Recording

As you may well have picked up, within two weeks I’ll be spending a week in a studio to record an EP with my band, Transentience. The songs we’ll be recording are the following.

1. Paradox
2. Little Girl
3. Seductilence
4. Ease your mind

While we usually only play with one guitarist, yours truly, I’ve taken this opportunity to add another rhythm guitar. While in some parts this guitar will only be a double of my usual chops and for which I won’t have to do anything special, there will also be additional rhythm parts which I’m working out right now. In a lot of parts, I play broken chords. A normal chord consists of 3 or 4 notes. On guitar, when playing a full chord, each note is played at least once and a lot of notes are played twice. Let’s look at a Dm, for example. This consists of a D (obviously), ends with an A (also obviously) and has a flat third added in the form of an F to make it minor. A D major would take a full third, i.e. F#, to complete the chord.

On guitar, a D consists of (from high E to low E)

1. A
2. F
3. D
4. A
5. D
6. A 

or, alternatively when struck as an open chord,

1. F
2. D
3. A
4. D
5. A
6. F

When played as an open chord, the low E string mostly gets muted or not played at all.

In metal, however, a lot of people, including me, don’t actually play the complete chord but play a D5 which simply consists of a D and A, making it fit over both minor and major progressions.

For the fullness of a chord, however, I will be playing all the minor chords but over 2 guitars. I’ll be playing a D5 on one guitar, which is my usual take, and a different chord consisting of F and D. When mixed properly, you should hear the emphasis on the D, with the A and F both present, completing the chord.

In Little Girl, there’s a chord progression which goes E/C/A. If I’m not mistaken, the keyboard basically plays an inversion of B/E/G, a regular C/E/G, rounded off by an A/C/E chord. To keep the doomy vibe provided by these chord changes, I play all chords on the guitar with the low E. I play a regular E/D and then E/C followed by E/A. I’m currently experimenting by filling in the “missing notes” with a second guitar, playing A/E, B/E and E/C. This is basically almost an inversion of the other chords but so far, it sounds great. I’ll have to wait and see what the opinions of the others are since we won’t be having another rehearsal for two weeks.

It takes some work to rewrite all the parts, but I’m sure I’ll work it out! It’s gonna be worth it. Definitely. Amen.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 1st, 2007 at 14:14:04 and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.