Noodling in the studio (behind the scenes of laying down a track for the new album)

By PRSD, on Thursday, April 21, 2011

Photo taken by Lisa (Indigo Blue Photography) and edited by Sandra (Soul Photography)

Katie Marie in the studio recording tracks for her new album

This week I’ve been working away in my little studio recording tracks for my new album. There’s nothing I love more than locking myself away in my studio and noodling, so it’s been lots of fun (well, mostly!).

I thought it would be a good idea to record one of the songs I’m pretty familiar with (called Until Tomorrow) as I’ve been playing it live for the past year or so. I actually wrote it when Elli and I were touring around Germany together and it’s all about our adventures on the road.

If you’re not familiar with Until Tomorrow here’s a clip of me playing it at Miss Peapod’s last weekend:

The guitar part I’m playing is quite busy and in my mind I was thinking that I’d have a simple but funky cajon beat playing underneath it with some tasty bass to anchor it all. I could hear what the main accents where in the guitar riff and I thought all I’d need to do was just lock into that and everything would be fine (this is usually my theory lol).

So I recorded the guitar part without a click track – my thinking was that I’m so familiar with this song that it’ll sound better flowing along naturally rather than being squished to a click track.

Happy with what I’d record on the guitar, I set up a cajon and got it all miked up. I began playing along with my guitar part… I tried desperately to lock in with the key rhythms of the riff but for some reason it just wasn’t happening. The cajon part either made the whole track sound too messy or it dragged along.

I re-recorded the guitar part again, this time with a click – as when I was playing along with my cajon I noticed I *massively* changed tempo, feel, groove all over the place… which I was completely unaware of!

Although the guitar part sounded a lot nicer it sadly didn’t make my cajon part gel any better, doh.

I then thought maybe I need an actual drum kit sound and was thinking along the lines of Ani Difranco and her trio she used to gig with back in the good old days.

So I set up a nice, simple kit to do some funky grooves:

I thought I’d use brushes to start with so I wasn’t too invasive with my playing. I tried over, and over, and over (and over) again to lock into my guitar playing… but all I seemed to be doing was creating one very messy over complicated drum beat lol I tried simplifying it and again that didn’t sound right either. I changed from brushes to hotrod sticks to normal sticks and nothing seemed to work, it was all just clashing with the guitar part.

Hhhhmm… ok, now what lol

I listened back and tried really hard to understand what on earth this song needed. It defiantly wanted a beat behind it, but everything I tried just killed it dead.

I tried thinking outside of the box and came up with the idea that it needed to have the sound of a groove without too much drum sound (if that makes any kind of sense!) so that the implication of a groove was there but it was still allowing the riff to be the main driving force behind the feel of the song.

I put Kartha (my cajon) on his side and tried hitting the side of him with cajon brushes. I played what felt like an opposite kind of beat along with my guitar part and for some reason it seemed to be working…r-e-s-u-l-t!

I did a few different takes and ended up with a groove that fitted into the guitar part really well. I then miked up a floor tom and used that as a kind of sparse kick drum sound and it all worked together lovely.

Added with some shaky shaker sounds and a bit of bass it all sounds very cool indeed and totally *not* what I would have thought of at all – which just goes to show that I still have so much to learn about listening to what a song needs!

(main image: Katie Marie Photo taken by Lisa (Indigo Blue Photography) and edited by Sandra (Soul Photography))