Blog: Mike Peters ‘Under Attack’ Recording Diary Entry #15

Day Fifteen: Friday 10 June 2005

James Stevenson comes in to record his guitars on ‘Without A Fight’. We are starting to notice that we have a few tuning issues. This is only to be expected with so many guitars and especially with a lot of vintage instruments. This is the most time consuming part of recording. James has to constantly tune his guitars before every take / drop in. It can be very frustrating and you need to have the patience of a saint. Wen you go back and listen to a lot of 70’s recordings you can hear a lot of slightly out of tune instruments but performance hangs it all together. Nowadays tuning is absolutely bang on in modern recordings. Most Bands / Artist don’t play live to make records anymore and the playback facilities are so finely balanced that you can hear the most acute tuning problems. There is always a battle going on in the studio between the artist / performer and the engineer who keeps asking for a retake because something is slightly out of tune. Recording is a bit like building a house if the foundations are weak it will all fall down. Rock solid and it will stand forever. That is why Steve takes so much care over his drums because once they are down everything is added on top. The tuning of the guitars has to be accurate or the vocals / backing vocals will sound out of tune etc. etc. One thing out and it will all be out. Of course a mega performance can make up for all of this in one go. We are striving for the best of both worlds, almighty performances that are bang in tune and we don’t stop till we get what we want.

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