My spiritually advanced friend Matt approached me recently with the idea of doing a collaboration under the name Sky Burial. His idea of trying to do some somber ambient noise was very appealing to me and I readily accepted. However I was a bit nervous as this would mark the first time I used the studio with someone else.
Generally up to this point if there is something I wanted to do and didn't know how I would either stop working and learn, or decide it wasn't really that important anyway ;-)
How would I handle fielding these same types of requests from an outside person? What if I have major gear failure? What if I just show myself for the hack I am?
Despite my crisis of faith I am happy to report the session went very well. We spent about 8 hours or so working on one 3 minute song we are calling "Exhaust the Sun." The process was fresh and collaborative, and most importantly creative. Most ideas that we wanted to try I was able to program. Never did we have to really stop what we were doing to worry about process. Our imaginations ran wild and we recorded a heavy, dense, at times terrifying piece of music. The drums are a mess and it doesn't sound very good outside of studio monitors, but I am working on it.
Once I re-program and remix the sketchy parts I am going to put it up on the MySpace and send out direct copies to the usual suspects. I was really happy with what we were able to do, and how the technology worked for us. It may not seem like it from some of these posts, but I am not as into the process and the tech, as much as I am into having the tech just WORK so I can be creative.
On a gear note, however, this was the first time I got to use the AKG condenser mic. It sounded absolutely amazing. The one time Matt started screaming and wasn't thinking about line levels the mic peaked in the most amazing way. The vocals sound like they have a nice tube overdrive on them, rather than a muddy crap out. It saved me the time of having to apply distortion.
Also, Amplitube2 completely kicks Guitar Rig's ass, and is far less CPU intensive. I recommend everyone check it out. I am blown out of the water.
