Studio Diary

[allihts]

Hello Basschatters, I thought you might enjoy reading about my experience recording the new EP with my band Hold the Suspect.

A bit of background on the band, we started a few years ago and we recorded an ep a year and a half ago. Safe to say the songs were of a poor quality and the recordings were not much better. We are now back and going to a better studio with dreams of a better sound and (hopefully) better songs.

So the day began, very early, in our rehersal room in Fin's (our drummer) barn. We packed up all the gear and Euan (guitar) arrived with the van. After almost crushing my ashdown cabs with the bass drum we finally managed to fit our unholy amount of garbage in the back of the van and set off for the studio. Upon our arrival we struggled to get parked and had to carry all our stuff up a flight of stairs to reach the (very nice) home studio belonging to the producer, Mark. The day began with guide guitar swiftly followed by drums (fin was on form, needing only two takes to nail the whole song) It was then my turn to set up and record. I assembled my usual rig (Laney RB9 into Ashdown cabs) which was then mic'd up but Mark also ran a DI out of my clean, unnafected signal, through the Ampeg Amplitube plugin. After settling on a suitibly collosal sound I took a couple of takes to get it perfect, but there was four notes right at the end of the song that Fin wanted me to play in a timing that my simple brain just couldn't understand! So he made me show him the notes and he played the bass instead of me! It was safe to say I was gutted. I went to read my book while Jake (guitar/vocals) and Euan sorted out and recorded their guitar parts. We took a break for a lunch of KFC and cake lovingly baked by Fins sister

[allihts]

I ran out of words on the last post, so I will continue here. After lunch it was time for singing which Jake again got through very very quickly, there was a section of todays song with a sort of group vocal, so all five of us (4 band members and David, the manager) crowded round the microphone and had a singalong. After this Fin and Mark worked on mastering the drums and Me, Jake, Euan and David started discussing promotion for the EP. We planned our launch show and decided on the support act 'victim of a hero'. David was looking into getting band merch, T-shirts, Badges, Keyrings and the like so we discussed designs for these items and got really excited about our big plans! After a play-through of the (almost) finished song we left the studio with high hopes. It already sounds miles better than any recording I have done before and so far it has been a reasonably pain-free process. I'll leave you eagerly awaiting the next update!