Studio Blog 10
Written: Sunday, July 29, 2007
At last…. The Gathering. No. Wait. That was from Highlander. That happens all the time. I can’t pass a nun and not say, “Happy Halloween, ladies.” And then wag my tongue at them. Man, that’s gonna cost me.So, yesterday was the day that I actually started laying down tracks of 12 string on the CD. I was pretty excited about doing it and was really looking forward to it. I needed to change the strings on Gil, my Guild 12 string. I simply abhor changing strings on the 12 string because it’s so damned time consuming. I contemplated taking it to Elderly Instruments and having them do it but common sense prevailed and I ran down to Marshall Music, picked up a set of strings, and killed some time trying to find a decent acoustic to play. Before I knew it, it was Friday night and I had to be at the studio at 9 Saturday morning. I had every intention of re-stringing Friday night. However, two out of my 5 children had other plans for me. Apparently, my Friday night was going to consist of watching Open Season for the 17th time and A Night At The Museum for the 23rd. When I woke up all the kids were asleep around me and it was way too late to think about re-stringing. No problem, I’ll just get up a little earlier and do it before I go to the studio.
So I get up at 7, and trudge downstairs and begin re-stringing Gil. The first four went on without a hitch. As I was putting on the 5th, I heard of a string being pulled through wood. I looked down and saw that the 2nd string (actually I start upside down so I’m talking about the thick low E string) had unraveled just past the ball and was officially useless. After cursing several times REALLY loudly, I had no choice but to take it back off. I thought I would just boil the old one and possibly bring it back to life. So I ran upstairs, put a pan of water on, and threw the string in. When I had re-strung the guitar and was ready to replace the low E, I ran upstairs and retrieved it from the boiling water. As I got ready to put it on something strange jumped out at me. I had to look at it for a moment but then realized I had actually put the bad low E string on to boil. More cursing. I ran up and put the right string on to boil and started loading things up in the van. I loaded up Gil, my 11 string for the time being, a guitar stand, a cord, and I also grabbed Ivan my trusty Ibanez SA220EX, just in case I needed it for whatever reason. It’s always good to have a Plan B when you’re going to the studio with ONE particular goal in mind.
So, I grab the string and took it with me, deciding I’d just put it on when I got to the studio. As I headed north on 127 and was passing the Frandor Shopping Center, I looked up at the billboard that always shows a group or artist who will be performing at The Soaring Eagle Casino. For the last several weeks I’ve been looking at Kenny G and I’d hoped that would have come and gone. Alas, it did not.
I stopped and grabbed a nice healthy breakfast of donuts and Mountain Dew for Jeff and I and then shot around the corner to the studio. As Jeff got mics placed and set up I quickly threw on the string and tuned it up. It sounded terrible. Nothing I could do would make it sound good. It just sounded so dead and with 11 new strings, the lone old one just stuck out like a sore thumb. The music stores didn’t open up for another ½ hour and I really didn’t want to lose the recording time to go and get one being that I’d burn at least a ½ hour doing so. Fortunately, I always keep an extra set of electric strings in my guitar case so I pulled out the electric low E string and threw it on. I’ve heard of guys stringing their acoustics with electric strings but I’ve never done it. And certainly I’ve never strung an acoustic with acoustic strings and one electric string.
However, once I tuned up and got it ready. It sounded just fine. There is nothing like the ring of a 12 string with new strings. It then took about an hour and 45 minutes to track the 1st song. Jeff used two different mics and then ran them through two separate tracks with different settings. One is EQ’d with more mids and the other with more highs. I then did another track the same way for a total of 4 tracks of acoustic. They were panned from 10 o’clock to 2 o’clock. I totally LOVED the way it sounded. It sounded really good with the fretless bass line that Bill (Kitley) had laid down on this particular song.
The song is completely arpeggios so I had to pick each note exactly the same way when I was tracking multiple tracks. Fortunately that went well and we didn’t have to do a lot of editing.
I’ve really been pushing myself this summer to try to get it finished by the end of summer. It’s looking at this point that I’m going to make it.
I know I’ve been promising but I will soon have some audio clips to post to give everyone a feel of how it’s going to sound.
So I’ll talk to you soon.
Traceman
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