Tracking session: day 1

The first day of a recording session is always the toughest. We set up the drums(a nice old Ludwig set with a 5x14 "black beauty" snare) in the tracking room where Mr. T worked furiously for a number of hours testing several different microphones in order to capture the full ambience of the room. The drumming on the record will be fairly simple with me handling the drum duties but the real challenge is getting the sound right, T ended up using his trademark distance micing technique and truly nailed the sound i was after.

Instead of using session musicians i chose to enlist the talents of few selected friends to help out on the record. The bass player "Mike" is a seasoned rock&roll professional who has performed with bands like Primus and Against All Odds and is also an enourmously talented guitarist with solid skills in all genres of music. Mike brought in a really nice bass amplifier, a "flip top" late 60's Ampeg B-15R, after a bit of tweaking and replacing the tubes Mr. T got behind the desk in the control room and announced that we could start tracking.

We decided to work on two songs with a similar feel that first day, a waltzy track called "Josephine" and a 6/8 song with the working title "12 red roses". Mike quickly got in the groove and we layed down a solid foundation for both tunes. The great thing with working with such talents like Mike and T is that you have to think less, without saying anything Mike will accentuate the right parts of the song and T will enhance the track where a bit of studio magic is needed.

It was a long but triumphant day of recording and we will move on fleshing these arrangements with various instruments in the next session. I think you will be surprised by the special guest who i will be working with next.