playing through the first song, ‘She’s So High’. We played it so many times it was impossible to tell whether it was good any more. That does happen in studios. You get lost inside things. You often can’t tell if anything is good until you’ve had a cup of tea and listened back to it later. Sometimes getting it right is a joy; sometimes it’s a chore. It depends on the producer, too. Some producers like to do everything a hundred times, some like to use the first take.
We were all wearing headphones, which had a clicking metronome coming through them that was louder than anything else. It was very offputting. Lovell said we had to get the tempo exactly right. I knew what a tempo was, but I’d never heard anyone say it before. We persevered, trying it slightly faster, then a bit slower, then in between. Then he said, ‘That’s brilliant, guys, we’ll record the drums in the morning’, and I was driven back to my hovel in a limousine.
We spent the whole of the next morning recording the drums and the whole of the afternoon listening to them, just the drums on their own. Again and again, considering the sound of the hihat, the steadiness of the rhythm itself, whether any bits needed patching up, was the tempo definitely exactly right? It’s the usual procedure these days, to start by recording the drums. When the drums are spot on, all the other instruments are overdubbed one at a time. Sometimes a song sounds better if everything is recorded at once, but it’s usually easier to concentrate on one thing at a time.
After dinner we checked the drums one last time and started on the bass. ‘I Know’ was a song based on a metronomic groove and the producers thought it would be more mesmerising if we looped the bass. I hadn’t done that before. Looping is used a lot in dance music, rap and hip-hop.
The fundamental unit of groove is the riff. If the riff is good, the groove is good. A groove is usually the same riff played again and again with subtle variations. With a looped groove, you’re actually hearing exactly the same thing over and over. The bass player jams along with the drums and a small section of the performance, usually eight beats long, is cut and pasted together to make the bassline for the whole track. Computers make this easier to do, but bands had been using tape loops before computers arrived. The Bee Gees used a tape loop for the rock-solid drums on ‘Stayin’ Alive’. I’m pretty sure they used that exact same drum loop for some of their other big hits, too.
There is something very earcatching about the same thing repeating, a hypnotic perfection. Eight beats is quite a small amount of time, but it is actually long enough to change the course of popular history, if you get it exactly right. Making good loops is no easier than playing well through the whole song. In fact, it puts even more emphasis on the ‘feel’. ‘Feel’ is the subtle quality that separates the great players from the ordinary ones. It’s largely innate, like a person’s way of walking or talking. A hundred different guitarists will all play the same riff in exactly one hundred slightly different ways. The subtle pushing and pulling at the rhythm, the exact length of the notes and how hard the strings are hit and bent, mean that no riff is ever quite the same in different hands. Things played with clinical accuracy often sound quite lifeless and mechanical. If it feels good, it is good.
Knowing what is really good and what isn’t quite so hot is the key to making a good record. I played the riff over and over and listened to it again and again until we found ‘the one’. It had a slightly lazy lilt and, boy, it made the drums sound good. It was a crap guitar but it was a great bassline.
The record, a double A-side featuring both tracks, sounded amazing. It sounded like a record. It was all shiny and shimmering and it floated. We got the tempo spot on. We got the feel spot on. We listened to it a hundred
We were all wearing headphones, which had a clicking metronome coming through them that was louder than anything else. It was very offputting. Lovell said we had to get the tempo exactly right. I knew what a tempo was, but I’d never heard anyone say it before. We persevered, trying it slightly faster, then a bit slower, then in between. Then he said, ‘That’s brilliant, guys, we’ll record the drums in the morning’, and I was driven back to my hovel in a limousine.
We spent the whole of the next morning recording the drums and the whole of the afternoon listening to them, just the drums on their own. Again and again, considering the sound of the hihat, the steadiness of the rhythm itself, whether any bits needed patching up, was the tempo definitely exactly right? It’s the usual procedure these days, to start by recording the drums. When the drums are spot on, all the other instruments are overdubbed one at a time. Sometimes a song sounds better if everything is recorded at once, but it’s usually easier to concentrate on one thing at a time.
After dinner we checked the drums one last time and started on the bass. ‘I Know’ was a song based on a metronomic groove and the producers thought it would be more mesmerising if we looped the bass. I hadn’t done that before. Looping is used a lot in dance music, rap and hip-hop.
The fundamental unit of groove is the riff. If the riff is good, the groove is good. A groove is usually the same riff played again and again with subtle variations. With a looped groove, you’re actually hearing exactly the same thing over and over. The bass player jams along with the drums and a small section of the performance, usually eight beats long, is cut and pasted together to make the bassline for the whole track. Computers make this easier to do, but bands had been using tape loops before computers arrived. The Bee Gees used a tape loop for the rock-solid drums on ‘Stayin’ Alive’. I’m pretty sure they used that exact same drum loop for some of their other big hits, too.
There is something very earcatching about the same thing repeating, a hypnotic perfection. Eight beats is quite a small amount of time, but it is actually long enough to change the course of popular history, if you get it exactly right. Making good loops is no easier than playing well through the whole song. In fact, it puts even more emphasis on the ‘feel’. ‘Feel’ is the subtle quality that separates the great players from the ordinary ones. It’s largely innate, like a person’s way of walking or talking. A hundred different guitarists will all play the same riff in exactly one hundred slightly different ways. The subtle pushing and pulling at the rhythm, the exact length of the notes and how hard the strings are hit and bent, mean that no riff is ever quite the same in different hands. Things played with clinical accuracy often sound quite lifeless and mechanical. If it feels good, it is good.
Knowing what is really good and what isn’t quite so hot is the key to making a good record. I played the riff over and over and listened to it again and again until we found ‘the one’. It had a slightly lazy lilt and, boy, it made the drums sound good. It was a crap guitar but it was a great bassline.
The record, a double A-side featuring both tracks, sounded amazing. It sounded like a record. It was all shiny and shimmering and it floated. We got the tempo spot on. We got the feel spot on. We listened to it a hundred
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