Beautiful Garbage - Recording

Recording

Garbage decided the best way to start writing the album was to set up their recording equipment, guitars, keyboards, drum kit and a sampler and "jam" as a group. Their improvisation led the inspiration of a few songs such as "Shut Your Mouth", where the band played for three hours while Manson spontaneously composed lyrics, while "Breaking Up the Girl" came from both Erikson and drummer Butch Vig strumming acoustic guitars in the studio lounge. The band felt that it was foremost that the new songs worked on an emotional level with Shirley's vocals and lyrics. The initial sessions ultimately led to around 32 song ideas to develop further. Smart Studios had upgraded their mixing console to a Trident A-Range model, which the band used extensively. The band tracked directly onto analogue tape using a Studer tape machine, which was then dumped into Pro Tools digital audio workstation. Overdubs and mixing were carried out in Pro Tools.

Vig kept the drums and percussion simpler than before. Percussive tracks were recorded through a thirty-year old Roger Meyer compressor to colour the sound (Vig: "It's really saturated and distorted, but in a very musical way") Some tracks however were fairly scrutinized: an instrumental break in "Til The Day I Die" incorporated reverse tape effects. Vig was not satisfied with his "swing" on a 6/8 groove written for a falsetto vocal Manson had recorded on "Can't Cry These Tears", so he recruited Matt Chamberlain to play the part. The recorded sequence incorporated Chamberlain's contribution, some of Vig's performance and some light programming. Chamberlain also performed a "chopped-up" drum pattern for "Cup of Coffee" and a "bitchin' funk groove" on "Confidence".

Much of the recorded guitar work was heavily processed, the band using a Line 6 Pod for melodic parts and embellishments: for example, for the middle 8 of "So Like a Rose", Erikson played a Les Paul with an E-bow through the Pod, while the synth-like intro to "Parade" was created by layering an acoustic part with a clean electric guitar. A tremolo effect on "Can't Cry These Tears" was inspired by 1960s production techniques. The amp modelers were used to pre-effect the recording prior to Pro Tools, in order to prevent phasing. For electric guitar recording, the band utilized cabinet miking - four mikes recorded the output of a Marshall amplifier. Acoustics were recorded using a single Blue Bottle mike. Daniel Shulman, who had performed bass guitar on Version 2.0 and the band's two world tours, spent two separate weeks laying down bass parts. Shulman was given freedom by the band to come up with parts and be creative, creating new basslines on the verses of "Androgyny" and "Nobody Loves You". Shulman revisited "Silence Is Golden", breaking up the straight eighths of the coda to make it more interesting.

Due to Manson's growing confidence and technical skill, the band decided that her vocals did not require much treatment, utilizing a number of guide vocals in the final mixes: the vocal on "So Like a Rose" was recorded on the first take. On some songs, however, Manson's vocal was subject to Pro Tools plug-ins and post effects. "Til The Day Die" featured a digital "scratch"-effect, created by printing her vocal to DAT and using whatever edited passes sounded good. On "Can't Cry These Tears", the four vocal parts were triple-tracked using different mikes, while a guitar riff was matched to her voice for a section of "Breaking Up the Girl". On "Cherry Lips", her entire vocal was sped up and heavily EQ'd. On slower songs such as "Drive You Home", Garbage were not overly concerned with phrasing and pitch, giving it "a rawer quality".

Garbage finished recording Beautiful Garbage at the end of April 2001, and spent a month completing the final mix (some songs had gone through as many as 40 rough mixes). Final EQ, compressing and sequencing on the album was handled by Scott Hull of Classic Sound in New York. Despite running a competition on their website to name the album, Manson's own working title, inspired by a lyric in Hole's "Celebrity Skin" won out. The album artwork came from Garbage's wish for it to be "something organic". The band came up with the fractured rose idea, thinking that it worked well with the album title. Garbage contracted London-based designers Me Company to create the visuals.