Song A Day: 2/06/09

Song-A-Day: 2/06/09

Jury Selection

Jury duty is a worst-case scenario. The selection process, which I must attend daily from 8 AM to 1:30 PM 5 days a week, may drag on for weeks. Once jury selection is over, the trial phase is expected to last another 7 weeks. I swear that if anyone tells me that jury duty is justified because it is my 'civic duty', I will place that person's head in an electric pencil sharpener.

I used a completely different process to write this song. First, I sat down and wrote out some lyrics. Next, I noodled around a guitar while speaking the words aloud until a basic melodic shape began to take form. Then it was a matter of polishing the melody, lyrics and chord sequence until it all made sense to me, followed by a quick recording session (mostly first takes).

I used the 414C for guitar and vox. It generates an extremely low output; I had to crank the Groovetubes preamp gain to 11 in order to capture a usable signal on disk. Still, the sound is pretty good. It doesn't have the ugly bass build-up and metallic, shrill presence peak of the U87, nor does it have the slightly attenuated midrange response of the M81. Treble response is pretty good and the midrange is solid. Overall, it lacks the authoritative midrange power of the U87 and the percussive transients of the MS81. I'm happy to have 3 condenser mics with complimentary strengths and weaknesses across the audible frequency range.