416 damn takes and I'm STILL not half done!!!

Bah!! Frustration is a bitch. My band’s recording our album and we only had 4 hours today. Yesterday we had 8 hours… we got some good work done, and we decided to start trying to record my guitar solo (enough qualifiers for ya?) for the song we’re currently working on.

Two-hundred and three takes later, we packed up and left before I hung myself from the XLR cables littering the floor. So today I figured I’d nail the damn thing, no problemo.

An additional two-hundred thirteen takes later, it’s still not done. Yes, we managed to salvage some pieces but what we do have is occasionally slightly off time or housing some minor unwanted string buzz.

I’ve never locked up while playing before… this is ridiculous! I’ll play my solos note for note with no problem at live shows or in rehearsals. But as soon as I see that red light and everyone’s watching me expectantly, I regress to a hack two-year player instead of the fairly accomplished five-year player I am (generally).

It’s so frustrating to watch our art go so slowly and frustratingly for everyone involved on account of my inability to get my fucking fingers to work properly when we’re rolling. I end up snapping at band members who don’t understand the difficulty of hitting 16th note triplets at 140 beats per minute on something the size of dental floss with the tip of a piece of plastic, and everyone gets grumpy.

So, to wrap up this rant, fuck whoever invented perfectionism and solo lock-up, cause I’m plagued with both. BAH!

As another who’s been ‘in studio’ in the past let me give you this piece of advice:

Don’t give a fuck what the solo sounds like when playing live. Spend some time in the booth (recording) with a click track in your headphones and tooling around in the right key. Then take what you can from that. Odds are you’ll have 30 minutes of material to pull from. Bang! Pressures off and you get some fun ‘fooling around’ time.

That will make your solo sound more improvisational and less ‘formalized’. You’ll have a spontaneous feel to it and that livens any song up.

Hell, the ultimate perfectionist band, Rush, does it that way fairly often. Record sound checks and improv and see what comes of it.

What’s the name of your band? And what kind of music do you play?

More importantly, what are you playing, and what kind of pick are you using?

Try using a thicker pick for more control and to eliminate the buzz.

Oter than that, I second Jonathan Chance’s advice