What’s Next on the Menu?

For the next couple months or so, I will be attending to some miscellaneous to-dos.

(1) I still need to record a cello part for one tune. I was going to record this in Nashville during our last trip, but decided it’d be more cost effective to have John Catchings (the cellist) record the cello part at his home studio at a later date, instead of recording the part at David Davidson’s, where 3 other players would be sitting around twittling their thumbs… not to mention I’d be racking up unnecessary studio and engineer costs. Robert Nugent will be arranging the cello part. I will simply mail John a Pro Tools session, he’ll record the cello, and he’ll then mail/email me with the audio files.

(2) I also need to record string parts for the first song on the album. It’s a pretty simple string arrangement, and for cost reasons, I will have a single string player layer violin and viola parts over some full orchestra string samples I am already using on this tune.

(3) I need to record guitar overdubs for 3 more songs with Mike Payne. Unfortunately, we were unable to get to these songs last week when we were in Nashville. We will use iChat (similar to Skype) to communicate while recording (I’ll be in Columbus and he’ll be in Nashville). I think this should work relatively smoothly as we’ve already worked together a little bit. He will be tracking to his Pro Tools system and will mail the sessions to me once we are finished recording.

(4) Additionally, I will start working on editing the live strings we recorded last week and the MIDI strings which will be layered under the live strings. Basically, the rhythms of the real strings and fake strings need to line up. I will also need to program a number of MIDI articulations (marcato, slurs, etc.) that will emulate the articulations of the real strings. String arrangers Robert Nugent and Rich Barrett are providing me with MIDI files of the string parts, which I will further edit to align with the real strings.

(5) Also, in the near future, I will begin recording all the piano parts on a real piano. Still working on a location for this.

(6) After all these miscellaneous tasks have been completed, I will begin recording the final lead vocals as well as the background vocals (at 10x12 Productions). After these have been edited, I will hand all the files off to Dave Bechtel for mixing!