Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Day 2 Studio
Yesterday Adam and I were in the studio to lay down the scratch tracks for each song. Scratch tracks are a ghost form to give the song shape for the drummer and bassist. Basically my vocals and guitar are recorded with a click track and various drum samples. This gives us and the drummer a sense of direction and the feel we'd like him to experiment and develop as he lays the foundation. Scratch tracks help me and the musicians get in sync and in time as well helps me focus my vocal phrasing and meter. To prepare for our time I sat down a few weeks ago and picked out some tempos and click tracks on Alice's roland and gave Adam the bpm's (beats per measure) to speed the process. We ended up changing the tempo or bpm's only for a couple of songs, one a little faster and the other a tad slower.
Adam suggested adding a solo section for a slide guitar in the song take the sleek train and that will be great. Adam also thought my guitar lick on the song Today was reminiscent of a late Nick Drake tune and he played it for me. I haven't discovered this 70s singer songwriter and really liked what I heard. I could hear the similarity for sure though Nick's is far more intricate than my little hook. Adam thinks at this point the song How Would We Know is the most radio friendly  and will be interesting to see if it remains so at the end of the project. The title track is more flushed out now too. Adam had suggested reintroducing the intro to the song in the middle but instead I did 2 variations of the melody with the intro lyric and we both feel the song flows and is complete now. We still may add the intro though depends on how the production evolves. The song Lightening Strikes Twice is going to be a bluesy edgy song and will be cousin to 99%. I had a hard time keeping my groovey little blues lick solid in the verse and glad I can focus just on guitar when we record rather than voice and guitar. I think this one will be electric guitar rather than acoustic as well. Our session was about 3 hours and a very windy day outside. I had wondered if he might have a power outage as his studio backs into a luscious forest. The blue sky was a lovely backdrop with the fresh new green leaves swaying in the blustery air. Now back to practicing :).
Drum and percussion record next weekend!

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