That Old Black Magic

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 20^th 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!