it's not really a secret but we've been writing and recording new stuff for unannounced projects this summer. we just finished recording the bulk of the instrumentals today so i'm feelin a lil amped up on energy, but damn, practicing twice (and kai and i having other band practices in between/around), playing a show (which was sold out btw! insane!!!) and then jumping immediately into recording has been, uh, a lil rough on the vocals and hands and body in general. it's also great to talk shop and just chill in general in the studio—i think it was funny talking to please don't crash and treehouse of horror and having them be surprised at how dumb my guitar setup is. kinda taking the "you play in standard? with action that high?" as a badge of honour to be honest. we also showed up late to recording and made soup and kai caused a small kitchen fire. it's becoming a running theme for some reason that we're showing up late because of something absolutely stupid happening.
since i started playing in boxxy i've been more and more deliberate about my playing and the way that i approach guitar. after watching bocchi the rock i really resonated with the whole "i don't know other people so i am going to go insane in my bedroom and record a lot of music and practice a lot" theme a little too much, which has informed the ways that i approach guitar work and music in general. it's nice to play in a band and be able to depend on people (both musically and like, in general). a lot of the harmonic and melodic sensibilities i have come from trying to play as much as possible in a solo setting, which means octave, delay and loop pedals, big jazz-adjacent chords with huge extensions, counterpoint bits, etc. playing in this band it's just nice to be able to rip a fun lead part or go wide or play tight. lots of different philosophies has been a really nice change of pace in general?
i've also become a gearhead in very new ways. i started playing high action flatwound strings because i was taking jazz guitar lessons from my buddy sean (who plays in velvet beach). he really instilled in me lots of little lessons about being very intentional about playing with good tone, ergonomics, discipline in picking and lots of little stuff like that. i've really been exploring different tones between my jazzmaster and my telecaster, finding little nuances or dialing in exactly what i like or don't like about them. when playing live i swear by the jazzmaster bridge pickup to get a nice fat treble boost which sounds amazing overdriven til it's fuzzy, but my telecaster (which is a squier with two humbuckers) has been great to record with to thicken the sound a lot. it's nice to train my ears to be more discerning.
i think if you have a distortion pedal, any shitty amp and a laptop speaker, you could probably record punk music, but i'm gonna do a mic/amp rundown for guitars on our recording.
the demo was sloppy, but we recorded the whole thing in houndstooth's basement on my j. mascis jazzmaster through an orange or15 through an orange 2x12 cab. we mic'ed the whole thing with an sm57 and an e609 on the cab and an sm57 as a room mic. that room was warm as hell, and also the amps started leaking mystery fluid. all of that was recorded to tape, bounced to digital, mixed, bounced to tape then ripped to digital as the final streaming version. we stand by the tape as the best quality recording of the demo, actually. analog has a lot of charm, and recording to tape means that you can't walk back your mistakes—you just do your takes again. it feels warm and grimy in a beautiful way.
for the new stuff we're recording, the off-the-floor takes were all done on my jazzmaster through a fender twin reverb mic'ed with an e906 and akg414 (thanks long & mcquade) in a separate room and then layered on top with either guitar. i used the telecaster to record the more pretty parts using the neck pickup mostly. if a take needed a little grit and a little of that natural guitar resonance, i'd record the parts inside the amp room and hope the feedback sounded good. it's been fun recording and having something properly engineered through good amps.
anyway. i'm exhausted, i'll catch you all next time.
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