Skip to main content

Day Three Hundred Fifty Eight (Year Three)

I know I said it last night, but it bears repeating:

Out of all the days during this first run-through of doing a song in 8 days for the Start Experiment, today was the day I was the most worried about.  Why, you ask?  Simple.  Out of all the times I've sat down with a guitar and put down an idea on my recording gear, out of all the times demos got finished back when B. and I were working on hard rock stuff, out of all the solo acoustic/power pop type songs I've recorded some of over the years, do you know how many of them have actually had drums behind them  (Yes, even the somewhat canned drums that I'm using for demo purposes during this project)?  Maybe two.  And they were the first couple of songs J. and I ever recorded together, almost twelve years ago.

So yeah, in the grand scheme of things, figuring out and piecing together a drum track was number one on my list of things to be worried about.  But guess what???  I punched fear in the face and I DID IT!  I've got the exact number of measures needed for the intro, the verses, and the chorus, plus a few fills, and I know which patterns I'm going to use for the solo section.  It took me probably an hour and a half to sort it all out, and it's not entirely set in stone, but I think that it will work pretty well for my current purposes. 

I haven't officially programmed the whole track yet, I'm a little too tired at 11:30 tonight to undertake that, but with only having to record the bass lines tomorrow (and with having them already written), I should have time to program the drums and then lay the bass part down over the top.

I'll tell you what, though, it was awesome to sit and play acoustic along with the drum tracks tonight.  Doesn't take a whole lot to start hearing songs instead of a chord progression.

One more thing tonight:

The small daily assignment of the day from Acuff (Day 3) was to "find 1-3 people who have accomplished what you're aiming for during these 24 days.  Research them online and see what you can learn from the trail they have already blazed."

So I did a little research tonight, and I found a website called The Recording Revolution.  Here's the link to their site:

http://therecordingrevolution.com 

There are all kinds of articles full of tips and tricks for mixing and recording.  Ways to go about it that are practical and expedient.  I've barely scratched the surface of the website, but I can already tell it's going to be a treasure trove of information.

Another great day filled with music.  

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Day Two Hundred Ninety Three (Year Four)

Big day today, for a few reasons... First off, it was a good night in the studio.  As opposed to the recent sessions that have had a singular focus (either theory-related, or acoustic/set list related), tonight had a little bit of both things in it.  When I hit the studio tonight, I fully expected to pick up the electric and work out a bit more theory studying, much like things have gone for the last week or so.  Knowing that, I somehow ended up with the acoustic in my hands, working through a little bit of Brandi Carlile.  More specifically, two songs of hers that I have always loved, "Wasted," and "Fall Apart Again," but until tonight, never taken the time to sit down and learn.  I have a songbook with everything from the first three records, and it took me until tonight to sit down and take a look at working through some of these things. In a related note, I really feel like the last year has been so very good for my confidence, musically.  There are some p

Day One Hundred Eleven (Year Eight)

Okay, so Dave's voice was kinda shot last night and the show was still epic.  Here's what they played: Run All My Life Learn to Fly The Pretender The Sky Is a Neighborhood Rope ( with solo's ) Sunday Rain My Hero These Days Walk Under My Wheels / Jump / Another One Bites the Dust / Blitzkrieg Bop ( w/ band introductions ) Big Me Congregation Breakout Times Like These This Is a Call Under Pressure ( Queen  cover) Monkey Wrench Breakdown ( Tom Petty  cover) Best of You Dirty Water Let There Be Rock ( AC/DC  cover) Everlong   And here is a little bit of "Big Me," just for fun:    

Day Three Hundred Forty (Year Six)

It's done.  Well, okay, so it's 99.5% done, but that's close enough for me. The stereo and the turntable got set up this morning, as I figured they would, and the two bags of randomness (picks, my slide, tuners, etc) and the few small piles of notebooks got dealt with tonight.  I even managed to get the iMac set up, if not fired up. And yet, the studio remains only slightly unfinished.  Somewhere in either the house or the garage, there must be a box or a bag that has a couple of studio-related items tucked into it, because there are at least two things I can't find.  As fate would have it, they're important things, too.  And something tells me that they're all in one place.  I'm missing: 1.  My looping pedal 2.  The power cable for my Marshall 3.  The foot switch for the Marshall They're all things that would have been in the same general area in the old studio, but given how much of the house we've gotten set up already, it really surpris