Not sure if Dougie went into any details about this but Friends was hard to record. The first attempt was marred with late night jitters. We were all tired and I think because we had recorded a heavier song before, playing this delicate arrangement was impossible so we called it a night and agreed to come back to it the next day.
24 hours later we were all ready. There was room for 3 takes on the reel. At the end of the 3 takes, if we didn't think we had the one, we rewound and started over with another three goes. It took 2 lots to get a take we were all happy with.
We came in and listened. It was agreed that 2 of the takes were really strong and we would likely take the first part of one and edit it together with the second half of the other. They seemed to have the same tempo so the edit would work. However we left the edit for another day and moved on with tracking ( tracking means recording a song)
A couple of days later, Emery dumped the 2 takes onto the computer to do the edit. Emery said there was very little between the two takes and that we wouldn't need to do the edit, instead just choose one.
As a joke I said to him put one take the left speaker and one on the right speaker. This shouldn't work. It should have all been out of time, as we didn't play to a click. But when we played it back, miraculously it was all in time and only began jiggling about at around the one minute mark. Emery corrected this and it only flammed a couple more times.
After correcting these, the two takes were nearly identical. It sounded mental. 2 drum kits, 2 bass guitars, 2 lead guitars and 2 rhythm guitars, 2 vocals all playing together...
We took out one of the vocals and made one of Andys guitars more dominant but apart from this it was left as is. So when you hear this song and you want to hear two different takes of the same song just disconnect whichever speaker you don't want to hear and you'll get a full take coming through.
Today Emery did a great mix. I don't think I have heard of an entire song being double tracked in this fashion so it could be a first. This was the last song to be mixed on this session. Not bad going. Because we used 16 track, it makes everything alot quicker in the mix.
1/2 way.
ohhhyyyeeesssss.
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