Session Log: 2.06.07

Tuesday, 2.6.07: 3:00p - 6:00p
'Learning to Forgive' (Take ? - Harp)
Studio: MAJA Audio Group - Philadelphia, PA
Producer: Jim
Engineer: John Anthony

I called John Anthony about a week ago and left a message with him about bringing in someone to play harp on one of the tunes. When he called back, he said he always thought it was funny when people called it "harp" - he thought I was having someone in to play bluesy harmonica. No John, real harp.

Gillian Grassie came recommended to me through a friend. We got together at my place last Friday (video here.) and worked on some ideas and I was excited about what it could bring to the song. The results of today's session have me even happier, although the session almost didn't happen.

Here's some things you may want to keep in mind when making your own album using multiple studios and recording to hard disk:
* Back up your drives
* Keep track of which drives you have which songs on

I'm all over backing up my drives. The second bullet point is the one that nearly brought me down today. Got to the studio, took my hard drive out of it's well-wrapped box, plugged it in and discovered that 'Learning to Forgive' was not on the drive I brought. Oops. In situations like these, your mind immediately looks for ANY solution. The one I came up with involved calling home, having Emily re-configure my 8 hard drives underneath my computer, find the file, open up FTP software and upload it to the studio's website. If we were lucky and didn't hit any snags, it should only be moderately mind-numbingly complicated.

Then, miraculously, John made an offhand remark - "it's too bad you don't have it on your iPod, we could pull it off of there". Freakin' brilliant. I did have a rough mix on the iPod and so, we saved ourselves a bunch of weird science, the day was saved. Reason #426 why iPods are cool.

Now we just have to re-assemble the harp tracks we recorded today into the session file with the rest of the song, which we'll do next time I'm in.

If I bring the right drive.

Session Log: 2.02.07

Friday, 2.02.07: 11:00a - 4:30p
'Chalk One Up for Albert's Side (Take 1 - Drums)
Studio: MAJA Audio Group - Philadelphia, PA
Producer: Jim
Engineer: John Anthony

Working with Roger at MAJA on a drum track for 'Albert'. Actually, 2 drum tracks. Going for a bit of that White Album era drum overdub sound, conceptualizing things as one drum part, but then leaving out bits and doing them on a separate track to be able to pan them a bit differently.

Also, had Roger lay out during the bridge, then went back and cut a separate take of just the bridge with Roger playing one of those big, deep military snares.

Don't freak out - it sounds much simpler than the description.