Guitars done for "Brotherhood"

We were busy this past week.  Between mixing several songs for other local groups I managed to fit in a couple excellent sessions on our new song Brotherhood.

Last weekend we tracked Misty on the drums, and the bedtracks still make me smile.  There are little subtle noises in the background which seems to bless this song with extra life.  I'd finished my bass part early in the week and then Juice added some expertly played hand percussion to give some polish to the song.  After that we put a guide guitar part down.  It was Juice's idea to track his guitars on two different sessions, the first time to simply capture what we were playing live, giving us a chance to listen back to the arrangement.  That was important because it allowed Isabelle and I to record our vocals to a backing track that had the full dynamics of the song.  One should never under-estimate how important the vibe needs to be before getting a keeper lead vocal.  Seems simple but even after all these years I still seem to forget that.

Attempting something new, Isabelle and I sang our parts together against the new tracks and everything started to feel right.  It's an interesting process to record the vocals simultaneously, rather than individually.  I found we hit our notes with more confidence and our timing was much tighter. Something to attempt again on the next songs.

Then Sunday night Juice returned to the studio to lay down the keeper parts for the song.  We'd done a little rethinking on the tone and part and I'm really pleased to say the final results are quite inspiring.  He came up with a couple new ideas that really pulled the song forward, and the final outro has never sounded more massive.  Check out the clip below for a brief segment of the guitar lead at the end of the song.  The Gibson 335 running thru his vintage Marshall JMP makes quite a lovely sound!



Just need a quick session with Isabelle to track her vocal part (we've got it figured out nicely) then I need to make a few touch ups to my part and I believe we'll have our new one ready to mix!

Brotherhood was written about our friend Todd Simko who committed suicide last year.  It's taken many months for all of us to come to grips with that tragic event and this song seems to have helped.  The arrangement is a little more traditional than our recent Crumbling Hearts ep, but I couldn't help grinning at its undeniable epicness during the final chorus and guitar solo.  It's definitely another Combine the Victorious song!

Okay, gotta get back to work.  Thanks for reading, I believe we'll have the song to listen to next week!

Cheers,
mrh

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