I’m no U2-apologist but since Under A Blood Red Sky days I have to admit I’ve coveted THAT Black Strat and found something deeply satisfying about a lightly overdriven,
heavily delayed, clanging guitar sound (my own finest BTF moment, homage-verging-on-plagiarism,
was the lead break in Yes, We Are Having A Good Time Now).
Even if a new
song of mine doesn’t demand such a track, I often start the guitar writing process
simply by firing up that kind of sound (Line 6 PODs or if I’m really keen,
AC30 and Line 6 green stomp box) pressing “R” for “Record” and
jangling madly along. A few quick takes of that on a fledgling recording can
often focus the mind nicely and spawn half-a-dozen new ideas as well as
inducing that head-on-fire, fleeting mania which in my teens was enough reason and
reward for ever getting involved in music in the first place.
Whilst there
were more than a couple of weak spots I wish I could change in my second album,
generally songs like the aforementioned YWAHAGTN represent “Me”, more or less
at my “peak”. Like it or not, sorry but that’s it; words, music, that’s about
as good as I get. If I insist on doing another album, it begs the question: how
on Earth do I top that? More of the same but better? It’s tricky.
Michael
Palin, in the BBC’s 1989 OMNIBUS Monty Python 20th anniversary documentary, Life of Python, considered the difficulty of writing a third
series after they clearly hit their stride in the second; his brow furrowed as
he stared into the middle-distance and said,
“That was
the best time, before we got self-conscious… suddenly we’ve ‘broken new
barriers in comedy’ and we all went a bit quiet then”.
To limit my
own self-consciousness and avoid becoming lost amongst the near-infinite choices of instrument
and arrangement the modern tech. allows (and maliciously encourages!), I have
long-since employed a pretty strictly limited palette, based on my idealised
band line-up (fundamentally, guitars, bass, drums, Hammond, Rhodes, Mellotron
strings, flutes & choir – a 1973 Pink
Floyd minus the widdling synths). This keeps me focused and forces the
“creativity” to come from what is played, (and it IS played, not programmed) not
from hours and hours of scrolling through sound patches, (however delightful
and comforting that undoubtedly is.)
The icing
on my Productivity Cake™ is to make a TEMPLATE in Logic. Not just the list
of pre-labelled empty tracks, but all inputs & outputs set on the Focusrite i/o box, pre-wired and
ready to go. Need to thrash down a quick electric guitar track? Plug guitar
into Pod 2, click “R” on Track 11, play! It’s that fast. In my previous
hard-disk-recorders-based studio, it took me twenty minutes or more to set up each
individual track. The joy of eliminating such creativity-killing faff is tempered
by the potential for instant and infinite retakes which can suck the soul out
of the art.
New Rule
Number 6: Don’t give yourself the option!
