Sidingsound

Projecting into the future

So, you might be thinking around this point: what do you do with your studio set up?

Well you might ask, and the simple answer—occupied as I am with the worthy demands of job, vocational study and family—might be, "not as much as I'd like"! I'm not the most prolific of songwriters at the best of times, but I do actually use the studio for producing demos, and actually hope that the weeks and months ahead will see me doing more with it than has been the case until now.

Since I acquired the Tascam 2488mkII (my current multitrack, a 24-track digital hard-disk-based machine, of which more detail in a future post) this August, I've already become a little more active on the recording front, and I expect this activity to continue to increase from here.

It often helps to have "something to aim for", and the most immediate "project" which I have scoped out for myself, is to gain experience with operating and getting good results out of the 2488mkII, by producing what I hope will become my first proper CD (at 35!). I have a stack of demos of my songs, accumulated over the past five years or so, and whilst the results are superficially reasonable in their own right, I am planning to re-record ten of the songs on the 2488, possibly for some kind of release (though I'm not sure exactly what shape that will take yet).

For the most part, I performed the demos entirely myself, with some guest appearances (mostly my wife Joy on piano, and Dan, the friend who's teaching me drums, played djembé on one). However, I'm hoping to record roughly half of the songs with a 'live' rhythm section (Dan on drums and another friend on bass, with me on guitar); we'd get the basic backing tracks onto disk, and then overdub the rest of the instruments at leisure later. (According to a 2000 Sound On Sound magazine article on the band Eels, this is the approach they took for their album "Daisies Of The Galaxy"—it gives you a live rhythm section on your recordings, without the expense of recording everything in a pro studio.)

The other tracks would be mostly solo again, either with comparatively stripped-down accompaniment or (in at least three cases I can think of) some measure of programmed/sequenced backing. I'd say the latter is for artistic reasons rather than economic, in that I'm going for a deliberately "electronica" sort of sound—in other words, the songs which I 'hear' a proper "band" backing for, will hopefully have it.

When will I start on this project? Well, I already have—I recorded the backing track for what I think will be the CD's closer ("When The Sun Goes Off To Sleep", a song I wrote for my daughter Naomi in 2004, before she was born), a few weeks ago, more to test the 2488 than anything else. The results were better than I expected, so when I shake my current bad cold (!) I'll overdub my vocal onto it.

As for when I'll record the 'band' backing tracks, that depends when I can get it together. I'd like to do this before the end of 2007, but it will depend on when Dan and/or my bass-playing friend are available; where we can record as cheaply as possible (rehearsal studio?); whether I can borrow some drum mikes; can I fit it around study/family duties... you get the picture.

Anyway, as they say, watch this space—I'll keep you informed here as to how (and where) it all goes.

(And, for that matter, when/where you'll be able to buy a copy of the results! :-) )

posted by Tim @ 18:56