First, a short disclaimer as some of the information might only be interesting for gearfreaks or hardcore pien feith fans.

Today we had our first day at the IJland Studio in Amsterdam. Pien is having a sore throat, so we decided to postpone the final vocal recordings until Thursday. We worked on two songs, which only need a few overdubs and perhaps some audio-editing. The first one features a lot of percussion and still needs some overdubs, as it still is a bit mellow, although this is also something that delays and reverbs can solve. The song started out in 147bpm, we weren’t satisfied, so we bumped it up to 150bpm. 3bpm equals a world of difference. We caught the 2nd song on tape quite fast and this one is built around a processed vocal samples and a dubby drumsound.

The synths came straight out of Ableton, we recorded the midi, audio and we mic’ed two amps (Pien’s Fender Showman and IJland’s vintage Marshall). This gives the ableton synths some nice edge and room, and the midi gives us the possibility to adjust the sound in a later phase, if we want to that is.

Tomorrow I will post some pics of our setup, and we will probably turn to some of the synths/organs that IJland has to offer. The next songs will feature a lot of electronic drums, Lil’ Wayne-style swagger, and arpeggios. So it’s going to be fun tomorrow. Hopefully, Pien’s throat will feel better tomorrow and the day after, although her guide vocals still sounded wonderful.

As always there were some minor setbacks: 1. I lost the keys to my bike, which are probably underneath some amp/keyboard/stompbox. 2. The casing of the external backup hard-drive we bought fell apart. So I had to go to the Mediamarkt and get in a minor fight with one of the employees. After I survived the cold journey to Bijlmer and I showed the drive to the lady at the servicedesk the casing was firmly attached. I told her that it was probably because of the cold and that I would not make the journey for fun, and if she wanted I could pry the thing open. She complied and I got a new drive.

Quote of the day (in Dutch): Je kunt niet altijd pieken! – Pien Feith