Mentor Log 5

3:00-6:00
I went to meet Chris at 3:00 like we did last week. This time I brought my guitar and distortion pedle so it would be easier for me to play the guitar riffs I created and to get the sound I wanted. Chris welcomed me into his home, where I was welcomed by the Scredon's barking dog again. Ms. Scredon took the dog out with her to do whatever, while Chris and I started working in the studio. Chris set up the speakers again, and we talked about the new song I was going to do because I didn't want to keep messing with the one we had recorded last week, mostly because the one we recorded this time represents more of my style and I have alot more ideas to construct it. We tuned up the guitar and starting trying to play the first riff. The first problem we encountered is the speed and tempo of the song was hard to work with. We had to get it down at a set tempo so that it could be constructed properly for the whole song. Chris explained to me that, in most cases, the drum parts would be recorded first, because it sets the rythym of the song and its much easier to record the guitar tracks along with the drums, rather than vise-versa. Unfortunatley, not only do we not have a concrete drum pattern in this case since I haven't been able to mess with drum parts for it, but recording drums properly takes a lot of microphones and preferably a studio, and that could end up costing up to $100. So we decided that the song will be focused mainly on instrumental guitar and bass riffs, and if possible we'll add in drum parts later. So to get the timing right, we used whats called a click track, which has a range of tempo and sounds to use for timing. We spent a little while trying to get this right, mostly by having me play at different speeds and seeing out it worked out until we found a proper pattern. The first riff was relatively easy to get down compared to the second riff that we recorded next and took up most of the rest of the time I was there. Finding the tempo was easy since we just had it at the same speed as the last riff, but finding the pattern to make sure I could play along with that tempo properly was tough, and Chris even said it was hard for him to wrap his head around it. The riff is also somewhat complex and requires a bit of skill and acuracy to pull off, as well as speed. We had to try a few different things to figure it out, including Chris listening to the tempo himself and beating on the table with it to try to create a beat that would make it easier for me to play with. We ended up sticking with the click track after messing with it for awhile. Chris would then hit record and leave me to play the riff 4 times. The initial plan was the try to record the riff 4 times in one take because it actually is played that many times in the song, but because its a complex riff, this proved to be extremely difficult to get right and took a few times until we found one part of the riff that was perfect, and we ended up copying and pasting it to work with the song, which ended up working very well. Since that took up most of our time, Me and Chris talked about how the rest of the song is set up and how many riffs are in it. With about 6-7 possible riffs in the song, we figured we need to make sure we have a bit more time in studio to make sure the product would be ready on time. So we set up a time for this wensday like we usually do, but instead of meeting at school at 11:00, we would meet at his house at 9:30.