Studio Bottleneck... / Honest his usual self

I was really looking forward to getting back into the studio yesterday, and it started off well...

I've got five tracks ready for an EP release next year and am happy with the group. It's pretty dark stuff but nice to vent that right now.

One is the blues track (Mad Masters) that I've been pedalling for a while and I've been looking forward to playing blues harp on a track of mine for a while (have a look here to see me breaking in the harps). Me and my mate Chocolate Soufflé put together a really quirky but good arrangement over my live track which I recorded at Steve's a few months ago. I'm playing guitar and beating the guitar with a pedal switch (you can hear the switch if you look out for it) and we sat down to embellish it with some 'atmosphere'... We were going to go all filmic and got some lush strings down and then this noise just came out of nowhere while we were setting some sound proofing up in Soufflé's studio. His keyboard started playing this really low bass note grumble, and voodoistic enough it was just the right note. So we sat that under the track. Then we wanted to go all Aussie Aboriginie with an authentic percussion instrument he had lying around but instead a trusty 808 sound intercepted us and we want all electro beat with the track.

I chucked it over to steve for some slide guitar playing. I went to his place last night to hear what he had done and it sounded wild, he's put down three tracks of Cooder style chicago evil slide and I'll comp them together .... I also layed down some 'chicago blues harp' with the help of his old school blues mic (turn it up to 11!) and his Rock Of Lonon all in one amp/cab. Was a good sound and a good vibe.

Then sat down to record a couple of new tracks. The vibe lost me and it didn't go that well. I've decided I want to do completely live takes whenever possible from now on, singing and playing at the same time. Steve got a great sound and his new studio complex with it's tracking rooms is shaping up really well. He got really good sound and separation between my voice and guitar. But my mojo deserted me. My right hand was too clunky (it's an intricate picking song) and the rhythm (that is such an awkward word to spell) was off. I've been playing and gigging too much and think I'm a bit worn out, also it feels like these songs are too new, I need to play them in a bit more - the structure is fine I just need to let them sink into me. These things seem ok outside the studio but when you go in and are recording at such high resolution the little things show up and become big things very quickly. Have another session booked tonight but I think I'm just gonna go pick up my gear. I've done enough recording to know when things aren't right and things don't feel right. No rush as I've got my new double A to put out this month and this EP can be wrapped up early next year....

Shame because I was looking forward to it.

Oh, and I'm pleased (or not pleased depending how you look at it) to see that steve is his usual charming self. 'I love being me' he said. 'You're right Steve' I said, 'I know', he said. 'Meeeaow is that a cat wailing or someone trying to play the harmonica?' He said. 'Not you and your bloody mojo again' He said.