The Rabies of Oz

The recording adventure continues...

One thing we're trying to accomplish during pre-production is tightening up our songs by using a click track. It's the first time we've done the metronome thing as a band, so we spent some time last week experimenting with the logistics of it. We tried hooking up a clicking drum machine to Ryan's headphones, but it wasn't loud enough. Then we gave the headphones to Kirk and let Ryan play along with the bass that was playing along with the click in yet another set of headphones. This convoluted setup wasn't effective either. Then I recorded a guitar track with a click on the 8 track for Ryan to listen to while he played drums, but it ended up being too slow. We wouldn't be able to vary the speed without recording it several times, which was unrealistic.

Finally, Mike Moebius, Master of Moonlight Mile Studios said "Why don't you just play it through the PA, dummies?" So we did, and it worked pretty damn well. After playing each song two or three times, we got the hang of it and zeroed in on the exact tempos we wanted to the songs to be. The final breakthrough was changing the click sound itself to a much more exhilarating midrange snare beat. From then on it was fucking Dance Party PMF.

Here's a shortened, vocal-less version of "Rabies First Battle" that ended our Thursday night: