Day 11, 12, 13 - Guitar Tedium

After Tuesday’s session wrapped, we had a great sounding foundation of drums and bass that Jeff immediately set to editing. With each pass, the sounds get better and the performances are tweaked to precision.

We moved immediately onto guitars, with Matt Mahaffey taking the helm. Clashes over the guitar work sparked our first true creative conflicts.

Conflict #1 – For efficiency’s sake, we’re getting a good guitar tone up first, and then moving through the songs trying to think of which parts should utilize the selected tone. This is theoretically faster than doing one song at a time, as it reduces hours of transition time it takes to move from one sound to another. However, this causes a tendency to force a sound that doesn’t fit the part, and creates a general sense of chaos and uncertainty in the workflow.

Conflict #2 – Dirty or polished? Those freak nasty guitar sounds can be really effective, but how much is too much? I’m going after a more modern, dare I say radio friendly sound, where the rest of the band (and the producers) prefer vintage grit and some messiness. Is my perfectionist nitpicking counterproductive?

Conflict #3 – Are we trying to recreate our old demos with superb production, or are we trying to break out of the box and freak out? We have some really good arrangements down in our home recordings – is it worth changing them? Matt and Jeff have come up with some excellent new parts, but we’re also asking them to painstakingly recreate accidental nuances from our old demos. We’d like to trim the fat out of our traditionally complicated guitar parts, but find ourselves adding more and more stuff.

And so on. We’re trying to make decisions definitively as we go, to avoid having to fix too much in the mix. This is why I fucking hate the recording process – we’re under pressure to create the definitive version of these songs for all eternity that will make or break our music careers. I want every note to be perfect. I love high production value music and the creative process, but in the studio I turn into a little gremlin that smirks and second-guesses everything.

We do get to have some fun though. Creative epiphanies abound, and on Friday we got to rock some simple stadium guitars in the big room to create the “A&R wall of rock”, as heard in Hinder and All American Rejects songs.

We have this weekend off, and are about to head to a BBQ in Studio City. Surely some Mexican beer and hotdogs will get our heads back in the game.

More updates and photos soon.

Matt