Oh my gosh! My dear friends! It’s been well over six months since I last wrote anything. Here’s what’s been up, and how a song called ‘Wear A Mask’ developed.
Although I’ve missed writing, I had some adulting to do. Firstly, my wife was running for office. Secondly, we moved to a house from our one-bedroom apartment. Because, thirdly, we now have a Light Audio Recording Junior!
So yeah, some pretty life-altering stuff. But, the need for light audio recording remains. While I have more space in the house, I have to share it with two other people who won’t enjoy a sprawling mess of cable and mics across the place. And, as it currently stands, my gear is in a pile in the basement. Which is very sad.
But, I’ve been writing songs again, which I’m obviously looking at recording, and I haven’t even written about my last recording yet. Let’s go!
Wear A Mask: background
Obviously, throughout the pandemic and lockdown and quarantines, people have been writing songs. Some of those songs were about all that was going on. The first show I went to when bars reopened and live music resumed featured a duo called 4 Brown Eyes.
I enjoyed them, looked them up on Bandcamp, and they had a song called Mask Parade which is a tune. And I think that’s what pushed me into writing a pandemic song of my own.
Probably the most annoying thing for me throughout it all has been the stupidity around masks. Like, they’re not hard. Anyway, this song was born out of frustration with people being awful.
If I recall correctly, I wrote it on an acoustic, but always envisioned it with a more traditional punk feel.
Unfortunately, with my wife’s campaign in full flow during this period, I was so stuck for time, recording this song isn’t as well documented with pictures and videos as other works.
Rig run down
- Dell 3100 Chromebook
- BandLab Link Digital audio interface
- Pig Hog 10ft XLR cable
- Pig Hog instrument cables
- MXL V67G microphone
- Beyerdynamic DT-240 Pro headphones
- Portastand Compact Mic Stand 2.0
- Samson PS01 pop shield
- Taylor TSBTe
- Ernie Ball Regular Slinky guitar strings
- Dunlop Gator Grip 1.14mm picks
- Hotone Tuner
- Ibanez Tube Screamer Mini
- BandLab free, online, in-browser DAW and companion app
Recording Wear A Mask scratch track
To start, I set up my Chromebook, audio interface, and other toys, in the usual way.
Despite feeling it as a punk song, I also still felt it was grounded as it was originally written – an acoustic song. With that, I opted to record the scratch track with an acoustic guitar. As a scratch track, it didn’t need to sound super-lovely or anything, so plugging in my electro-acoustic Taylor TSBTe would be fine.
Then, I plugged the Taylor into my pedalboard, which was in turn connected to the Link Digital. I took a level, clicked record, and rattled through it.
In a slight change to how I normally work guitars, I played power chords right the way through – on the bottom three strings for the verses, and a string up for the choruses to bring them out higher. I played open chords on the little post-chorus bit.
Next, I needed to record a vocal track. I put my microphone on a stand with a pop shield, and switched the pedalboard going into the audio interface for the XLR cable coming from the mic. In BandLab, I added another track, took a level, and clicked record.
Bish bash bosh! I had a scratch track!
Conclusion
To conclude, here’s the completed scratch track.
Not much to it, really! And indeed, not much to this post. The next post about recording will be about drums, which will be a little more involved.
Although this has been a pretty short post, I’m glad to be back writing – I’ve missed it! While I’m going to be very busy going forward, I hope to write at least one post per month. When I take a break from things, it’s always the first step in returning to it that’s the hardest. So it’s a relief to have taken that first step!
Thanks for reading – let’s keep it going!
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