So, I've recorded three really shitty songs on my 8-track so far. All three are covers which bothers me, but judging by the quality, I should definitely be starting there.
1. "Candy Says" by the Velvet Underground. I did a pretty clean version of this, though I DEFINITELY needed more than one take on the acoustic guitar part. I was rushing because it's no noise past 10 PM here. I decided to layer two guitars together rather than rerecord the shitty sounding guitar (lots of flubs on the rhythm). This was a fairly bad idea, but I guess with the machinery, I could have just turned down one of the tracks. I sort of did that, but it still sounded off. The rhythm on that track was really difficult.
I had one track of clean guitar, one track of slightly dirty guitar, one track of real fuzzy guitar over the "I'm gonna watch the bluebirds fly" part. That sounded good. Made it more of my own than a direct cover. I had one track of vocals, one track of tambourine, and one track of a salt shaker (attempting to keep rhythm). I've listened to it a bunch, and I realize (already) that I made a lot of rookie mistakes. You can't fix bad playing with production. And (most importantly) you can't create rhythm with production after the fact.
2. "Layin' Up with Linda" by GG Allin/Lemonheads. I've listened to the Lemonheads cover of this religiously since I stole Varshons from Evan Dando (and he drunkenly signed it, too!). I've played it frequently on guitar as well, as it's only three chords, and I transposed it to work with my voice and be easier to play (G-D-C is as easy as it gets). Two guitar parts on this one. One a little fuzzy, one totally clean. I decided to experiment and put my vocals through the guitar distortion on the BOSS. It sounded really cool. I'll be able to eventually do some badass stuff with it. Whenever I sucked in hard, the sound was like being in the center of a funnel cloud (maybe). When I breathed out, it sounded like Hurricane Mike. It's totally wacky and insane sounding. My vocals still sounded sort of pussified, though, which bothers me. I wish I could do this at my old apartment where I could scream my head off. I'm really worried about, well, worrying the neighbors. I'm sure I sound like a freak doing this stuff (all the tracks are isolated, so I'm listening to the full version on my headphones while I sing, meaning, on the outside people would only hear me sing along to music that they can't hear.) I added a really cool rhythm track from the drum machine that worked great. What else? Oh, I tried to solo over some of it. That sounded really bad. I've got to work on my leads. It was at least a good experiment, though I would never play that track for anyone. It could be a whole lot better. It's the first of what I hope many folk/noise ballads, though. That's the genre I'm going for with YOUR NECK OF THE WOODS.
3. "Breakdown" by Suede. I didn't finish this. I'm going to experiment tomorrow with doubling the vocals. This is one of my favorite songs of all time. If you haven't ever heard it, check it out here...
I played the rhythm guitar part on a setting called "ambient" that was really cool, though it wasn't exactly what I wanted. I wanted more of an "under the sea" (sounding, not the Mermaid song) sort of an effect. It worked ok, though. God, the vocals for this song are tough. I modulated my voice a bit to make it prettier, but it still sounded rough. Tomorrow, I shall have some drinks early and sing loudly. If I really belted this song out, I could do it. The worst part was the end. I was basically just talking "Does your love only come in a Volvo?" That can't be done. I need to fucking scream it. Once again, I added the fuzz to the power chords at the end and it sounded sharp as fuck. I'm happier with this track, even though I did it in about a half an hour. I'm looking forward to spending more time with it.
I really want to start writing some songs. I can't wait to be posting portions of my concept album on here for people to hear. I've never had much faith in reading instruction manuals, but the BOSS is making lots of sense by reading the book cover to cover and underlining, highlighting, and taking notes. I'm totally obsessed with this little fucker. I can't wait until I can actually put something decent together on him.
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