RECORDING

See how to record. See also recording vocals on a computer.

Apart from the Crypt session, all my recording sessions have been at home. They've been either vocals or guitar but not both in the same session. The sessions are often around two or three hours, though there was one session recording backing vocals for multiple songs on the same project that went on for five or six hours.

When I was working the recording sessions would be at the weekend, often starting in the late morning, around 11am. The main vocal would be recorded first, often in sections although sometimes the whole thing would be recorded straight through in one take. Backing vocals would be added once the main vocal was complete, although sometimes I decided not to add backing vocals. The total number of takes would often be around 20-25, though it has sometimes been over 40.

The sessions included preliminary editing of the recorded material, resulting in what I term a 'rough cut'. This isn't the same as a demo - a rough cut is around two thirds of a finished complete version. Once all the rough cuts have been assembled, the first editing round begins.

Most of the sessions have been with a USB studio condenser mic on a stand with a pop filter, though the Unfamiliar voices vocals using BandLab were normally sitting down holding the microphone. I'd usually use lightweight headphones so that I could hear both myself and the existing backing. In theory software can play your own voice (or guitar) back to you through the headphones as you're recording it, but there's a lag which can be really offputting so I don't bother.

It takes years to get comfortable in front of a microphone, and even now especially at the very beginning of recording sessions for a new project I do get nervous at first, before reminding myself of how many of them I've recorded. The first vocal take is a gentle canter through, because although I've written it I still have to learn it. Singing is a very physical thing, in a way like riding a bicycle - no amount of description of what it's like substitutes for actually doing it. There have been a few takes that terminated with me muttering "damn" as I got the timing wrong.

I used to think the microphone was an enemy eager to pounce on every error and mistake. It was only later that I realised it was an ally - any nuance or subtlety I could inject into a vocal, it would catch, it was endlessly patient, and I only had to get it right once. After three or four runs through, I would basically have it, and by then I'd be playing around with different interpretations and trying to make it expressive. I'd be trying to perform the vocal rather than just sing it. I always considered the characters I portrayed as fictional, as if I was an actor playing a role; some of them have been very different to me.

In some of the later sessions, after I'd recorded the vocal it would seem a shame that I was never, ever, going to sing that song again; so I'd do a 'the hell of it' take, not because I needed it, but purely for pleasure, and some of these did in fact get used.

The guitar-only recording sessions were of two types. The ones using Logic Express were recording loops to be edited and inserted as loops later. However, on BandLab (which didn't really do user loops) I'd record straight in to be used as-is plus or minus the editing. Sometimes I'd go upstairs and set up with absolutely no idea of what I was going to record, which made me feel that this was as close as I was ever going to get to what it must feel like recording in a band.

I'd looked at the pictures on Rubber Soul years and years ago, and thought wistfully how writing and recording songs must be a good job, and I'd wished I could have that job. I got part way towards it. If you'd played me back then some of what I would later create, I would have been absolutely amazed. If it's not quite a dream come true, it is at least half a dream, and perhaps the other half wasn't ever really me anyway.