Finished Palomino strumming on another song tonight. 5 more to go!

I've been asked what guitar I've used most to record. On the current album-in-progress (New Old Stock) it has been my USA Dean Hardtail. Here's a picture:

I've had my Hardtail modified to let me coil tap one or both of the pickups. I get a nice quasi-single coil sound. This guitar is loaded with Seymour Duncans, a JB and a Jazz, I believe. I've used the Hardtail for almost all the rock guitar rhythm parts. Will probably use it for most of the solos too!

For stuff requiring vibrato bar wanging, I use my Dean Custom 450. It looks like this:

This picture doesn't show it, but I've recently changed out the EMG HZ pickups on this guitar for a Seymour Duncan Distortion, and a '59. Sounds very cool now. This guitar has HUGE frets and an almost-flat fingerboard radius. Very shred-worthy.

Ok, time for bed. 

2008 now and I still have 6 songs to hit with the Palomino! I finished up one song tonight -- one that I hadn't completed as of the last blog posting.

If nothing goes funky this week, I'm hoping I can finish (the Palomino parts on) one song per night.

Then I need to get a haircut. Badly.

TTFN.

Last night I finished the strummy rhythm gtuitar on three songs! Most productive recording session in a long while.

On one of the songs, I ended up doing hybrid picking: using the pick and the middle and ring finger of my right hand. I hardly ever do this, so I don't have proper callouses built up. So, I ended up with a nice blister. Here's a picture.

Tough work, this music making.

Hopefully this weekend I'll be able to finish the strummy guitar. Next up is the acoustic guitar. Not too many acoustic parts to play, so it should go quickly.

Almost the end of 2007! I gotta, gotta get this album finished. I've been whittling away at it for almost three years now, which is way too long. One of my New Years resolutions is get New Old Stock done by March 2008. No more procrastinating!

I finished the strummy acoustic/electric guitar (using the Dean Palomino)on the Cowbell Song tonight. By my imprecise count I have 8 songs remaining that need the strummy stuff.

Then, I'll go through all 14 songs and add acoustic guitar parts. Most are just double tracking the previous acoustic/electric stuff I recorded with the Palomino.

That leaves vocals, backing vocals, and guitar solos.

I can't decide if I feel like the project is halfway done, or only half done, y'know? Is the cup half full or half empty...

I do know that I don't have my lyrics completed for all the songs! I am a lazy bastard.

In related news, I bought the Sonar 7 Producer upgrade, but haven't loaded it yet. I usually wait for one maintenance release before loading new software, though Cakewalk's software has been quite stable the past couple iterations.

I'm also trying to figure if I want to video tape myself recording parts for the album. I figure video of me double-tracking rhythm guitar parts would be pretty boring, so I've been waiting until I get to vocals and guitar solos. Again, I am a lazy bastich.

Let me finish with a picture of my two dogs. Cindy is 7, Carl is 5 months. Carl is already bigger than Cindy. He's going to be HUGE!

Tonight I recorded the Dean Palomino on two New Old Stock Songs. I'm recording both the electric guitar tone and a miced (acoustic) tone.

Here's what that looks like:

The Palomino's live acoustic tone sounds kind of like a resonator guitar, partly because of the electric guitar strings I'm using, and partly because I have the action set so low it buzzes a bit. It's a very cool, distinctive sound that I stumbled on totally by accident.

For this application, I'm using a Rode NT1-A, a large diaphragm condenser microphone. This a very nice sounding mic, with a non-hyped top end (in my opinon). It's also very quiet -- very low self-noise. I'm sending the mic into an ART TPS tube mic preamp, which has a limiter that comes in real handy preventing overloads. The ART TPS is an inexpensive, basic mic pre-amp. Very quiet and clean.

I'm also recording the guitar's plugged-in sound, though it is going in direct-in (no guitar amp). I like the P90 style pickups on the Palomino, so I wanted to make sure I got that sound captured too. I re-amp it later, either with the Line 6 Gearbox VST plugin, or through one of my guitar amps.

So, as I mentioned, I finished the Palomino parts on 2 songs tonight. I think about 10 of the 14 songs will end up having Palomino parts on them. The recording goes pretty quick, since the parts are pretty basic, strummy rhythms.

I'm going to try to include pictures in this blog more often. Maybe make it a little more interesting to digest, yes?

The bass is finally done!!

I took a deep breath, sat down and recorded the bass on song 14. This tune, currently called "The Cowbell Song," has the most difficult bass lines on the album. Not hard for a real bass player, but then I'm a guitarist :)

The remaining things to do are:

Vocals, backing vocals, acoustic guitar parts, lead guitar parts. Mix, master and release.

I wanna buy a Presonus Eureka pre-amp to record the vocals, and perhaps a new microphone. I have a Rode NT-1A which I like quite a bit, but I'm considering a tube condenser mic. Probably a Rode NTK or K2. I like the sound and build quality of Rode mics. They're affordable too.

So, I'm thinking I'll get cracking on the acoustic guitar parts until I can afford the mic pre-amp. I'll use the Rode mic I have and the ART TPS. The TPS is a tube pre-amp, and it's pretty transparent for guitar stuff.

Also need to finish the lyrics. That's another thing I've been putting off :)

I listened back to song 13 this week, and decided the guitar and bass parts are good enough for the album.

Fortunately I recorded both a distorted tone and a direct in tone for the guitars. So, I can run the DI tone back through the Line 6 Gearbox plug-in and/or my tube amps. This is called re-amping.

This past weekend I played with re-amping using the Gearbox plug-in. It's fun! You can mess with all the Gearbox parameters, while you're listening to the guitar track. I can try different amp models, cabinet models, etc.

Perhaps equally as cool, you can automate Gearbox paramters from Sonar. This means I can automate drive level change for different parts of the song. I can have the verse semi-distorted, for example and then crank the drive for the chorus. This is great for adding dynamic changes to the songs. I like it.

Still have to record the bass on song 14, which will be the hardest I think. I'm gonna go practice it now.  

Tonight I finished the bass on song 12, "Come Back to Me." I played this one fingerstyle, which was a challenge for me.

The bass I'm using has a large dynamic range, so it's a challenge for me to play as evenly as possible. If I don't, you end up hearing random bass notes suddenly pop out of the mix. Doesn't sound very professional!

Now, I can fix much of this at mixdown just by putting a compressor on the bass track. Best to have good source material though. An evenly played bass line doesn't require as much "squashing" of its dynamic peaks, so you're not messing with the bass sound as much.

So, two more songs to do. One really hard one, and then a re-record of the DOA 2005 song, which will now become a vocal song. The bassline on the DOA song should be pretty easy to do. Hopefully I can finish it tomorrow night.

See how I'm putting off the hardest for last?

Time for sleepy...

Tonight I finished bass on song number 11. Yea me.

Next up is the hardest bass part, on song number 12.

Then I'm re-recording the bass and the chorus rhythm guitar parts on the song "Come back to Me". The bass is actually ok, but the guitar part I played is annoying me. Must fix! So, that will be song 13.

Song 14 is a slow song, originally called Driving. I recorded guitar and bass, and have decided the tempo is WAY to slow. Also, I'm thinking I have too many slow songs on this CD. So, I think this song is going back on the shelf in favor of a new song.

The new song is going to be a slightly modified version of the song I did for the Dean Owners of America 2005 compilation CD. I think it will make a decent vocal tune.

I might put the song I did for the 2006 DOA CD on Loss for Words too, as instrumental.

Well, that's the plan.

Finished song number 10's bass line tonight. Like song number 9, it took about an hour to record the parts. However, my wimpy little fretting hand callouses are killing! Tonight's song was much more work.

Next up is the tune on this album with (I think) the hardest bass part. It's the bridge, and I'm doing unison lines with the guitar. Sounds cool, and I hope I can pull it off cleanly.

So, four songs to go and I'm done with bass!! 

Which reminds me to make another back up of all the songs. I would HATE to lose all the work I've done, and I've been burned before. I lost everything but the final mixes on the album Wings of Gold, thanks to crappy late 1990's Colorado tape backup media. This was before burning CDR's was widely affordable (by me). I'll NEVER trust my music to tape backup again.

Not that optical media is so much better :)

However, I burn duplicate or triplicate copies of all my music stuff. I'm thinking this time I might do that, and also copy all the data to a removable hard drive...

Ok, I'm rambling at this point. Time to go to bed!