What was promised...

The other day I said I would write some more about the process of recording "Feed My Tragedy". Now that Scot and Chappy have both written on that very topic, I find myself thinking the familiar refrain that it's better late than never. I meant to do this yesterday, but like so many things that I mean to do it went undone. I could not allow that to happen today.

So, about "Feed My Tragedy"...

It's all first takes! That's right, everything that you here on the rough mix I've posted is all first takes. We laid down the main bass loop a couple of weeks ago while we were working on some other songs. We decided to spend this week's session working entirely on this song, building it one part at a time from the loop rather than tracking live the way we have been doing on most of the stuff. Chappy and I worked earlier in the week on drum sounds, which yielded the absurd kit that he describes here. We then left well enough alone until this week's session began.

This week's session began at 3:30ish on Sunday. The first thing that we decided to do was Scot's dummy vocal, as a guide for where everything else was to go. The loop is basically 10 minutes of two bass chords, which is kind of hard to follow unless you have something else to go by, like a vocal track. Scot decided he really wanted to record his lead bass line (that's right, LEAD BASS!) at the same time as the vocal. So we worked on his sound, which he describes here. He laid down the track in one take. We listened to the playback and decided that was the one, there was no sense in doing any more. Now that's a dangerous philosophy, there's always a chance that you notice little things about a track when mixing, and would really like some other options. But there's this certain quality about that take that I can't really articulate, but I just know it's the "one". It has character, just like the "dummy" vocal track that Scot recorded. I really like that take. It communicates well. To me that is the most important aspect of the vocal part. It communicates the song. Ideally I'd like to just use the dummy. Maybe double it and do some other "producer" stuff to it, but I really like the take.

After Scot's tracks we recorded Chappy's drums. We'd already worked on the sounds and some ideas for his part, but we never really came up with a solid arrangement for it. With Scot's tracks added to the loop, Chappy just played along and his first take was just brilliant! So we kept it.

Next it was my turn. In rehearsal I've use my looper and layered a lot of sounds and textures that compliment Scot's main loop. It's usually improvised and very dense. When listening to the playback of Scot and Chappy's tracks, I decided that the song sounded very full without any guitar parts. The idea was then floated that we just don't put any guitar on the song. Chappy suggested we subtitle it "Tom Goes to the Bathroom". I'd like to think he wasn't serious. The problem with not putting any guitar tracks on that song was that I'd just received my new Parker PM-20 Pro one day earlier. It needed to be played. It needed to be recorded. Clearly I didn't need some kind of "wall of sound" looped part like I'd been doing, but I really liked the idea of using the E-Bow. So I grabbed the new Parker and the E-Bow and improvised. The only effect I used was my delay pedal, set to repeat quarter notes with a fairly short decay with the song's tempo tapped into it.

After that take without even hearing the playback I ditched the E-Bow, grabbed a pick, and using the same amp and effect settings I recorded another part. I just winged it. We listed to the playback, I liked the takes, so I started mixing them. The current mix is available here.

That's it, all first takes.

Tom