Day VII. I Got A Feeling...

So today was basically a day off.

Steve spent the day doing some editing and making sure everything was nice and in sync for the Will.

This time around we wanted to make sure that there was nothing limiting what we were able to accomplish with the soundscapes and emotions on this record. It seems silly that in order to do this, we ended up recording to a click track (metronome for you nerds out there.) Orwell has never used a metronome in the studio. I think it has always been a combination a few things. One being, its incredibly challenging to have your drummer be on with every click. It takes a long time, it takes precision, and it takes patience.  I don't mean to say that our past drummers haven't had the ability to do it this way, its more a case of the band not being able to afford the time needed. Luckily this time around, we had the time, and Cris was willing. We had originally gone into this saying "no click track, if any record we've done needed to be guided by feeling, it's this one." That being said, this record is very ambitious for us, and there was a lot we wanted to do with guitars, layering, atmosphere, etc. I think it was about  a 5 minute conversation when we changed our minds to be honest, haha.

The thing is, imperfection and fluctuation can sometimes help you and your audience "feel" the music, however, more often than not, it takes you out of the music when the tempo shifts down 10 bpm out of nowhere. It's mind-blowing how even a 3-5 bpm drop or raise completely throws you off as a listener, and you probably wouldn't even notice it consciously. It's more of the feeling you get when you are nodding along to the music and all of a sudden your heads not in time with the music anymore. Unless you have absolutely no rhythm, its pretty hard to get off the beat with songs that sit around 100 - 130 bpm.

So anyway, back to my original thought, the metronome is what has ended up really giving us the room to create the hypnotic trans-like state of a lot of the songs and parts on AVOHFASIH. As a listener, we want you to be moved to the next part of the song, subconciously. This, as opposed to banging your head so fast and hard that your neck hurts after the first 1/4 of our 8 minute songs and then slamming you into a new tempo so quickly that you have to stop and focus in order to realign with the beat and resume head-banging. This album progresses from song to song, and ideally, you'll close your eyes and just let it play.

So, in summation, today was spent hanging out, relaxing, and cooking various meats as Steve worked on making sure that the drums were ready for Will to latch on to.

-T