Getting that Guitar Solo

It has taken The Great Plotnik two days to record just the guitar solo to his song "Culiacan." It is always hard at first, when you haven't been playing live all that much, to play with the precision necessary for recording. And Plotnik is trying out an old recording technique which involves playing the whole thing three separate times, then splitting the takes along the stereo spectrum. So if he makes a mistake in the left year you're going to also hear it a split second later in the right ear. He's got to be careful.

And then: the furnace turns on. WHOOOOOOOOOOSH! Cancel the take, start over. The doorbell rings. BA-DANGG! Cancel the take. Then -- it's perfectly quiet -- and he's almost finis...clank. He drops the pick. Flubs a chord change. Cancel that take and the next one and the one after, until...

...this is the beauty of home recording. Nobody's charging you. If you don't get it, you just keep doing it until you do. It'll take awhile to get the rest of the guitar, bass and vocals on Culiacan, but that'll make three: "100 Years," "Who Will Be Our Mandela?" and "Culiacan." After that: "So Long, Foghead."

When Plot is done he'll have tracks recorded except for drums. That's when it starts getting interesting. After drums: sweetening (if Plot is smart, he'll figure out how to use doorbell, furnace and someone screaming at himself "GET IT RIGHT GOLPHLURSH IT!").