Recording report: 2/11/09

It was the Daryl and Steve show at stately Stile Manor last night, with the two of us recording guitars for “Don’t Look Down” and backup vocals for “Crash and Burn” and Daryl doing his solos on “The Edge of Forever.”

Very pleased with our progress. At this point we only need three more sessions to complete all the basic recording work. Then it will just be a few miscellaneous overdubs and on to the mix. We’re on pace to wrap this up in April.

After 2/25 we’ll be putting recording aside for a couple weeks to start rehearsing for our gig on March 14th, when we will be opening up for Seven Color Sky at Club Café. I can’t even tell you how excited I am to play a show after all this time. No actually, I can tell you: I’m excited to play a show after all this time.

Now for you diehard recording geeks, what you've all been waiting for, the agonizingly detailed rundown on last night’s session:

Daryl started off with his octave guitar part on “Don’t Look Down.” He kept it simple and played the part straight, no frills. That means it will just be a solid, useful track that will serve its purpose in the song and we won’t have to fuss with it. Then he recorded a second, more improvisational, part with some nice fills and licks, the idea being that we won’t use all of it but we can go to it here and there when we’re mixing the song and hit a place where a little guitar fill is needed. We’ll probably use some of it on the final chorus where the songs opens up a bit.

While the amp was still warm (Daryl brought the Mesa Boogie this time – sounded great), I went over and did my rhythm guitar part for the same song. I’m not actually sure how much of my guitar will make it into the final mix. I’ve always heard this song as being entirely keyboard and horn-led, with the only important guitar part being Daryl’s octave thing. But I recorded my part anyway just because I always play it live...we’ll see when we mix.

Then it was time for Daryl to lay down his solos on “Edge of Forever.” He set his amp for a bit of growl and he used his wah pedal to get that wild, slightly-out-of-control sound that the youngsters of today love. After doing a couple takes that I thought were solid but a little restrained, I encouraged Daryl to really open it up and let fly. He didn’t need to be told twice, as every take after that was more intense than the last. It was normal pentatonic blues-based lead guitar (which is what I like), just really good and really fast. Some of what he played sounded like Jimi Hendrix at his wildest. We’re going to have fun when we mix and use two or more tracks of Daryl’s solos, panning them left and right to get a kind of psychotic hard-rock meltdown feel as the song climaxes. It’s a long song and was built to have plenty of guitar improvisation, especially toward the end. Daryl really rose to the occasion and did some impressive work.

After that it was on to backup vocals. We had about an hour left, which was just enough time to do both of our parts for “Crash and Burn.” Daryl did two tracks, one where he sings the same melody as Lexi but an octave lower, and another where he just sings the low A note in a kind of drone. It adds an interesting effect and should make the whole vocal mix more fully rounded. I did my usual harmony part and got through it pretty quickly. It’s one of our older songs, written in the spring of 2006 shortly after the band got together, so singing it is second nature by now.

We listened to the playback of “Crash” with all the vocal tracks up, including all the doubled parts, and it was a kind of funny. There are a lot of vocals on this song! We will have to mix carefully. With all the vocal tracks up full-blast the chorus has an unintended Gregorian-chant quality. Pretty sure that is not what we were going for! It’s gonna sound good though, once we get it mixed.

Jason did his usual stellar work behind the board, i.e. behind Joe’s Mac-based digital audio workstation running Logic 8, a truly amazing program. I have a program on my PC called Sonar, which I love and am very loyal to, but I have to admit the latest version of Logic beats Sonar easily. This program can do things that are simply astonishing. And of course it helps to have a smart engineer/producer who knows how to run everything at maximum efficiency.

Next week: Rod plays bass on “Edge of Forever,” Lexi wraps up her vocal parts, and Steve warbles into the mic and tries to stay on key!