Recording Revisited – Part I

Well, I’m back in VT. The drive up was a little more scenic than I had planned, but I think I like it that way. Kristian had warned me that the GPS might tell me to get off of Rt. 2 a little early and that it would take me a slightly off the beaten track route to the highway. What he didn’t tell me is that, by listening to the GPS, I never actually got back on the highway. I’m actually pretty psyched about the way that it ended up like that, because it was a much prettier drive, down rural routes and through small towns. And I hate driving on the highway anyways.

Recording is much less stressful this time around. Not that I was a ball of nerves last time around (I had fun the whole weekend), but I feel much less pressure to really get things done. We’ve got all the hard stuff taken care of, and now we’re just adding in what we need to do in order to make it better. We might actually have a couple songs totally done, which would so completely rock my world, it’s not even funny.

This morning we went through the whole shebang and talked about where we see songs heading and what we’d like to add (and who we’re going to tap for those additions). Pete had already done some work on his own and I got to see what he’s added. It all sounds wonderful and songs are already sounding richer and fuller than they did with our bare bones tracks.

After working out our road map, we started adding in the tracks that we can do on our own. The first thing that we added was some upright bass to one of my finger-style songs (“The Words that Say Goodbye” for those of you who are familiar with my repertoire). Pete played upright bass, not me! He thinks that he’s terrible, but it’s not true. He’s very good. The bass really gives the song a little something extra. I’m digging the sound. Of course, because Pete was playing, that meant that we needed someone to work the board. And that someone was me.

I guess this means that I get to give myself an engineer credit on the album.

Basically, I hit record at the beginning and stop at the end, but it was still a whole bunch of fun and we took some very funny pictures of me pretending to do my thing. I’m just glad that I didn’t find a way to delete the whole album. Although I’m sure that the system has an undo button in it somewhere. I hope.

Pete tells me that his wife, Mel engineered a few of the bits that he added after our last session. This album is truly going to be a collaborative effort!

After Pete recorded his bass part, we moved onto guitar and it was my turn to play some music. I borrowed a hollow body Gibson electric guitar and played along to “His Worst Fears” (which is turning out to be dark and haunting but clear and lovely all at the same time). Pete had previously recorded some funky keys to the song and adding in the guitar really helped to pull it all together. The song might now be mostly done, which pleases me to no end. My guitar playing is tolerable on it, aided tremendously by a whole lot of tremolo.

After that we took one of the original scratch guitar tracks from another song “VCV” for those who have seen my songs on youtube) and re-amped it. Basically, we took a track (which was me playing guitar with a line directly into the board) and sent it back out into an amp. Pete then mic’ed the amp and recorded that. It’s an easy way to take a bare bones guitar track and give it some effects and a fuller sound. It is a little bit disconcerting to hear an amp, with no guitar in sight, blaring out a guitar part. It’s pretty cool, though.

So, here we are, taking a lunch break. I made a trip to Whole Foods on my way out, so I’m living the highlife (sushi and stuffed grape leaves – so decadent). We’ll probably get started in a few minutes and keep working until 7 or 8pm (or maybe not quite so late into the evening this time, because we got an earlier start today and we have a lot less work to get done).

Tomorrow, Robert Holmes shows up to add in some backing vocals and lead guitar. I am very excited about this. You may remember Robert Holmes from such bands as ‘Til Tuesday and as the co-author of the song Voice Carry. He’s an incredibly talented musician and I am just tickled pink that he agreed to contribute to this project.

I hope that you are all enjoying this lovely Saturday as much as I am.