Stuck Hands

Monday, December 11, I set down a few more acoustic guitar tracks for "Dirty Money and Filthy Love," "Ada," "Suffragette Chrysler," and "Let's Climb the Staircase." I brought my Rode NTK mic this time, which created a very nice and bright and full sound for the guitar.

"Ada" was a breeze - just clean strumming without much fuss at all.

Next, we decided to tackle "Let's Climb the Staircase" while my fingers were still fresh. When this song is played live, I play it very loosely, and picking two strings at a time and being a little messy is just fine; however, when committing it to recording, the process can be much more demanding. Needless to say, this song took several takes, and it took a lot of energy out of my fingers.

"Suffragette Chrysler" went smoothly since the strumming it pretty straightforward, like an early Neil Diamond song. Though my fingers were tired, we breezed through this one fairly quickly.

"Dirty Money" was another story. I play two chords very high on the neck, and the song's got a long long meander of double time in the end, and by the time the right take was done and I lifted my fingers off the strings, my hand was stuck fast in the form of a claw.

I'm glad I've got this space to write down and share the tiny minutiae of these recordings to remember later on. Recording the history will make the finishing of the project all the more satisfying.