What Kind Of Privilege Is This? scratch track

It’s a new week, it’s a new post, and it’s a new song. Today, we record the scratch track for a song called What Kind Of Privilege Is This?

Now, with two tracks completed with the light audio recording approach, we get cocky and try new things!

Scratch track: rig run down

Recording the scratch track

As has been noted, the iRig doesn’t work with my Chromebook. While it’s not that big a deal, I would certainly prefer to record directly to it when I’m recording at home. So I can make minor edits – like adjusting the timing around latency issues – on the fly.

But, this is where we’re at. And I can’t seem to find an audio interface that will work on both my Chromebook, and my phone.

I wanted to focus on What Kind Of Privilege Is This?‘s punk feel in the scratch track, so I decided not to include any acoustic guitar.

Step one – set up

Firstly, I set up the rig in the usual way.

There’s really not much more to add here. However, perhaps I should note that as this session is for a scratch track, I will be recording both guitar and vocals in a single session.

Additionally, as I’m now using the iRig as my sole audio interface, I need to mic up the guitar, as the iRig only has an XLR input, rather than a combined XLR/jack plug input. So, I can’t plug the guitar directly into my audio interface like I did previously.

Step two – admin

Next, I logged into BandLab.

I clicked + Create in the top right hand corner, then, Let’s Make Music. That brought me directly to the Mix Editor, and the popup menu to select what I wanted to record, in this case, Voice/Mic.

light audio recording privilege scratch track

Step three – record scratch track

Firstly, I recorded guitar. There was nothing too scientific – I placed the mic as I did in the last session where I was recording electric guitar.

Secondly, I recorded vocals. As I was in the living area of the apartment, probably the place where most neighbors would hear me, I refrained from giving it too much welly.

Conclusion

To conclude, we now have a scratch track for What Kind Of Privilege Is This?, comprising guitar and vocal.

A note about What Kind Of Privilege Is This?

Certainly, this is quite an angry song.

In essence, it’s about not being allowed work in the United States.

Amidst a narrative of people bemoaning immigrants not working, but also stealing jobs.

And there I was, an well-educated, professionally experienced, immigrant who would get deported if I was caught working.

It makes no sense!

So, this song happened on one of those frustrating days, waiting on work authorization.

And here’s a video of it, just to give you an idea.

Next week, we talk about recording drums, where we take a different approach than in the previous two tracks…

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