Recording: 705 – Palmer's World

Last night I set forth to record my new song, 705. I’ve alluded to this song before in this post where I performed it for my family.

I first moved my recording console up into my bedroom. I have felt quite uninspired down in the dark, dank basement. Maybe as a teenager, it’s another story and the basement is your haven for guitar rock greatness, but I feel that I just don’t want to jam out down there, let alone record. I also think I got a lot of this thought process once seeing Troy’s music studio in the daylight!

So after setting up the mics and whatnot, I ripped into another ditty which I am tentatively calling E Jump. I just throw in random names to log a song and usually write what key it’s written in so I can figure it out later. I’ve had this tune for the past six months and thought I should record it before forgetting about it.

Then I followed up with 705. It took me a few takes to get it right and the worst part was that I kept messing up the last verse. I hate the last verse…it doesn’t flow well, I don’t like the lyrical content…bah! I put it in there as a placeholder to finish the song because it sounded dumb when I had the entire song written except for the final verse where I just hummed it. I will get inspired some other day to finally revamp the last verse.

My new microphone, the Shure SM58 is a dream. I had only used it once and that was for a live recording over the Christmas holidays so I didn’t get to see the real power of it until now. My vocals are amazing on this thing. They were so amazing that my headphones kept shorting out on the right side because of it’s awesome power. Alright, maybe the volume was set too high. Either way, I am very pleased with the outcome of this new purchase.

So after laying down the rhythm and vocals, I figured no song is good unless there is a lead to it. I had come up with a simple lead the week before and figured I would lay it to a track just for fun. In the end, the lead isn’t really what I envision for the song, but it will be good for now.

Essentially what I want this song to become is one of the classic rock tunes, much like in the vein of Mississippi Woman by Mountain, maybe some China Grove by the Doobie Brothers, 850 Commando by Matt Mays, and Hot Metal on the 401 by the Sam Roberts Band. I am searching for that classic rock vibe so I wanted to get this down acoustically to send to Troy so he can help me in my search for the ultimate tone for this song. I have trouble envisioning a song from acoustic to electric format…something Billy Corgan is amazing at if you’ve ever heard his acoustic demos to his albums. So this is my next evolutionary step in music theory…hopefully Troy and can help me in my quest to hone my songwriting ~ music wise. I think my lyrics have come a long way from the teenage years…I like to try and write an actual story to my tunes. That’s a new shift and it’s coming along nicely.

In the end, I laid the tracks down, brought the recording console to connect to the Macbook, imported the tracks, converted it to MP3 and brought it over to Rob and Janice’s house last night. Carrie was the first to listen and she thought it was catchy. Success! Janice listened to it and was frustrated with me because she didn’t know whether or not to believe me considering I had already fooled them last year with the classic Canadian Idol April Fool’s joke. (Can I just say that I am loving the WordPress software I use to maintain this site for the sole reason that the search function is way better than Blogger? I can hyperlink a bunch of my old posts here!). So I had a good laugh with Janice at the sheer fact that she didn’t know whether or not to believe me because she thought the track was really good. It’s interesting to think that some of my friends definitely know how I play guitar and sing, but some others don’t have a clue. For example, I was in the car the other day with Philipp and I popped in The Stomper to listen to and he had no idea.

So I have a feeling this weekend may be spent noodling around with recording and jamming considering there’s a storm coming our way. If anyone wants to join us, come on out!

My initial impression was that the tune is catchy. Your vocals sound great. After repeated listenings, some ideas started to pop into my head for further development, and I was able to analyze the song a bit more. All in all you have a good demo. There are some elements that need tweaking, but if you never did another thing to the song, it stands up as a good stripped down acoustic version. Sometimes it’s not always good to polish up a song too much….I tend to like the odd little buzz of a string, or a mistake (as long as it’s not glaring). That way it doesn’t sound over produced.

Your lyrics are good, though I would like to see them all in front of me to see how the alliteration is and how it flows. Having taken song writing courses in the past I might be able to give a suggestion to improve the lyrics.

Last night I picked up the guitar after repeated listenings and tried out some riffs in the classic rock vein that might sound good with the chord structure you already have.

One other suggestion is the lead guitar line you have during the verses. I like the riff, it sticks in your head. It might sound better if it was played as the bass line. But then again, once Darryl gets a hold of it, I’m sure he will come up with something cool and rocking.

Keep working on it!!!