Session Log: 'Learning to Forgive'

Tuesday, 11.07.06: 4p - 8:30p
'Learning to Forgive'
Studio: Miriam Audio - Philadelphia, PA
Producer: Jim
Engineer: Jesse Honig

Tracks (in order):
* Acoustic Guitar
* Nylon-string Guitar
* Bass Drum (oversized, played with mallet - NOT a kick drum)


And . . . begin. A rather short session (it was going to start earlier, but I went to vote and discovered that my registration did not follow me when I moved so I had to go back to my old polling place), but hey, the new record is officially started.

This was a really straight-forward session. Started with the main acoustic guitar track, Takes 1-16. Most of those takes were just testing different microphone set-ups and placements finding the right tone. Take 16 wound up being the one used for overdubbing.

One of the things I'm going to try on this record is to have as many tracks be full performances as possible, instead of doing the usual "punch-in" to fix any mistakes. I think in the end everything will sound more musical because you tend to retain the "macro" aspect of the performance - the little nuances that occur as you travel THROUGH the song, rather than just playing the second chorus, for example.

The other thing is that I'm going to try to not use a click track whenever possible. In a lot of my songs there will be sections of the tune where a chord will hold and want to take a really tiny pause or breath before the next section starts and I've found that when I've used a click track in the past, these sections sound rushed or stiff and I wind up editing all the tracks by "pushing them back" a bit. This works, but again it's just not as musical as playing your way through it in the first place.

Cutting to a click is pretty much the norm nowadays because it's easier to edit when your're "on the grid" - but it's not really my job to make my engineer's job easier (sorry Jesse, Pete, Adam and Shane)!

The nylon guitar (you may know it as "classical guitar") part is just a little counter-point line that happens in a few places throughout the song. Oh, which reminds me - the last couple of takes of the main acoustic were done because I realized that the counter-point line required me to change a chord in the main guitar part, so I had to re-cut it. This is one of those times where in another situation, I'd just punch-in and "fix" the original take, but I went back and played the whole thing again. You'll thank me later.

It was Jesse who suggested doing some hits on his over-size bass drum (imagine one of those marching band kinda deals) to give a little touch of depth and drama. The drum itself sounded good, but we wound up pitch-shifting the thing down one whole octave - it sounds like a tympani now.

At that point, I had to catch a train. Looks like I'll be back in next Tuesday and through most of the remainder of the week.