this track is actually about four years old, holy fuck. i’d been listening to loads of converge when i wrote it.
this was back when my recording set-up was clunky as fuck - i’d need to program drums on my laptop (it could barely do that it was so shit), export all the drums basically mixed onto two stereo tracks, burn that onto a CD, take it over to my hardware recorder (a wee 8 track korg thing), rip that track onto two tracks, then to get higher quality recordings i needed to sacrifice two tracks so i would have two for drums, one for bass, two for rhythm guitars and one for any lead stuff if i was feeling particularly adventurous. i’d then have to mix that down onto stereo tracks and burn that onto another CD and take it over to my computer again.
it was a shite way of doing things but i did it out of necessity. i’m actually grateful for it because it taught me so much about working around problems as an engineer, and also as a performer. i didn’t really have room for any rhythm or bass overdubs, so i had to get everything in one take, which really made me a tighter player. i didn’t have access to the wealth of effects and mixing tools that DAWs like protools offer you, so in order to get my stuff sounding like this (which is good considering the equipment i had to work with) i had to improvise a lot. all this meant that when i made the switch from a hardware recorder to a protools set-up, even though it was still on a shite computer that’s basically broken and slow as all fuck, it’s still so much better than what i had before. most people nowadays have everything just given to them on a plate from the start in terms of bedroom recording and stuff (that’s why most metal sounds so fucking generic nowadays - anyone can get their hands on pretty decent recording gear which has all these fucking templates already set up for you), whereas i really had to work to get anything sounding close to good. i got used to the fact that i was going to be working around problems most of the time i was recording, which made coping with them when they arise a lot easier - most of the problems i have now, i’ve experienced many many times before. still though, that’s not to say recording problems don’t still stress me the fuck out…
