So, I got summoned to record Starcake. As an engineer/producer this cant be taken lightly for a lot of work goes into making a record. It was subtle at first but we decided to set a date and we
I had spoken about this recording with super Mundet! (Edmundo Gomez) , he pledged his support to the project until the end! So he is engineering and I am producing, my work has suddenly being reduced in half, I became the unwanted assistant.
We started pre-production in my home studio a week before the recording where we locked a basic form of the songs to a click track. This was done in reason that can later attach to the ProTools session via rewire. This click track will later conduct the band through the different takes with the exact same tempo and tempo changes. This allows for time correction of the recording in case it is needed, useful to fix drum tracks or adjusting timing in different instruments.
The main focus when recording in the studio was to get everything we could live, the piano, the drums and bass in order to take advantage of the space and the great equipment Zapboombang has to offer. Everything else will be overdubbed at a different time.
After the weekend, the tracks came back in incredible condition. The sound was pristine and fat, so we proceeded to clean the tracks. Find the right takes and splice them in, correct any time fluctuation and clean punches and unwanted noises. This process usually optimizes my session quite a bit because this is where I remove all silence and unwanted useless audio. So two birds with one stone. It is crucial to fix all timing issues at this stage for anything else overdubbed with this timing will be harder to fix as you keep adding instruments to the session.
Now with clean tracks we can proceed to overdub the bass and guitars.
Once the bass is recorded, we can proceed to recording guitars. For this Mundo is the right man, he’s got a great collection of guitar gear from amps to cabinets, attenuators, fx and more. Not to mention his surgical ear and guitar production experience. So he sits with us providing the colors and textures we want to hear and suggesting cool effects. After drum recording, this is one of my favorite things to do, build the guitar tracks.
This can be a very daunting experience for the guitar player who is used to perform his part as a continuous performance. For this process we record part by part choosing the final sounds and creating stereo images for most of the parts. So each song can easily take between 2 to 4 hours of guitar work. We end up with at least 12 to 16 tracks of guitars.