From the Studio - Take 7

We're getting there. I can feel it.

We had another good night last night, recording our worship CD Prepare. It's really a shame we only have one day a week to work on it. It's really starting to come along, but the starts and stops can get frustrating.

Wer had decided that we really needed to scrap the entire recording of "One Way." Why? Well, after listening to some of our later songs, we realized we could do much better with this one. The original recording had some timing issues, and to be honest, I wasn't completely happy with my tone in it. So out it went.

Elyano came in and put down a new drum track to it. While it seems fairly straightforward, playing drums without anyone else playing is a strange experience. Plusk, that song has several transitions, so it really becomes a challenge to keep everything perfectly on time. His last take was pretty much perfect, though, except for one small section. Gabi is going to quantatize the track during the week, so that next week we can simply come in and put the rest of the parts down.

Moving on, we had to work on "Mighty to Save." We had a good rhythm track, but that was about it. I had planned to throw the acoustic track I had originally done out anyway - it was just a guide for Aquim. What I wanted to do was to record the acoustic track with a higher voicing than the electric track. For you musicians out there, that means playing it in G with a capo, and playing the electric part in A open.

Justin was also laying the piano track. We spent some time finding just the right sound patch for the keyboard, with the right voicing and such. Originally we started to play together, but wound up throwing each other off. Plus, the song ran way long. Time to rework the arrangement a bit. That done, I put the acoustic track down solo (one take, baby!) and then Justin did the piano thing.

For electric, I had two patches ready in the Digitech. One was a echoey, chorused thing with a lot of wah in it, the other was more overdriven, no delay. I also used a little tape delay on the EchoPark. It sounds (I must say) pretty amazing in the verses. There's a couple of places where the song just drops to the acoustic, so the dynamics work well. I had done a short instrumental before the bridge, but it didn't really sound that great. We pulled that, and it sounds better without it.

Listening to it on the way in this morning, I realized it's still a little thin, though. I think I need to add another electric track, a little heavier from the second chorus on. And I need to rework where the solo went - something has to go there. But... I have a rough mix of it, and my Ardour workstation at home, so I have plenty of time to practice.

The plan was to finish the music next week and have the singers in come April, but we might have to push that back. The other thought is to take a break from the music and let the singers get some work done anyway, and come back in a couple of weeks and do the rest. After next week, we should have seven songs completely done, maybe eight. I'll let you know what we decide.

I'm really getting excited about this. I listen to the vocalists rehearsing with the rough mixes, and I get goosebumps. I can't wait to start hearing some totally completed songs.

We have a Facebook page set up for the project. Why not check it out, and become a fan? You can get updates as the project gets further along, and maybe we'll do something nice for those who sign up.