DAY1: Recording Inamorati by e.l.m.s.

With a full day of recording ahead, Em arrives, ukelele slung over her shoulder, at the house where Eamonn’s studio is. Take note of the odd growth of gourds on the door. This is foreshadowing.

Inside, it’s cozy like American apple pie – beautiful hardwood floors and wooden walls. Eamonn’s seat at the helm. Doesn’t look very comfortable 🙁 He could use a nice seat pillow for Christmas.

This song we’re about to record harks back to a time of dreamy, retro, reverb-drenched girl harmonies. So it’s only fitting we use a 12-string guitar to lay down the foundations for the song. The guitar is courtesy of dear Ryan Beanstalk, and it was perfect to give the song an ‘old’ shimmery tinsel & ornaments feel!

So guitar went first. Then Em got ready to lay down a lush bed of keys. After picking through the sounds on the Nord Electro, she settled on a hypnotic Wurlitzer sound. Then used Rhodes to play a riff that occurs 3 times in the song but is played on different instruments each time.

Noticed Dostoevsky’s ‘Notes from Underground’ sitting atop a pile of cables by Eamonn’s seat. Rather apropos. The song is melancholy and minor key, but still manages to be cheery and romantic. It has sleighbells for Pete’s sake!

Next up were violins to fill in the holes and beef up the choruses.

Here’s a random clip of Em playing that riff on the vio. Excuse my shaky camera work. Was just trying to get Eamonn in the frame too. Jeez already.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFQ97yXl_o4]

Good job Em. Now for the riff on electric guitar. We wrestled with the guitar tone for a bit, even tried out crazy fuzz pedals. It was a smidge tricky to play because of all the feedback. It turns out the pedal Eamonn had in mind was awol (on loan to Patrick Bellflur). Maybe next session we’ll try it.

Aight back to more keys. We needed more low-end, so Em tracked the root notes using a droney, ominous sound.

We might more percussion later, but since we had some time, we used a monster bass drum to capture some echoey booms on the choruses.

And here comes another pointless video. In this one I’m playing said ‘booms’ on the monster kick drum. Stunning performance if I might say so myself. Judge for yourself ‘fore you snicker at my braggadocio.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEEB_S4zSl4]

Last but not least, the shakers. And here the gourds are back to haunt us. When I mentioned shakers, Eamonn disappeared into the basement and came back with a handful shakers. The weird thing was all the shakers were in the form of gourds. I dunno. But they were so cute!

I took a stab at recording the shakers, but it was determined by consensus that my shaker skills were inadequate. Em was able to do that cool shaker motion where you shake upwards, back, then downwards and back. That way you get two different sounds. But pfssh. Whatevs.

And thus ended our first recording session for Inamorati. Next Sunday, Laura and May will be joining us to record 4-part harmonies. Yay!