Three weeks from today, we’ll be leaving for Nashville! If you haven’t heard yet, on June 18th, I’ll be at Dark Horse Recording in Nashville recording drums, bass, and rhythm guitar for the new Marc Andre rock album that is set to release early 2011. It’s hard to believe it’s been 6 ½ years (October 2003) since I was at Dark Horse tracking my last album Backstage Pass. This trip should be a lot of fun!Prepping the Demos
So far, I’ve already spent about 6 months preparing MIDI demos for the live band to emulate. In addition, I’m now currently working on exporting all the instruments from the demos as sub-mixes. In other words, all of the instruments are now being sup-grouped into the following categories/channels: (1-2) drums, (3) bass, (4-5) rhythm guitar, (6-7) lead guitar, (8-9) keys, (10-11) percussion, (12-13) lead vocals, and (14-15) background vocals. On the day of recording, the musicians can adjust the volume of these sub-mixes to taste. For example, the drummer may want to turn up the percussion a bit more than the bassist, just to stay tight with any drum programming. As another example, some musicians may want to hear a lot of the lead vocal and some may want to turn it down quite a bit. The band will probably listen to the fake drums, bass, and guitars once for demo purposes only and then those channels will be muted once we start recording (as we are replacing all the fake drums, bass, and guitar with real instruments).
Making the Most of the Time
As you can probably imagine, studio time isn’t cheap. Neither are studio musicians. With this in consideration, I am sketching out a game plan so that we (co-producer Dave Bechtel and I) can work as quickly and as efficiently as possible while we are at Dark Horse. My goal is to spend about a ½ hour on each song, which equals out to about 6 hours per tune (we have 12 songs to track on June 18th. The 13th song on the album is a piano/strings/vocal only song, and will be recorded later). If we go over a little, that’s ok, but 6 hours would be ideal. I hope to record 6 songs in the morning before lunch and 6 songs after lunch.
The Order of Tracking
We also will probably group the songs by sound, and will record songs with similar qualities back-to-back. In other words, all of the heavier songs may be recorded one after the other as they may call for complimentary drum tones… similar kick and toms possibly with a varied snare drum from song to song. Dave Bechtel will be engineering the session and will have a better idea how to arrange the order of song tracking, although I am trying to plan things the best I can. Dave is a very seasoned engineer who knows a lot about miking technique, and has a great understanding of how to get particular sounds out of live instruments. He has been responsible for lining up the studio and the studio musicians, and has been giving me pointers throughout this entire process. I am extremely thankful to him for his involvement in this project!
The name of the new album will be unveiled on June 15th. Be sure to check the blog next Tuesday, June 1st for the first hint of what the album will be called.
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