Recently, I was cleaning out the hard drive on my laptop and moving some old files to an external hard drive. I kept coming across some cool things that I had forgotten about. One of those things was the first composition I ever wrote and recorded. Later, I would share it with a friend and he would add some lyrics, vocals, keyboard/synth, and some drums. But in the beginning, all I had was what I recorded.
For some unknown reason I thought my first recorded comp should be in 6/8 time. The most likely reason is that 6/8 is a superior time signature. I just love that swing. Nearly every song I fall in love with has a 6/8 feel. The other reason could be that I wanted to do something a little different, but not too different.
Here is the track as background music to a video
How I Recorded It
A bit of background of how I recorded it.
For recording I laid down the basic rhythm guitar track all the way through the track. Then I doubled that and panned them left and right. Then I started to lay down some color to the guitar parts. Color as in either small parts that didn’t last long, or parts that had a bit of a different tone.
After all this was done, I went ahead and exported it and sent it out for some feedback. After the feedback, I had to redo the whole thing because I got off tempo and any drums (DAW plugin) that were added were a mess.
So the second time through, with drums added, I recorded the parts and got something closer to what you hear now.
The final version was mixed by me. Admittedly, I was pretty bad at mixing during this time. I’m much better now, but still have a long way to go.
I can’t remember if I knew about cuts and filters at this point. I imagine I just used something like “classic guitar cleanup” or something. My main mixing strategy was to control levels of the different tracks and add some reverb and chorus.
And this was V1. But I kinda like it.
Gear used:
- Fender Stratocaster
- Shure SM57
- Orange Micro Dark
- Custom 2x12 cab with Celestion G12’s
If you liked this, I’d love to hear from you! I can be reached at the typical places on the internet or you can just email me.