I thought it might be interesting to document the process of recording a song from start to finish.
Ok before you start recording you first need to have your song. For this process I am using the song “Some Like it Hot” a folk rhyme from England that was turned into a folk rhyme in Trinidad. I have been singing the song for a while and have adapted myself from the Trinidadian version. Then you need to get your musicians rehearsed. For the rehearsals you need sheet music I have been using a program called sibelius to do this. It is a nice music notation program which I have just started using and seems to work quite well. I made an arrangement that has drums, bass, guitar, and several vocal parts for the band to read in rehearsal and recording sessions.
This song will have the following instrumentation:
Drums
Bass
Guitar (several guitar parts 4-8 different tracks and sounds)
Voice (about 5 different parts)
Horns (probably 3-5 different saxophones and brass instruments though I might not use em)
The first part of the recording is to get good takes of the “bed tracks”. In this case this means the rhythm section, bass and drums. I will play guitar as well and have it recorded but the most important part in this first part is to get a good foundation to build on.
Then the day before I had studio time booked I had a rehearsal with the bass player and drummer to make sure we sound tight. The guys I worked with on this occasion are, David Monis (drums) and Kevin Cooke (bass). I have found that with professional musicians it can work really well to have the rehearsals and recording next to each other as the material will be fresh in their minds.
I did the rehearsal at my drummers house and we got about 7 songs ready to record the next day.
We recorded at Canterbury Sound which is a really beautiful studio near Dufferin and King here in Toronto. There are fewer and fewer of these “A” class recoding studios with equipment and engineers that are top notch. Canterbury sound, run by Jeremy Darby who used to do sound for David Bowie, is one of these last “A” class institutions. It is is nicely laid out and has many different rooms and isolation areas available to be utilized, it has great microphones, preamps and other recording equipment.
Anyway have a look at the nice room we did our playing in:
From the left Kevin Cooke (bass) John King (guitar) and Mike Whitla (electric guitar) David Monis (not visible) the drummer is in the room at the back right of the picture. John came in to record one of his songs with the band called “I can’t fly”
Well the recoding went well and here is how the bed tracks sound:
[audio:http://www.rainbowsongs.com/mp3/some-like-it-hot.mp3]
You will notice although the performance is ok on this the sound of the recording is very flat and does not have much life. This is because it has not yet been mixed that will get worked on as we move on to. . .
. . . Part 2 where we start to add overdubs of vocals and extra guitar parts and begin to mix the rhythm section.
1 Comments.