CD Recording Project

Lynn and I spent last weekend at Seabed studios and completed the 'tracking' portion of our CD Project. Altogether we recorded for a total of 4 'half' day sessions (previous recording was done the March 8/9 weekend, see http://geezerguitar.blogspot.com/2008/03/our-first-real-recording-sessions.html). Daniel, the recording engineer, will be mixing this week.

Saturday was mostly spent recording some guitar-fiddle and guitar-mandolin songs that we hadn't gotten to during the first sessions. We also re-recorded the 12 string numbers, since Daniel wasn't happy with the sound from the microphone used the previous session. (Turns out that the 12 string puts out so much sound that you need a fairly 'crappy' mike to limit it or some such). On Sunday we did 're-dos' of songs that we had had problems with in previous sessions.

Although I felt fatigued and we hadn't done a lot of practicing the week before, we ended up with good takes. The fact that we had performed almost every song twice at the previous weekend's Dulono's gig contributed to fatigue but also helped us be more relaxed and comfortable this time around.

Lynn had worked on her vocals for her two solo numbers since the last session and we've ended up with good tracks of Going to the West and Dear Companion. For Dear Companion we up changed keys from B to C#/Dflat (We just slid the capos up 2 more frets). She had tried this before, but my first time in the new key was on the recording. This kept her from hitting some problematical notes in her low range.

I was pleased to get good takes on my two instrumentals: Babbington's Hornpipe and Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine (These were train wrecks 3 weeks ago).

It turns out that all of the CD will be from live tracks. We had discussed doing some multi-tracking on both Lynn's numbers and the instrumentals, but the live takes were all 'good enough'; thus, we are ending up not that far removed from recording the way the old 78 artists did. However, unlike their use of a single mike (or single horn) setup - we used separate vocal and instrumental mikes and Daniel will apply the magic pixie dust during the mixing process to clean up a few things. However, these are live recordings in the sense that no over-dubbing or re-recording was done.

During the 3 weeks between sessions Daniel had done some mixing and set up some templates. At the end of Sunday's session, he gave us CDs with all the 'good' takes. There were 27 in all (23 on 1st CD with 4 left over for the 2nd). I've put them on my Ipod and both Lynn and I are listening to them all. Factors influencing which ones make it to the final CD include the usual suspects: good variety, overall quality (there might be some fluffs that Daniel just can't coverup), and, of course, the 'publisher royalty', factor. We only recorded 2 covers of 'living' song-writers - Billy Gray by Norman Blake and One More Dollar by Gillian Welch. However, a number of the Carter Family and other older songs may be still under copyright (blame it on Walt Disney). Since it'll cost about $90 for each license, this could be a factor.

For posterity's sake (and maybe for friends and farmer's markets), I'm tempted to create an Outake CD-ROM from material that doesn't make it into the final CD.

Steps that remain: format of the CD (jewel case or 'digi-pak'), design of CD, title!, mastering and replication. We are probably going to end up using the people who have done Daniel's other CD's for mastering and replication (both local). We have a photographer in mind for new pictures but not sure what we'll be doing for Graphical design. Stay tuned...