Where we are now...

I've completed, more or less, the guitars for the three tunes that I had Eric playing drums on. I say "more or less" because there could be some overdubs later of little flourishes and add ons and such. But what I've gotten down is the basic guitar parts that will be part of the foundation of the songs.

It basically worked out to doing one song a weekend for the past three weeks. Each song was done over the course of a few hours on three consecutive Saturdays.

(Note, I'm going to refer to these tracks by name, as they are three that have some lyrics written somewhere or other. Whether these lyrics end up getting used at the time when it comes to record vocals remains to be seen.)

"C'Mon", which is the most recently written of all the songs I'm recording, was the first done. There are two rhythm guitar tracks to that one. The next week saw me recording "No Bargain", a slower, balladish type tune that was inspired by a Faces song. As of right now, this song only has one rhythm track. I do have a possible second rhythm track in mind, but am not yet sure if I'm going to record it. It does add something to the song, but I don't know if it's the right something or not. I figure I may wait until everything else is done and see how I feel at that point. The third song is called "Woman" and is also a one rhythm track tune. This is more because I couldn't think of a second rhythm track that I liked. This is also the song I'm least into as far as the recorded part went. This is because this song is, by far, the heaviest that will be recorded during these sessions---I wrote it when I was fairly big into Wolfmother, and it shows---and with the gear I have now, I can't really get an appropriately heavy sound for it, especially not at the volume I'm recording at. I'm considering some options for rectifying that later in the process, in that I might double/triple the guitar parts just to add some beef to it, or I may bring my rig to somewhere I can set up and play a lot louder, thereby pushing the tubes in the amp to give me some more gain. We'll see.

But now those three tunes are done for now. I'm also not going to put too much time into mixing them just yet, because the mix would change by the presence of bass and vocals anyway. Next step for those songs is to find someone to put down some bass lines. I have a couple people in mind. One guy from the Looney Tunes board, which is where I originally posted the thread indicating I was going to do this project and where I tried to enlist some help. Or perhaps my current Pawnshop Diamonds bassist, Rick, as I got the impression he could potentially be interested.

And speaking of the Looney Tunes board help, here's where I'm thinking there's going to be a not totally unepected roadblock. On top of the three tunes I've started, there are six more I want to do (with a possible seventh, if I can get it done). The drums for those six tunes were spoken for by someone on the board, and after much wrangling we decided to try for this upcoming weekend to do them. However, I'm feeling less confident in this guy's willingeness to put some effort in to coming up with some good drum parts. He's heard the tunes, but I don't know if he's actually done anything with them; my gut feeling says no. Also, I had originally told him that it would likely take at least a weekend to get six songs recorded. At least. And when I emailed him today about if we were still on for this weekend, he replied with something along the lines of: "How much time did we need, about six hours?"

Six hours?

First of all, it's going to take me at least an hour of that time to set everything up. So now we're down to five. Recording the three tracks with Eric---someone 1) I've worked with before so was comfortable with, and 2) had put some thought into the songs beforehand---took about 4 hours in one day, and that was with the benefit of me setting up AND us running through each of the tunes a couple times on the day beforehand.

I'm a little torn about this. To be honest, I was already considering if there was any way I could back out on this guy without being a total ass about it. I raelize these are just demos that I want to record for myself, but at the same time I'd like them to sound as good as possible in all facets. I don't want to listen to them when they're done and hate how they sound; I'll feel like I've wasted my time if that happens. But at the same time, I didn't want to be the jerk that said: "Forget it, I'm going to go with someone else even though I asked and you said you were interested."

Luckily the six hours comment gave me an out. What I'm looking at now is cutting down on the songs he plays on. I responded to his email that six hours wouldn't give us enough time to do all 6 tunes, and if that's all the time we had to work with that he should pick 2-3 and we could concentrate on getting those done.

The downside is that if it happens this way I will now need to schedule a third round of recording drums. (The main problem here being more that I'll have to ask people to borrow equipment a third time.) But the upside is that Eric had mentioned he might be interested in doing more tracks, so at least I'll have the comfort of knowing that I'd be doing them with someone I know is going to get me some good drum tracks. That's much better than the uncertainty of the other situation.

More to come.