One of the great luxuries of recording like this is being able to try out ideas in a relaxed way. However big the budget there is always a “time is money” factor inherent in hiring a studio (“we’re paying for this place so hurry up!”); it tends to lead to an unhelpful “that will do” attitude. In my experience, clock-watching can utterly and incurably poison a record. In our Bedlam House we are no richer in time, but at least money is not too much of a limiting factor for once.
We have moved into the overdubs room. We’re not completely done with drums and live takes, but we’ve decided to work up a few of the more completed numbers for the sake of, well…fun. It’s good to have a change of scenery, even if it’s aural rather than geographic.
So we’ve been listening back to the songs we’re happiest with, armed with pens and an assortment of spirits and mixers. We’ve been jotting down ideas throughout this recording period, but now we’re finally trying some of them out. Today we mostly focused on vocals. It’s always good to have a credible working lead take in place fairly early on, for the sake of song character and to work out what harmonies will sit best. (Sometimes my delivery veers towards the Rex Harrison and no amount of vocal ingenuity will help a harmony work with that!)
Biff also made an interesting suggestion once the evening began to wane: “Have a few more drinks, then have a few more, then try laying down your vocals for Year Of The Bitch.”
You may remember a few days ago I mentioned how that song had a rather drunk quality to it. Well, this seemed as good a time as any to see how far we could push that.
So I stood swaying in front of the mic, gesticulating with my glass, meandering through the song. It was an interesting experiment. It definitely worked with the song, but there were too unforeseen problems:
- I kept forgetting the lyrics;
- try as I might, it is simply impossible to synchronise one’s hiccuping to a backing track.
Still, it’s nice when learning lessons can be fun.
Though I can’t say the same for the next morning…
