God damn... now I feel like the best guitarist in the world.


Dude's riffs had tons of bends in them, and every one of them was out of tune. Dude couldn't play to a click... dude just sucked. I got 2 songs down for them, about 15 takes per side EACH. I ended up playing one of the songs FOR HIM.


Good god...

Before and after clipz. lol Lets hear it!

Not allowed, already asked. Dudes are paranoid and I don't wanna lose my $300.

A lot of your work when recording other metal musicians is repairing the shortcomings in their performances.

Yep... knew that when I started.


I don't mind so much, though. The main frustration is trying to coax a good take out of the musician. Everyone's capable of that one good take... Hell, I don't consider myself even a decent guitarist and most of my shit is one take per guitar track... sometimes two.

I remember this from my metaller days.

Oh yeah, totally. One of my guitarists back in the day recorded all of his parts for the whole EP with the tone knob on his guitar rolled completely off. As soon as i came into the room after tracking the drums and we listened to the first song, i was like "DOOOD. Is the fucking tone knob on your guitar rolled all the way off?!" Like, it was immediately, wildly, obvious.

No way to fix that but re-record all of it, even if we had taken a DI.

Of course, we were on a tight schedule, so we just left it as is, and to this day every time i listen to the thing i hear that one wrong guitar, panned hard and obvious, obviously.

So yeah.

Actually Kurt Ballou played one part on that record too, now that i think of it... He thought of it, tried to show it to the geetar doods, they couldn't get it down, so he just tracked it, and they just learned it later.

Ghosting parts FTW. I've done it before myself.

Shitty bassist + ground hum on the DI means I can't reamp if I wanted to = I retracked your shit.

How would one not notice one's tone knob is off?

What happened to the days when you actually had to know how to operate your instrument AND play it to consider yourself a musician?

I've noticed a lot of guys tend to think they have their shit down when they don't. Usually because they have not recorded enough to realize they 1 have to have their shit together and 2 if they are in a 2 guitar band they need to know exactly what the other guy is playing.

also, dude, your rhythm playing is great, and you say you don't lead, but don't underestimate how valuable a great rhythm player is.

Jon Schaffer "doesn't play lead" and he's pretty okay at the metal thing.

First proper recoarding studio experience i think. Like "this doesn't sound right, but i am sure it is just because i am so nervous"

Kurt was all "oh, i thought that was just 'his sound'?"

Like, it didn't sound terrible, but it was (should have been) totally obvious to anyone in the band, and out of the other guitarist, singer, and/or bassist in the control room, *someone* should have fucking noticed it as quickly as i did when i came in.

As Snaxie would say... Donkeyshave.