Studio Blog, September 15, 2009

Studio Blog 14

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

So I was back in the studio this past Saturday at 9am. My usual drive down 4-96 to N127 is normally where I finalize what I’m going to do that day. This day I already knew. I had been listening to that ”Lazarus’ return from the dead” song all week. I knew what I liked and didn’t like and needed to be replaced.

I took about 15 minutes and just loosened up before Jeff even started doing all of his tweaking and adjusting. I also went to the end and started on the outro leads. Towards the end of the song the verse riff is just repeated. A very laid back but heavy riff that I can just take off on. In one of the first session jobs I ever did. I did a lead track, then went back over it and put another lead over that. I did that several times; nothing too busy, just enough to keep it interesting. There were a lot of accidental harmonies and riffs that, while not planned to do so, just worked really well together. I’ve done this several time since then and it almost always gives really good results. It took a while to get the 1^st track down. I started it off with a Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath type of “Heaven and Hell” riff and then just kind of went from there. Once that one was down I did two more over that. I think the next two tracks I got on the first take. That doesn’t happen very often… especially with me. Once we got the outro’s done and I had been playing for a while and was good and loosened up, I had Jeff go back over that intro that I just hadn’t been happy with. It’s almost funny how after 13 years of working together Jeff and I know each other so well in the studio and Jeff has engineered enough music for me to know when I want to do another take. I did the intro over. Jeff saved that track, quickly fired up another track and said, “Okay, do another one.” I did. He fired up another one and I did one more. I ended up using the first one that I did and then blended that with one that I did during the last session. The hard part is that the intro is a good 30 second longs and I had to play it exactly the way I did the first time. Fortunately, I had that thing memorized. There’s a couple tricky parts that had always given me trouble and I’d have to do several times to get it and then sometimes piece two or three together to get the best result. But being that I’d been playing for a good hour before that, I was loosened up enough where it went pretty smoothly. I only had two hours in the studio that day. Jeff and I both had things going on that we had to attend to so he graciously gave me two hours in the studio even though his schedule was already pegged that day.

Normally, I’ll have Jeff burn the song to a CD and I’ll take it home and listen to it that week to make sure I like it. I was… relatively certain… that I liked this and told Jeff to just move it into the completed folder. I’ll listen to it again next time I’m there. If it’s not right… it’s gotta be close.

And with the completion of this song musically… there is just 3 remaining. Two of these are instrumentals and one is the title track. The only thing remaining on all of them is lead guitar tracks. So on the title track… it’s just a fast paced flying song. Sounds like it should be easy but my only shot at it in the studio left me unhappy with the results. The other instrumental is the music that I played at my dad’s funeral so it MUST be perfect.

One step closer to being done.