Blog: Sympathy For The Knob Twiddlers

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I've often been perplexed by how certain bands of my acquaintance (i name no names, let us use the entirely unrelated moniker THE FRANKIE EXPERIMENT to disguise their identities) can take FOREVER to record anything. I've sat at home with my four track and in the space of an evening written, recorded and mixed a whole song and STILL had time to pop to the pub, whilst CHEMISTRY MACHINE have taken YEARS to get 12 songs finished for an album. It BEFUDDLED me - what WERE they doing?

Now i know. For LO! now i TOO have Recording And Mixing Technology at home, and last night spent two hours recording, mixing, adjusting and fading in and out the sound "OOOOOOOOO", or, rather by the time i'd finished with it "OOOoooOOOooo". YEAH! I was doing some recording on the EPIC "Zipcodes" and was trying to find something GOOD to play on the keyboards for the chorus. I'd got something worked out (using the previously mentioned Writing The Notes Down TECHNOLOGY - i tell you, it's so handy it's BOUND to catch on!) and then discovered that although that was all fine and dandy (and has been bouncing around my head all morning) the BEST bit was holding down a key at the very end, and LEAVING it there. THUS i fiddled and diddled with it, flanging, reverberising, equalising it and then using ENVELOPES to fade it in and out through the verses, MAN ALIVE i have rarely had so much PRODUCTIVE FUN for such a tiny final result. It was ACE! I can now fully understand how anyone COULD spend a whole year crouched over the computer screen every evening MINUTELY adjusting the EQ on every instrument until it is PERFECTISIMO.

Fear not though - i am also MORBIDLY PARANOID that my computer is going to EXPLODE if i do too much more, so i think there's just the vocals and BACKING vocals to do now before it's finished. Mind you, maybe a ROBOTIC CHOIR of thousands would sound good?

posted 22/6/2005 by MJ Hibbett

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