We spent practice last night with Jeremy recording Richard and me. Actually, we only spent most of practice doing that. The first half-hour was spent trying to get rid of a loud 60-cycle electrical hum that was going from my bass amp into the recorder. We tried swapping cables, cutting my wah-wah pedal out of the circuit, plugging the amp into different outlets, raising the amp off the floor, and even shining a flashlight behind the speaker. Nothing worked. The hum even came through when the amp was turned off, and only went away when we unplugged it from the wall. So instead of plugging the amp directly into the recorder, we just mic’d the amp and ran the mic cable to the recorder’s input jack. That worked fine.

Richard and I recorded our guitar and bass parts for “Spank-Ray,” “Time Machine,” and “Streets of Water.” Jeremy played back the drum tracks Pete had recorded months ago and we played along with those. He recorded Richard and me both on separate tracks at the same time. Oddly enough, “Time Machine,” the most technically difficult song of the three, was the only one we did where we were happy with the first take. “Spank-Ray” took about five, much to my embarrassment. I’d like to say I was having trouble with it because I’m not used to playing it without singing it at the same time, but it’s not much better when I’m singing. “Streets of Water” was a little tricky because we were recording over an instrumental-only track, so there were no lyrical clues as to whether we were in the chorus or the solo or what. So we kept getting lost by a phrase or two. Yeah, we’re losers.

After we got those tracks down, we realized that all the rest of our originals have Richard playing acoustic guitar. Now, we weren’t going to be able to record my bass and Richard’s acoustic at the same time, because we had an open mic on my bass amp and Richard would have needed an open mic on his guitar. If we’d tried to record both tracks at the same time, they would have bled into each other horribly, which would make it impossible for Jeremy to get decent levels when it came time to mix it down. So we decided that Richard would record his acoustic tracks some other time, and the two of us would work on vocal tracks.

As recounted in the June 27th entry of this journal, Richard and I had already recorded the vocals on “Adornments,” “Free,” and a few takes of “Boomtown” with Jeremy. We went back and listened to what we had on the first two, and we were pretty happy with them. “Boomtown,” not so much. Anyway, Richard and I went into vocal recording formation (i.e., singing into separate microphones with our backs to each other at opposite ends of the KrakaTomb), and we did a couple of takes each of “Princess in a Jar,” “Martyrs and Devils,” and, yes, “Boomtown.”

“Martyrs and Devils” is pretty much all harmony, all the way through. Richard and I both held copies of the lyrics while we sang, which might seem a little odd considering we’ve been playing that song for over three years. Actually, that’s my fault. Richard knew the words, but then when I started singing the harmony I kept screwing them up so often that I made Richard screw up. So there we were last night, holding the printouts. We did two takes of “Princess in a Jar,” on which Richard sings while I drone “wooooooooould yoooooooooooooo faaaaaaaaaaaaaaall” in the background. There was some discussion over how I should enunciate “would you.” Should I pronounce each word separately, or should I just follow my inclination to say “wouldjou?” We decided to go with “wouldjou,” but not before the phrase had lost all meaning. “Boomtown” went pretty well on the two takes we did of that. When we listened to the previously recorded vocals, we all realized we’d sung it live better than that since the recording. So we decided to do it again. And it did indeed go much better. Particularly the second take. It wasn’t until then that I realized that Jeremy wasn’t singing with us; he just had his old vocal track turned up on the playback so we could sing along with it. Our “Boomtown” practice is paying off; most of the harmonies on our second take were dead-on.

It was nice to hear the recordings again. The last few practices, we’ve been a little loose. It was reassuring to listen to the recordings and remember how tight and clean we’re capable of being.

When I left, Richard was laying down a vocal track for “Polaroid.” I don’t know if he or Richard are going to do any more recording without me this week (in addition to Richard’s acoustic tracks, Jeremy still has to do his vocals on everything, and lead guitar on almost everything), but next Wednesday Pete will be back, so we’ll be rocking the KrakaTomb at full strength.