The rhythm section got on a plane and went home. Basking in the glow of a job well done.
And they did indeed do a fantastic job. Great players and people alike.
So after a one day diversion to record Barenaked Ladies at another studio I am back with Jason. We will be doing lead vocals and acoustic guitar tracks. Perhaps some other electric tracks but most of the bed track guitars are keepable. Cody, the lead guitarist will join as again next week.
The day was spent pretty casually. We laid down a simple keyboard pad in all the songs to give a clear tuning reference for vocals. Some of the guitar and bass parts have 1960′s tuning, which sounds cool but it is best to sing to something solid. We set up the acoustic guitar station and finally we set up and tried 7 different microphones for lead vocal. It was a real luxury to have the time ( and mic’s) to compare and choose. I let Steven (assistant engineer) record a verse and chorus of Jason’s lead vocal on each mic while did some last minute editing in the other room. When I returned I sat and listened to all the passes not knowing which mic was which. To my ears it boiled down to 2 mic’s and possibly a third. It was the first blind taste test I had done in a decade.
Watch the video to find out the choices and choosen.
Neve 1081 pre into a dbx desser followed by an 1176 and finally an LA2A. Nice.
Because the functionality of the console is not complete it has been tricky setting up a headphone mix with discreet outputs to the cue system. Anyway I think we got it licked.