Well folks, here we are for another update. I was planning on getting some updates out every day, but its been an incredibly hectic few days recording and I just haven’t had time to sit down and write some of my thoughts down. I wanted to fill you in on the latest on the Denied By Reign recording sessions though.

I am pleased to report that all of the drums are basically complete. It was a long, complex and exhausting session getting the drums in place, but they are done now and the drums are sounding pretty big. I still want to do some additional overdubs and slight fixes, but the majority of material is in place. Some of the tunes are sounding really fat in the current mix - Take The Test and Beating Heart sound bigger than before, and Dollar Plague is sounding chunky too.

So, it was then onto the guitars…

I spent a little time trying to get a decent mic placement and struggled a little - at one point I was a bit exacerbated trying to get it sounding right. Then after some experimentation, I managed to find something that I was happy with. The sound still needs plenty of mixing, but I think the guts of it are in place now.

Recording the guitar parts for the album is a pretty varied job. Some songs are super fast, such as Dollar Plague and Take The Test, some nice and fat chuggy tunes such as Beating Heart and Edge Of Design and some out and out shredding such as The Lake. Everything is played in B tuning which gives it some grind, but it also requires some careful mixing so it doesn’t sound too flappy. I am pretty happy with the performances so far, but I do want to get in and re-record a few bits here and there.

For those who are musically inclined in the guitar department, I am using a Jackson Randy Rhoads RR2 tuned all the way down to B, Ernie Ball Slinky strings, EMG-81 active pick-ups and running into a Line 6 Spider II amp. I then plonk a rather fat microphone in front of it and get it down on disk.

So far the progress has been pretty good in terms of getting the tunes down, and most of the songs are completed. One song that has required a little bit of care and feeding has been War, with its acoustic parts, multi-tempos and other changes - its not a particularly complex song to play, it just required a bit of figuring out in terms of the mechanics of getting it recorded. I have not done Enslaved By Pain yet as I think I will be drop-tuning the bottom string and I need to see if it is viable - it might just flap too much, and if so, I am going to need to transpose it. Other than that, a few fixes on Take The Test and a few overdubs and the main rhythm and melody guitars will be in the can. No solos yet, they are to come.

Once the main rhythm guitars are complete, I am moving onto the bass. I don’t expect it will take too long to get the bass guitar parts recorded, and then I will be onto the vocals, solos and the final mix. The primary intention of the last few days was principle recording, which I am pretty happy with, but it is going to be a while before the album is finally completed. I do plan on hitting the studio at the weekend to finish up much of the non-vocal parts and to begin principle vocal recording.

Stay tuned folks! Don’t forget to check the Twitter Feed and join in the Forums!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 3:14 am and is filed under Recording. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.