The String & Guitar Sessions

Our trip to Nashville was exceptionally smooth – no snow, hardly any traffic, and we made great time! Crystal and I left Columbus a little after 5:00 am and got into Nashville around 11:00am (Nashville time). We grabbed some lunch at O’Charley’s, rested in the car for a little while, and then headed over to violinist’s David Davidson’s house around 1:30. It was nice to not feel rushed! After meeting David Davidson and engineer Bobby Shin, we headed inside and up to the control room. I gave my hard drive to Bobby, who copied all my Pro Tools sessions to his computer, and then imported his Pro Tools templates into each of my Pro Tools sessions (his templates contained audio channels set up to accommodate all of the string mics). The other string players began rolling in around 1:45 – David Angell on 2nd violin, Monisa Angell on viola, and John Catchings on cello (and David Davidson on 1st violin).

My friend Dave Bechtel was to be at the session, but had unfortunately come down with appendicitis the night before, and was in the hospital getting his appendix removed. David Davidson made the comment, “Well, Dave did say he might not be able to make it because he might have another gig… he got another gig alright… at the hospital! Ha!” All humor aside, we were disappointed that Dave could not be there and we continue to pray for his speedy recovery!

The plan was to track strings for 5 songs, all within 3 to 4 hours. We ended up recording 3 passes for 3 songs and 2 passes for 2 songs in 3 ½ hours. Why 3 passes on some songs and 2 on others? Well, most of the strings are going to be supplemented with strings samples in the final mix, but some of the tunes have more unique string articulations (slides, runs, etc.) that will be hard to copy with string samples. I wanted to keep the recording time to a minimum as I was trying to stay within a budget, and I figured 2 of the songs would be easier to fill out with samples while the other 3 might need more layers of real strings.

We finished recording around 5:30pm. What an amazing session! I was so happy with the audio we captured. Bobby was a great engineer, and David, David, Monisa, and John were phenomenal! Not to mention, David Davidson provided us with coffee, snacks, and a bag of oranges and grapefruits for the road! The day couldn’t have gone better. I think the musicians really enjoyed playing the songs. Thanks to Robert Nugent and Rich Barrett for some killer arrangements!

Crystal and I headed back to the Hampton Inn, where I immediately began copying the audio files to a backup hard drive. I also began burning the string Pro Tools sessions onto DVD. It’s always comforting to know you have a hard copy of such important data. After kicking back at the hotel for a little while, we went out to eat at one of our favorite restaurants – The Olive Garden! Afterwards, we returned to the hotel, and I began exporting stem files (sub-mixes) of the strings, as I would be using them for the guitar session with Mike Payne the next day. We finally got to bed around midnight. It was going to be a short night.

We woke up Friday morning around 7am, and after getting ready, we headed downstairs for a surprisingly tasty continental breakfast. I’ve had some pretty lousy hotel breakfasts in my day, but this was pretty good! We left the hotel around 8:40 and arrived at Mike Payne’s house at 9:00am. Mike took us upstairs to his home studio, and asked me if I’d be willing to man the Pro Tools system while he played guitar. “Sure!” I exclaimed. I plugged my trusty dusty self-powered firewire drive into his iMac, he grabbed several of his guitars, and we began recording!

Depending on the song, Mike used one of 3 guitars – a beautiful red Gretch, a warm toned Telecaster, or a PSR90 Jr. (which sounded remarkably great for the low price tag). All of his amps were set up in another room, and were feeding through a Chandler Limited Germanium Pre and a Universal Audio 1176 compressor into Pro Tools LE. He implemented a variety of pedals (delays, reverb, chorus, etc.), none of which I was familiar with, but then again, I’m not a guitar player - I just know his effects sounded amazing and he knew how to use his gear!

We stopped for lunch at noon and the 3 of us headed over to one of Nashville’s favorites, Oscar’s Tacos. We exchanged conversation about marriage (Mike is a newlywed), church, recording and touring, financial planning, and of course, the Toyota Matrix (as both of us are owners).

We returned to the house about 1:00pm and picked up on song #4. I had hoped to spend about a ½ hour recording guitar overdubs for each song (we had 12 to record), but unfortunately, we were only able to get through 9 of the 12 songs. Mike had to wrap up at 6:00pm. We could have worked faster, but I really didn’t want to rush through the songs, as I was so happy with the sounds we were getting, and didn’t want to skimp on anything. We will end up recording guitar overdubs for the remaining 3 songs via. iChat (more about this later).

We concluded the recording session at 6:15 and again, Crystal and I headed back to the Hampton for some chill time. I also copied the guitar sessions to a second drive, and began burning backup DVDs. We then went out to celebrate at another one of our favorite restaurants – The Cheesecake Factory (the restaurant where Crystal and I first met in February of 2008). We had to wait a little while, but the food was worth the sitting. We couldn’t believe how busy the restaurant was at 10:00pm at night!

Saturday morning, we slept in, which was great. We were both struggling from some serious sleep debt. After packing up our things, and grabbing some breakfast (at the Hampton again), we went to visit my friend Dave Bechtel, who had just got out of the hospital. It was great catching up with he and his family!

We got on the road around noon (Nashville time) and arrived back into Columbus around 8:15pm or so (Columbus time). Again, the roads were clear and we had very little traffic. Thank you Lord for a wonderful trip!

What’s next on the production schedule? There is still plenty of work to do. Stay tuned for details…