d-day - umm... again
The recording sessions continue -- we started the morning with John Rice, who laid down acoustic guitar, dobro, and chicken-pickin' electric guitar tracks on the downtempo western tune, and the uptempo bluegrass/country tune. John was amazing -- he nailed almost everything in one or two takes, improvising all his parts on the spot. Quite the musician! (evidently, he's also famous for being in the band that recorded "The Curly Shuffle").
Then we tracked our "tuba" for the dixieland tune, which is actually a "contrabass trumpet", invented by Mike Connelly. Mike came up with this technique where you track a trumpet at 192 kHz, then pitch-shift it down two octaves, and down-sample to 44.1 kHz (there are a few more tricks in there, but that's the basic idea). What you get is a pretty believable tuba track!
After that, things got a bit silly -- me, Mike, and Dina Bellini sweetened the beatnik jazz tune with finger-snaps, and some "ooh", "aah", and "yeah" tracks.
Afternoon -- horn section. These guys were AWESOME -- and finished about an hour earlier than I'd anticipated! Rob Parton was truly amazing, adapting his trumpet tone and technique to go from the Memphis Horns, to Count Basie, to Satchmo, to a very coooooool Miles Davis. Paul Mertens was also great at adapting from smooth jazz styles to a rock n roll buzz from minute to minute, and blew a great bari solo on my swing band tune. Tim Coffman was flawless, and took down his lines with no worries. Eric Pryzby was rock-solid and very musical, adding the extra grease and style that the sax section needed, and he switched off between tenor sax, flute, and clarinet without missing a beat. He also played a great tenor solo over the bridge of the big band tune. But my biggest surprise was that there wasn't a single bad chord change or wrong note in any of the scores or parts -- go me!
Another cool trick I've forever locked in the memory banks today -- MULTING POP HORN TRACKS. Its not like I'd never done it before, I'd just never done it on something I'd written -- it had always been for someone else. And while it doesn't work for everything, it makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE on the pop stuff -- gives it that immediately recognizable shine.
Tomorrow we record the last guitar tracks, and start mixing. Can't wait to hear what our engineer, Steve Weeder, comes up with.
Then we tracked our "tuba" for the dixieland tune, which is actually a "contrabass trumpet", invented by Mike Connelly. Mike came up with this technique where you track a trumpet at 192 kHz, then pitch-shift it down two octaves, and down-sample to 44.1 kHz (there are a few more tricks in there, but that's the basic idea). What you get is a pretty believable tuba track!
After that, things got a bit silly -- me, Mike, and Dina Bellini sweetened the beatnik jazz tune with finger-snaps, and some "ooh", "aah", and "yeah" tracks.
Afternoon -- horn section. These guys were AWESOME -- and finished about an hour earlier than I'd anticipated! Rob Parton was truly amazing, adapting his trumpet tone and technique to go from the Memphis Horns, to Count Basie, to Satchmo, to a very coooooool Miles Davis. Paul Mertens was also great at adapting from smooth jazz styles to a rock n roll buzz from minute to minute, and blew a great bari solo on my swing band tune. Tim Coffman was flawless, and took down his lines with no worries. Eric Pryzby was rock-solid and very musical, adding the extra grease and style that the sax section needed, and he switched off between tenor sax, flute, and clarinet without missing a beat. He also played a great tenor solo over the bridge of the big band tune. But my biggest surprise was that there wasn't a single bad chord change or wrong note in any of the scores or parts -- go me!
Another cool trick I've forever locked in the memory banks today -- MULTING POP HORN TRACKS. Its not like I'd never done it before, I'd just never done it on something I'd written -- it had always been for someone else. And while it doesn't work for everything, it makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE on the pop stuff -- gives it that immediately recognizable shine.
Tomorrow we record the last guitar tracks, and start mixing. Can't wait to hear what our engineer, Steve Weeder, comes up with.
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