Mission accomplished.

Getting the heavy guitar section to sound powerful and loud without clipping to fuck was ridiculously difficult again and only served to highlight my complete inability to produce music as effectively as I'd like. I tried to mix the song to be as loud as other recent recordings, but this was difficult and I gave up. The guitars still don't sound quite right!

These are mostly here for my convenience.