IN THE STUDIO - LAYIN' IT DOWN

Don & Jim @ Backyard Studio

For some time now, we've (Magpies) been talking about recording our songs in a studio and perhaps producing our own CD.   The process started last night.  We are recording at the Backyard Studio owned by Rick Garvin.  We met Rick last week to look at his studio and talk about the process.  It sounded straight forward and with advice from Rick we decided we'd start with one song.  After that we can decide what we want to do next.  Good plan!  We could then focus on one song and not get too far ahead of ourselves. 

We decided, well, actually Don and Brian, decided to record "Sitting Here".  You can find an early version recorded on a Zoom H2 in an earlier posting. 

So we got to the studio with all our stuff and were ready for the evening, or so we thought.  Brian had an idea about what was coming because he's done some recording before.  Me. Not a clue. 

First, we laid down a 'scratch track'  All playing to a metronome, or 'click track".  sounded easy, but the first run through, it didn't work. This was for a song we've done a hundred times.  So, we did it again.  This time reasonably good success and probably as good as we were going to get it that night.  Great,  Step one was done. 



In Isolation



Next.  Lets get Jim in the isolation booth to do the rhythm guitar track.  Sounds good, but the booth is a little room with no windows.  Claustrophobic actually.  So I do a track. Wasn't great.  Did a second one - that was going well until. I messed up a chord and flubbed the ending.   Not to worry.  We'll just play over those two spots and fix the track.  Good, Done, Now I get to get out of the little box

No, now I got to go back in and do the lead vocals.  Just when I thought I'd get a break.  Did two vocal tracks.  Second one was good.  Now I'm done. 

Now it was Brian's turn for backing vocals.  Again, he lays down two tracks.  Second one was good, except I changed the words in my version from the written word.  So Brian had to do another take for that line.  Finally, we had a guitar track, lead vocal track, and the backing vocal track.  3 1/2 hours passed by. 

But we're not done.  We still have to do the mandolin track, bass track, and keyboard track.  That's coming Thursday, but good news is I'm done so I can sit back and relax.  I think.  Maybe I'll take my guitar just in case. 

Also, check out Brian's Blog, In the Clouds - link is on the right

Layin it down.  Good times.