Working on a Buddy’s Track

I’ve spent the afternoon nailing down a bass part for a track that one of my friends has been working on. I think it’s going to sound totally fantastic, actually. I’ve sent off the rough version to him and hopefully he’ll dig it. It’s been so long since I’ve played this much bass, however. My fingers are so fucking sore, I can’t even begin to explain. I’ll definitely post a version of it here once it’s done. Can’t wait to hear if he likes the track or not.

The writing process continues for the EP, right now I need to find more material for lyrical inspiration. I might actually be working on lyrics with another individual for the first time. I’ve always worked on lyrics alone, but sometimes I feel like having someone else to work with is the best option. Partially ’cause I feel lyrically dull right now and partially ’cause I want to bring in other individuals to Æthereal. I’ve always thought it was a shame that I couldn’t find other musicians in time to do anything up in Umeå and now that I’m in Uppsala I’ve had a bitch of a time even finding a local scene. If anyone knows of anything, you should definitely get in contact with me as I desperately need local metal.

I’m going to start the grueling process of tabbing my material now. I’ve never discussed this really, but my method of recording has been, up to this point, that I map everything out in Guitar Pro 5 and then I export midi files into GarageBand and I demo like that. It’s a pretty insane process if you think about it. I write two guitar tracks a bass track and all the drums and export them to use them as scratch tracks for my work. Because GarageBand doesn’t have a way to change time signatures inline, I have to actually record each section of the song separately and if there’s a rotating time signature, it’s even worse. Sometimes GB will freak out and create 100 of minutes of a single note when I export a multi-time-signatured midi. I know that the music doesn’t sound the best comparitively. It’s way too quiet, the tone is weak and stuff. But if you consider how it was recorded, I think it sounds pretty good all things considered.

Anyway, off to work then.