From the Studio - Take 5

Ok, so last week was very productive. This week, not so much.

As I wrote last, we had rough-mixed three songs so that we could give them to the vocalists, so they could begin rehearsing. As we listened to the songs, we decided that "One Way" would have to be redone from scratch? Why? It was the second song we did, some of the timing is off, and we recorded it all together, instead of the way we've been doing things lately. The drums/bass combo has been working well.

So, our first goal was to re-record that song. But, somehow, we just couldn't find the groove for it. After a couple of takes, frustrations were mounting, so we decided to walk away from it, and try it later. Sometimes there's no point in beating your head against the wall.

Good news is, we were finally able to get Aquim into the studio. He is going to be playing drums on three tracks, and he definitely has a different style than Elyano. So it was cool to get a little different flavor into the mix.

Aquim's first assignment was "Mighty to Save." Now, there are a lot of different versions of this song. The arrangement we are using is kind of a cross between the versions on Mighty to Save and The I Heart Revolution. We're starting with drums and guitar, and not using that triad at the beginning. (the A-B-C# deal.) But we're going to do the bridge with a lot of dynamics. We're bringing the tempo down a little to make it more worshipful. That's the plan, anyway.

Aquim did a great job, and we got through the song in basically one take. So drums and bass is done on that one. I also tracked acoustic, but I'm going to redo it. I was playing with open chords, but I want to capo up to make the acoustic sound higher. I'm going to be playing rhythm electric open, and I want to have some different voiceings to play with. We may leave the lower acoustic track as well - we'll see how they sound together.

We bounced the drum/bass tracks for "From the Inside Out" so that I can practice that this week. I'll probably import it into Ardour and work on different voicings. Next week's plan is to redo "One Way" and track drums/bass for the rest of Aquim's songs. Then the following week will just be piano/guitar for the songs we have done.