Recording in the Frozen North

Ok, so i spend a lot of time up in Orkney, although I live in central Scotland. My Partner moved up there to study for a Doctorate a few years back and her kids are at school there. Orkney has a great music scene,. There are always live bands somewhere at the weekend. There is also an accoustic night at the royal hotel on the last/first Friday of the month, which is often frequented by some of my good friends - The Snarx, who can be found here:

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/pages/Snarx/240525905989087

There is also the brilliant Orkney Blues Festival at the end of every summer. More details here:

http://orkneyblues.co.uk/

Also, I am trying to get an open forum Jam session organised on a regular basis. The idea being that this will be held in a local pub or hotel at the weekend during the day and open to all. Intended that all age groups and abilities should be able and encouraged to take part. I dont want to say too much about that here as that's a whole blog in its own right.

Anyway, the other day while i was up in Orkney i decided to try and do some recording with my new Boss GT-10 floor peddle and see how it sounded. I have also been wanting to try and record a version of Megadeth's classic, 'Symphony of Destruction' for a while, so thought I'd give it a try. It can be found in the audio player on the left hand side (Along with a few tracks i recorded years ago) - let me know what you think - all comments are welcome as long as they are polite. I Originally recorded it with vocals, but they were just too horrific to include in the final mix! Here is a picture of me during the recording!

Look at the total concentration! - That was at the tricky little arpeggio section in the guitar break (I think?).

I recorded these tracks using Cubase VST as the sequencer for the bass and drum parts and also to multitrack the audio. I played symphony for distruction on my red Ibanez RG570, this was played through a noise gate, into my marshall 9000 series pre-amp, into my graphic EQ, into my Boss GT-10 and then into the actual amp, which was driving a 2 x 12 cab. I used a Shure PG58 microphone for recording both the output from the guitar and the vocals. I prefer using a mic for recording the guitar as i think it sounds far better.

Further to this I also went round to see a great slide guitar player the other night for a bit of a jam and to try and come up with some ideas for doing something together, it was great and pretty productive so watch this space!