Recording
With the other band members absent, Chamberlin and Corgan decided to record the album alone, which Corgan claims is not a serious departure from how previous Pumpkins albums were made. After the songs were finalized, Chamberlin laid down all of the drum tracks. Notably, the drums for the ten-minute track "United States" were recorded in one live take. After the drums were completed, Chamberlin began the process of interviewing prospective touring band members, while Corgan went about recording the guitar, bass, keyboard, and vocal parts. Chamberlin described the recording sessions as a "long laborious process to greatness". For the first time on a Smashing Pumpkins record, Chamberlin served as one of the producers, and was present and influential through much more of the recording process than he typically has been.
The band's insistence on recording live to tape, without click tracks or editing, was met with distaste by most producers they spoke to. One executive at Reprise suggested using American Idiot producer Rob Cavallo, in the name of commercial success. The band held out until they met someone willing to record analog, and with the right energy and philosophy, eventually choosing producer Roy Thomas Baker, who they considered "a real soul mate." Terry Date also contributed, and, according to Corgan, Date's production style helped the songs "resonate on a physical level". The album was largely recorded in the home studio of former Catherine drummer (and D'arcy Wretzky's ex-husband) Kerry Brown, on the same 24-track tape recorder that 1995's Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was recorded on—in fact, no computers were used for the recording of the album. As with the other Smashing Pumpkins albums, Zeitgeist was recorded in twelve-hour days, six or seven days a week, until it was finished. The mixing process also differed from previous albums'. According to Baker, "everything had sort of an on/off switch. So instead of having various degrees of volumes, we'd have the approach of, 'It's either on or it's not'".
Read more about this topic: Zeitgeist (The Smashing Pumpkins Album)
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