Our first 'real' recording sessions

This weekend (Sat, March 8 & Sun, March 9) Lynn and I spent time at Daniel Leussler's studio near University and Raymond (St. Paul Midway area) doing our first recording project. (Finally, in our seventh decade).

The first task was to determine how to set up microphones. Of the list of over 25 'potential' songs, the majority of these are vocals accompanied by two guitars. Daniel used an initial setup of a stereo pair using a couple of Shure condenser mikes. The recording room is very live and this sounded pretty good, especially the guitars. However, the vocals were somewhat echo-ey so he added two vocal mikes (also condensers). This improved the sound tremendously. Although the guitars sounded good, Daniel was concerned because he could not exercise much control over the guitar mix. He added a pair of Shure 57 dynamic mikes, the same type we often use for live performances, and got the mix he wanted. Thus each voice and instrument had its own mike; the stereo pair was still in place to get ambient sound etc. (We have some pictures that will eventually be posted).

He also asked about doing some multi-tracking (laying down instrumentals first), but we were not at all used to playing separately from singing. (On Sunday, we discussed doing one of Lynn's songs using this technique, so we may multi-track at least one song). Thus, most of the tracks are essentially live recordings. Although Daniel has control of the mix, we are not doing any over-dubbing or multi-tracking. On Saturday we tried once or twice to 'redo' a song: we discovered that the second time through anything usually resulted in a 'train wreck'. Thus, if we didn't get a good take the first time through, we'd shelve it for another day. Another thing that we learned Saturday was that it was a good idea to start a song and agree on tempo before Daniel said 'rolling' and we started recording. And of course, although Daniel said 'rolling', he's doing all the mixing on a computer, no reel-to-reel tapes were harmed in the making of this CD. And yes, Virginia, our goal is a CD, even though MP3s will certainly be available.

On Saturday we ended up laying down about 10 tracks; on Sunday, about 12 for a total of 22 tracks. Currently there are about 12 tracks that appear to be keepers, which I think is pretty good for about 10 hours of studio time. On Sunday we branched out and did some songs with with 12 string, mandolin and fiddle. We also redid a song from Saturday (Otto Wood), and ended up with a keeper. We tried a couple of instrumentals - 'Babbington's Hornpipe', a mandolin tune I wrote, and a flatpick guitar arrangement of 'Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine'. I couldn't get through the B part of Babbington's and there were some issues with Bonaparte (although overall it sounded better than I thought as we recorded it). I'm thinking that we should also try multi-tracking for instrumentals, since it would be useful to fix up any flubs (and there will be flubs!).

The songs that are working out best are usually ones that we have performed for at least a year or two. We are trying a few that we have learned this past fall (and have performed), but are finding that we often haven't quite settled on the arrangement or we aren't quite in sync. I have discussed almost all of the songs in previous posts (raw material for liner notes). As we start to settle in on the songs that make it to the CD, I'll start posting more information on the selected songs.

The other thing we've discovered is that recording is really exhausting. Part of it is staying focused (we found that we could record two songs before we needed a break - we're both pretty ADD). And of course when we weren't recording, we were listening to the 'raw mix' with Daniel and giving an assessment of whether to keep, redo or forget-about-it.

We are scheduled for another weekend at the end of March. (With a Dulono's performance in between). Of course recording is the only the first step - Daniel has to mix and we need everything mastered. (Mastering is some voodoo that is described here). Then there is all the design and packaging and replication of the CD - stay tuned...