TIC Diary Part III – HERE IS WHERE THE HARD PART STARTS
Most of my previous studio time was spent either recording someone else or doing just really rough demos on outdated equipment. I had taken for granted watching professionals record and was under the impression it would be a snap to follow suit since I had already seen this a hundred times before.
The truth is that recording basic guitars was the hardest part both physically and mentally for me throughout the whole process. I am not a professional guitar player – but I have been playing guitar for 20 years. Never did I feel like as much like a rookie as I did the first day we went to record the acoustic guitars. Every song has acoustic guitars and to me it’s the most key instrument other than the voice on the CD so it was pretty important to do right.
To get that true stereo image of the guitars I had recently (in the past 24 months) sold a bunch of guitars and bought two custom R. Taylors. (rtaylorguitars) (see Castor and Pollux blog/video). These guitars are identical in size, shape and configuration except the types of wood they are made of. They have very different sounds. One is brighter, the other more thick on the low end. The technique we picked to record a stereo image of the acoustic guitars ended up being a highlight of sound as far as I am concerned. We took one guitar at a time, put two microphones on the 12th fret in an XY pattern and put that guitar on the LEFT speaker. Then we recorded the exact same thing using the other guitar and put it on the RIGHT speaker. The trick to this was the difficulty in playing something EXACTLY the same every time. Every up stroke, every nuance, every rhythm had to be the same or it sticks out worse than a sore thumb. The first go around took me about 6-8 hours to record just the rhythm acoustic guitars. It was frustrating and humbling but by the end of the project I had that time cut down quite a bit.
All the guitars including leads are “doubled” and this challenge ended up being quite rewarding. Doing leads required the same skill but it is how that big full sound comes out. For the leads I primarily used two guitars – a custom Hembry guitar (www.hembryguitars.com) which allows me to mix a sound that is softer. The primary electric guitar is a trust Paul Reed Smith I bought used years ago that is the color of blue jeans. It is aptly named BJ for Blue Jean. This guitar is always in tune, has a sound that can’t be matched, is well intonated and plays like butter. Everyone that visits the studio that plays that guitar on a recording knows it has the “mojo”.
Vocals were done in a few weeks. They were done last – well actually background vocals are done very last but lead vocals are the part where everything comes together. One problem with me is I am not a full time singer. Meaning I don’t sing every day, I have atrocious habits, and my voice changes a lot depending on how much I sing or don’t. I took lessons for about a year some time ago and they really helped me get comfortable with my voice. Most folks spend all the time trying to sound like someone else, instead of getting their own voice. The human voice is an awesome instrument and to date is impossible to duplicate with computers. The dynamic range of any voice compared to any other instrument is amazing.
I really wanted to sing one song at a time and take a break of a week or so. But with independent productions and scheduling issues it came down to me having about 2-3 weeks to sing all the lead vocals. Mike enjoyed the part where my voice would break up after about two hours of singing. After about four hours into singing my voice would start to give but I could hit the high notes more easily. Each song had hundreds of takes throughout and we mixed and matched what we thought would get the song across the best.
I bought a new microphone the Telefunken U47 modeled after the most famous of all microphones –the U47 by Neumann. Since those are no longer made – Telefunken makes them, they are amazing microphones. If I am two feet away from the mic and rub my fingers together this microphone will pick up that noise. After talking with them I wished I had left the microphone on for weeks at a time because it sounds even better when its warmed up for days. The intro to Outside Looking Inside was sung after that mic was accidentally left on for a week. To my ears I hear a difference.
The learning curve continues and thankfully we humans can evolve…