So I decided to do something slightly adventurous.

Then again, for any budding musicians, slightly adventurous is just the tip of the iceberg. And just why is that?

First of all, it begins with an itch. Yes, an itch. An itch to do something productive. Or at least what at first glance and inclination, seems to be productive.What is that, I hear you ask.

Well, an attempt to come up with a more complete version of Fall From Grace. Now, yes, I've already made excuses about the poor quality of the first take that I put up, and I admit, I am not that endeared by my own singing, so I decided to give it a go. Or a re-go, if you want to be anal about it.

Soooooo, here was the setup : Samick semi hollow electric guitar, SX Bass guitar, Marshall amp, one standard mike, and a mess of cables, which contrived to run the input from the guitar and mike, through the amp and into the PC sound card, which is a Creative Audigy 2ZS. Software? Sony Sound Forge 8.0, and Sony ACID Music Studio 5.0. Result? Headaches and many, many attempts.

I laid down the rhythm track first, intending to base off the entire song off that. Next up, I did the vocal track. I played it safe, not straying too far from what I had done in the firsttake, and in the end, I sort of regretted it, because it came off sounding rather flat and draggy. Shrugging it off, I did the bassline. This is where most of the problems began.

For starters, I am not a natural bass player. Seeing that our bassist was not around to assist or record, I had to make something up as I went along. The result? I don't know. For an amateur, it sounded alright to me, but Russ will cry if he hears what I played. Haha. But yeah, I did it in three takes, which wasn't too bad. Then it was time to try and record the Lead guitar.

I made many attempts to try and do this one, but I just couldn't. The ideas were there, but the execution was lacking. Seeing that our second Lead guitarist, Radhie, had gotten home at this point, I urged him to help. Now, normally, his playing is faultless and he doesn't usually run out of ideas. But he was mostly off it today. And the result is there. I admire the fact that he tried, but after 4 frustrating takes, we just settled on the one that sounded least crappy, and pumped that one in.

After synchronising the tracks, I was a bit happier with the result, in comparison with the firsttake I had originally uploaded. I tried playing around a bit with the effects, and it came out a bit better than I had imagined it to be. Converted the whole damn thing into mp3, and uploaded it.

Drums and Lead will have to be recorded again later, so we'll see how it all turns out. And this is just for ONE song. Hehe, at least I have an okay home setup to do this. Ahh, the struggles of a budding band.

_rafie