Booking the day off, buying a bottle of vodka and locking myself in the studio with a mate with a view to making an album in a day

I am due to do this on the 8th October as part of my ongoing 30th birthday shenanigans.

I heard the Mike'n'Rich album by Aphex/Mu-Ziq was made this way. Anyone else ever done anythign like this? What were the results? Any tips or tricks to get the most out of the day?

http://www.henryphull.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/peepshowep4.jpg

Making an album in a day was what people used to always do.

First Nurse With Wound album was made this way I think - let's hire a studio and record all day and see what we come up with - don't know about the vodka tho. Also "Jack the Tab", tho it wasn't vodka they were on...

Yes, but usually with some songs already written/rehearsed.

I should do something like this for my 50th.

Well dog latin might have some songs already written/rehearsed, give the boy some credit!

I'm giving him more credit by suggesting he could do this totally clean (notebookwise, I mean)

I'm not entertaining any illusions that the results will probably:

A: Be mostly unlistenable rubbish
B: Nothing that anyone outside of immediate friends would really want to be exposed to

despite yes, having a few half-finished tunes and ideas already in the bank. It's just nice since it's rare to get the chance to sit around with a copy of Reason and a bunch of guitars and effects pedals without interruption.

Anyone else ever done anythign like this?

Over the course of seven or two or 4 days..

http://caughtbytheriver.net/cms/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/skip-spence-oar.jpg

I've done this a few times (without the booze as I;m not a drinker anymore) and it's best to start with a clean slate. Going in there with some half finished tracks kills the momentum. What I do is switch off the computer and spend the first three hours or so just writing and writing and writing, not bothering to work out specific guitar/synth sounds, just using a small Yamaha/Casio keyboard to work out chords and riffs. After that I'll switch on the PC and block out the tracks in the DAW, then lay down the keyboard/guitar chords all in one go, then the drums, then the vocals. The idea is to avoid having to continually set up and break down equipment throughout the day, because that can really burn up a lot of time. Once the recording is done, I'll do a rough mix of all the tracks one after the other, then a more refined mix, etc.. That way I don't have to mentally shift gears as much, compared to "rough mixing/fine tuning/mastering track 1, then rough mixing/fine tuning/mastering track 2, etc.".

We recorded and mixed an album in four days. The songs were heavily rehearsed and we recorded most of the instruments live at the same time.

The result was a record with good but flawed performances and a number of sonic elements I don't like that I think could have been easily fixed with a little more time (e.g. we didn't realize until too late that the overhead drum mics weren't picking up the crash cymbals well enough). OTOH I worked on an endless recording project where I still wasn't happy with the sound.

Once, a band I was playing in was approached after a gig by some American dude, who we assumed was just some random nutter, who told us he'd booked some time in a recording studio for the following night and needed a band to back him up. We said, "Sure, we'll be there" and laughed it off. Next day he sent a van round for us and our gear - I assume we must have already been on the vodkas 'cos we agreed to go with this maniac to the studio. Spent the next 5-6 hours, trying to make shit up to back the rantings of a (rich and indulged) lunatic. It simultaneously was one of the scariest and funniest things I've ever done. I've never heard what we recorded since. And it turns out he only really wanted to work with us because he liked our keyboard player: who couldn't go because he had an exam the next day!

That nutter was Captain Beefheart

I wish. He put up a little picture of Patti Smith in the vocal booth when he was doing his "singing".

Tom Verlaine?

There was no dartboard in the vocal booth

Actually, now I think of it, the reason we went was because he paid us of course!

Definitely not Captain Beefheart then.

Here's one I did in about 4 days (Hassan):

soundcloud.com/professorjorge

I stayed away from the vodka, though. just lots of coffee or tea and it was Winter, which helped.

Last time I did this I ended up with 12 tracks. The main problems were:

• if I'd had more time I'd have written more songs and dropped a couple of the weaker tracks
• there wasn't enough time to mix the songs properly, so there are problems with vocals and instruments being difficult to hear
• I could have done a better (read: less terrible) job on the vocals
• there really needed to be more hooks and riffs in the songs (seems there's a limit to how many I can come up with in a day before I start to repeat myself)

Robert Pollard's recorded and released 59 albums, 26 EPs and 43 singles using this method, hasn't he?

One time, I did say to myself: Write ten new songs NOW!

After about an hour, I had eight full songs, one very short (lyrically) but an idea for music that'd make it reasonable, and one (I think) that was cheating but I forget in what way.

At least three were immediately useable, the rest had some ideas that could have been refined.

however, I didn't record or enlarge any of them, life's like that you know...

Live at the Witch Trials by The Fall, recorded in one day, mixed the next.

Yeah, but as I say, they were well practiced, etc.

Oh, and lest we forget:

Disc 2 of http://www.mtv.com/shared/media/images/amg_covers/200/drf400/f430/f43009crhvi.jpg

I would say that maybe John Coltrane's Ascension is the sort of benchmark you should be aiming at here DL.

xpost

lots of jazz albs recorded in less than a day, obv - in the 50s, the miles davis quintet (or the rec label) got iirc five fantastic albs out of two days work

Wasn't "Astral Weeks" recorded in two days? (xxp)

'microminature love' by michael yonkers apparently only took a cpl of hours to make

RE: Nurse With Wound

The album came about when Steven Stapleton was working as a signwriter in London in 1978. Completing a job at an independent recording studio, he engaged in conversation with the studio's engineer, Nick Rogers. Rogers, frustrated with the advertising and voice-over work the studio brought in, expressed a wish to work with more experimental bands. Stapleton informed Rogers that he was in such a band and a studio date was arranged. Stapleton, however, was lying and had to hurriedly put something together. He called his friends John Fothergill and Heman Pathak, telling them to get hold of an instrument of some sort. Thus, the first line-up of Nurse With Wound was quickly assembled, Stapleton on percussion, Fothergill on guitar (with built-in ring modulator) and Pathak on organ. The trio didn't have a chance to rehearse before entering the studio, yet the album was completed within 6 hours, with Rogers adding what was called "commercial guitar" on the sleeve. The studio's piano and synthesizer were also used. The tale is so fortuitous as to appear unlikely but Stapleton and Fothergill agreed on the story when interviewed separately by David Keenan for his book England's Hidden Reverse.