Session musician!
I got a rare chance to play on someone else's recording session last night (as opposed to one of my own), thanks indirectly to an acquaintance of ours who is over in India for some months. Basically, she will be spending Christmas there this year, and a bunch of folk from our church decided to send her a little something to see her through the festive season: a CD with some specially-recorded renditions of Christmas songs (presumably ones that she likes).
When I got wind of this scheme, I volunteered my services (instrumental, recording, etc.), and shortly afterwards my friend Ben, who is producing the recordings, invited me in to lay down some guitar tracks. To this end, yesterday evening I took my acoustic and electric, plus my Roland VG-8 and EBow, round to Ben's home studio, to see what we could get down in three hours.
As it turned out, the answer to that is, "quite a bit, considering". With the VG-8, I didn't have to spend much time messing with mike placement and so on, so I was more or less able to 'plug in and go', which saved us some valuable time. I played on three songs ("In The Bleak Midwinter", "Shine Jesus Shine" and "Do They Know It's Christmas?" (yes, the Band Aid one, and specifically the 2004 version)); another friend, Luke, had already recorded piano tracks for the three songs, which we would be building on.
With the first two songs, I recorded a number of short guitar parts (e.g. verse/chorus, or single verses) in different styles, sounds, etc., so that Ben could splice the bits together into complete tracks later. Before now, I personally wouldn't have thought of trying this approach (especially for a recording I wanted to sell), but now I've tried it for myself, I think it would work well for demos, or where I was recording another musician and time was particularly limited (as was the case here).
It was great fun playing lots of different guitar styles and sounds—everything from 'straight' acoustic rhythm guitar, through jangly 12-string electric (courtesy of the VG-8) and some solo and 'textural' parts with the EBow, all the way to dual harmony lead guitar on "Do They Know It's Christmas?" (the latter replicating Justin and Dan Hawkins' parts on the 2004 recording, which we're modelling our version on). It's almost like being a kind of musical Rory Bremner: how quickly can I switch between different "voices"?
Working the session last night, reminded me how much I enjoy this kind of thing: I just wish I had more time than I have, to play and record music both for myself and for others. To be honest, if we'd had more time, I would've had a couple more tries at improving some of my performances, following the advice of another recording musician I know (basically, when recording, don't settle for any "second-best" attempts if you can help it, as you'll hear your mistakes every time you play the track!). However, we had the time that we had, and I think in the end, the results should sound pretty good (especially if Ben can cut-and-paste the better bits together, and maybe play some extra guitar himself, which he's well able to do).
From here, I understand Ben's going to record the bass and drums with various other church people we know, as well as assorted solo and choir vocals. I'm really looking forward to hearing how this turns out, and hope that the results will help our friend in India feel like she has a part of us with her for Christmas.
Labels: guitar, music, recording, session
posted by Tim @ 19:32
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