Recording began in March 2007 at Studio 606 in Dave Grohl's Virginia home's basement (the studio has since been moved to Northridge, California). As the band took a ten-day break in April, Grohl thought that the record needed another uptempo song, so he spent his time developing an unfinished song that became "The Pretender". The sessions wrapped in mid-June, and for the first time the band did not feel the need to rerecord any song. Grohl stated that while "In Your Honor" was a double album because he felt "schizophrenic" to alternate between loud and acoustic songs, Norton helped on sequencing the tracks into "an album that makes sense".