Studio Blog 8 (12-13-07 & 12-14-07)

The last two days have been a little bit boring, to be perfectly honest. Not a ton to write about, so I decided to combine them into one.

Guitar overdubs are slow and painstaking. Every note has to be perfectly in place. With bass and drums, if something is slightly off, you can go in and move things around. Guitar is a little bit tougher, so everything has to be perfect. I always felt bad because when I'm at home, it can take an hour to get a guitar part right. Then I see pro studio guys take an hour and it makes me feel kinda good...or at least that I'm doing better.

I already told you about George. George has been great all week long, getting the right sounds.

Thursday, we did more of the same. We had 3 songs left for electric overdubs, so we hit it hard...we really wanted to get the songs done so we could start vocals on Friday, after we did some acoustic gutars. So, we started with "Running Back". The rhythm part, we decided should be a little more brit-rock, so we used the Orange Tiny Terror. It sounded pretty freaking great. The part I played was more of a Switchfoot kind of rhythm part, basically downstroke-upstroke in 16ths, while the chord changes happen on off-beats...for those non-musicians, basically that means very syncopated. We started that one and in a couple of takes on each section, nailed that part. Then I doubled the part. Then I tripled the last chorus to give it some extra "umph". I even surprised myself, actually...since I'm supposedly so bad at rhythm I guess I kind of buy into it sometimes. But I/we found my "rhythmic difficulties" untrue in this situation.

We finished that part around lunch time and broke for lunch. Thursday, Sarah stopped by, as well as Mindy, Ash's wife, and thier kids. Debbie, Brown's wife, made a great chicken ceaser salad to help me stick with my diet, which was very kind. Steve Bishir and George and the rest enjoyed it, believe me, but I was thankful they were able to help me. At lunch we took some time to relax and watched part of "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"...what a great movie. Such great dialogue. The Coen Brothers are great.

After lunch we went up and worked on "In a Moment", which came really easy. I've played that song so many times that it just kind of comes natural. This new arrangement has such an incredible build to it. It starts off with a slow build and when you get to that last chorus, it is just absolutely huge.

Once again, I nailed the part pretty quickly, then doubled the part.

Then, it was on to the last song: "Cry Tonight". We decided what I needed to play and I pretty quickly got that one down. Seriously, I don't know if it's just the surroundings, but from a rhythmic standpoint, I was on this week. So, that was encouraging...I was scared of taking hours and hours to do electrics. In fact, Brown, thinking that I would have rhythmic difficulties had hired George to be there for a full 3 days for electrics plus a day for acoustics, so we got done a full day early!

After we finished "Cry Tonight" we listened through everything to make sure we had what we needed, then I headed home to get some sleep.

The next day, I showed back up to the studio and the electric guitar equipment was all gone. We immediately got to work on acoustics.

This stuff doesn't really need a bunch of acoustic stuff to carry the rhythm...but Brown really wanted to put some acoustic stuff in the songs for flourishes and just something different sonically.

Ash didn't come in on Friday because it was kind of the same thing we'd done...same studio, same people, etc. So it wasn't quite as fun without him there.

We started off with "Empty Me", which definitely needed an acoustic part. We layered the acoustic guitars, using my Taylor and a 1960 Gibson B-25. My Taylor has a bright and airy sound while the B-25 has a deeper, darker sound. "Empty Me" went pretty quickly and we broke for lunch.

My diet for yesterday was basically a fast, so they went and got great-smelling Mexican food...I was pissed! I wanted to ask someone for something so bad, but held firm. No cheating for me. So, I went back to the control room and ate my 1 oz of cashews and two celery stalks.

After lunch, we listened and decided to add a part to "Cry Tonight". I wrote a really great acoustic part but realized pretty quickly that I just wasn't a good enough guitar player to pull it off in the couple of hours we had before Brown had to leave. So, I taught George the part and he went in and recorded it. It took him 2 and a half hours to get it. So, thank God I didn't try...George is one of the best guitar players in town, so I'm sure it would've taken me twice as long. Anyway, he recorded 3 passes. The first one was with my Taylor which we did stereo. Then we used his B-25 as a mono track. Then he used a 1961 J-45 (the acoustics the Beatles played) to record another mono track. Altogether, they sound great.

As soon as he finished that, Brown headed off, and left us to lock up. We headed out soon after and I went home for some much needed R&R.

However, Mitch invited Sarah and I to go to see TobyMac, Aaron Shust, Superchick and several other bands on the Winter Wonderslam tour. Aaron is on the same label as me and with the same management, so I thought it'd be great to meet him. So I went home, hung out for a little bit and headed off for the show. We got to meet Aaron and hung out with Mitch for a while. These Nashville shows are a veritable churning pot of who's who of CCM, so I met quite a few really cool, influental people backstage. Aaron's show was only 4 songs, but it was really great. I was impressed. Mitch left after Aaron's set, but Sarah and I stuck around for part of Toby's set. Wow. I've seen Toby before and he blew me away, and he didn't disappoint this time. Seriously, the best performer in CCM, easily. He just jumps around stage and his band are all energetic and incredible. You need to see Toby sometime, even if you don't like his music.

And there's the last 2 days.