So today I want to look at what went in to the first day of recording. Obviously in this day we wanted to get the bulk of the tune completed to leave the second day for solos, embellishments and mixing down. We needed to record the sampled drums for backing, rhythm guitar tracks, bass guitar and the sax melodies.

Firstly, we recorded in No Machines studios in Wokingham with the help of the excellent studio engineer Neil Sadler. I've worked with Neil a few times in the past and he never fails to keep the energy up and make sure that we keep focused despite the long hours.

myself, Chris Selley and Tim in the studio control room

Neil and Tim did most of the work getting the drum/percussion track down. Tim played it using a keyboard and then Neil used sequencing software to edit it. Personally I would always prefer to use a real drummer but I was still impressed with the final results. After that, Tim used my Strat and a Fender Twin to put down a guide rhythm track for the song.

For the bass part I turned to my fellow band member and bassist extraordinaire Chris Selley. He turned up (with his Warwick in hand) for about 5 hours to put down his part. Initially he listened through it a couple of times (having never really heard it) and then we gave him some suggestions as to the style or feel we were looking for in the various sections. Other than that, he came up with the bass lines, fills and solo himself. It was a great performance and I think we were all mightily impressed.

So, now it was my turn to put the sax parts down. As anyone who has been following this site should be aware, I only started playing sax recently (around last July/August). I was fairly nervous to say the least. Neil is also great at getting good performances out of musicians and allowed me to play it through as many times as I liked.

In the end there were several worthy takes and I was very pleased with the final results. Some editing had to be done in certain sections to get the best takes in each verse or chorus. After we had the melodies down, Neil had me record three harmony tracks for the chorus to give the impression of a horn section. It had been Tim's idea for the horn section stabs there and I picked which harmony lines to play but Neil did a good job making them tight. After this, I recorded the keyboards for the chorus section. Initially these were to be more prominent with only minimal guitar but in the end we kept the guitars up here and the keyboards faded into the mix more.

So we have drums, bass, keyboards and sax melodies. It was time for us to put in the real rhythm guitar tracks. Tim I have to say put the funky 9th chord verse guitars down first time which was pretty cool. Again we used my strat with a Fender Twin. Using a slightly softer tone he put down chords for the chorus. After that he put down a funky muted picking lick for the choruses.

By now we were into late afternoon and had been thinking about what to do with the middle eight section. I put down the chords that Tim wanted but we needed a lot more. Tim put down a wah-wah funky picked line then had an idea for a melody to play over it. Initally we thought of using the sax but for a change of texture, Tim used the wah-wah, delay and some subtle whammy work to create a melancholic tone which would be the calm before the solos.

Well we didn't get chance to play any solo stuff the first day, so we'll talk about that next time...