While the hard copies of the album won't be available until the first week of July, you can hear the whole album online right now! Check out our virb site for the album at:
virb.com/ccjworship
We're all really pleased with how everything has turned out and can't wait for y'all to hear the songs...
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Wednesday, June 13th
The mastering is done!
On Monday morning I received the mastered version of the CD and it's sounding fantastic. The mastering process really gave everything the "glossy finish" that makes it sound professional and complete. The artwork and duplication process will take about 3 working weeks, which makes it look like we'll be releasing the hard copies of the album in the first week of July.
Everything int eh duplication process takes longer than you think it would. I've worked through 4 different revisions of the artwork, tweaking color tones and graphic positioning and other incredibly boring things! It's great to have everything on my end completed - we're just waiting for the box of 1,000 CDs to arrive at the church office...
On Monday morning I received the mastered version of the CD and it's sounding fantastic. The mastering process really gave everything the "glossy finish" that makes it sound professional and complete. The artwork and duplication process will take about 3 working weeks, which makes it look like we'll be releasing the hard copies of the album in the first week of July.
Everything int eh duplication process takes longer than you think it would. I've worked through 4 different revisions of the artwork, tweaking color tones and graphic positioning and other incredibly boring things! It's great to have everything on my end completed - we're just waiting for the box of 1,000 CDs to arrive at the church office...
Friday, June 1, 2007
Friday, June 1st
Here's the front cover!
We decided to make a bold decision and go for a pretty clean design, which I'm a big fan of. After a ton of hours working on this with the brilliant Lyndsey and Bryon (but mostly Lyndsey), we've come up with a package that's going to look amazing when you're holding it in your hands. The album won't be in a plastic CD case but one of those cardboard cases with a CD tray inside and a matte finish on the outside. I've always loved this kind of packaging and remember thinking how awesome it looked on the Foo Fighters "There is Nothing Left to Lose" album.
Artwork and the pre-master CD should leave today for mastering and duplication!
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Wednesday, May 30th
Question: Why the lack of updates?
Answer: Here's what I've been doing...
- listening to a mix
- taking notes on tiny changes that need to made
- making said changes with Coop
- burning a CD of the updated mix
Now imagine doing that about a million times! Actually, it's only been about 7 times but you get the idea. We've tweaked vocal EQ's, guitar EQ's, levels, effects, the way tracks start and finish and about a dozen other things but we're finally there! The CD will leave for mastering this week, as will the artwork. I'll have the CD cover up on this blog by tomorrow - it's looking incredible (thanks to Lyndsey and Bryon's help).
I've been enjoying singing along to they CD with my kids, which is an amazing experience in and of itself. It's sounding fantastic and I can't WAIT to get it out to the church...
Answer: Here's what I've been doing...
- listening to a mix
- taking notes on tiny changes that need to made
- making said changes with Coop
- burning a CD of the updated mix
Now imagine doing that about a million times! Actually, it's only been about 7 times but you get the idea. We've tweaked vocal EQ's, guitar EQ's, levels, effects, the way tracks start and finish and about a dozen other things but we're finally there! The CD will leave for mastering this week, as will the artwork. I'll have the CD cover up on this blog by tomorrow - it's looking incredible (thanks to Lyndsey and Bryon's help).
I've been enjoying singing along to they CD with my kids, which is an amazing experience in and of itself. It's sounding fantastic and I can't WAIT to get it out to the church...
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Tuesday, May 15th
This was our first day back on the project after my week in Orlando with my wife's family from Canada (eh?). Coop sat down with and we listened to what he had done on all of the tracks. I was listening mostly for the way he had EQ'd everything and the tones he's come up with. It's sounding AMAZING!
The intimate moments are intimate, the bass and kik drum are thunderous and warm, the drum kit sounds like a million dollars, the vocals sound pure and the electric guitars sound classic! Tomorrow we'll start going through each song, section by section, and working on levels together. This whole process is so much longer than I thought but this project feels special. Coop's excited about it, so am I and we want it to be the very best that it can be...
The intimate moments are intimate, the bass and kik drum are thunderous and warm, the drum kit sounds like a million dollars, the vocals sound pure and the electric guitars sound classic! Tomorrow we'll start going through each song, section by section, and working on levels together. This whole process is so much longer than I thought but this project feels special. Coop's excited about it, so am I and we want it to be the very best that it can be...
Saturday, May 5th
Today was all about clarifying my mixing desires and agreeing on a philosophy. It was the precursor to the final mixing stage. I also had to drag in my guitar gear to re-record a couple of simple electric guitar parts that were out of tune. Sometimes those kind of things slip through in the earlier stages of the project when you've been going for 6 hours already and you just want to be done for the day!
This means that all the recording aspects are completely finished and Coop will start the mixing process while I'm out of town next week at Disney World!
This means that all the recording aspects are completely finished and Coop will start the mixing process while I'm out of town next week at Disney World!
Saturday, May 5, 2007
Friday, May 4th
Back at it! We hit the studio for 6 and a half hours today and worked exclusively on keyboard parts. We've got Killers-ish synth riffs, soaring strings, intimate cello, grand piano and violins happening on different tracks. We've worked really hard at not being predictable and not simply throwing stuff in there just for sake of adding something. Coop's been great to work with as far as letting me know when I'm adding something that doesn't need to be there. The old adage "less is more" always rings true for song arrangements. Everything has to have a purpose and a place. It can't compete with another instrument or vocal and it has to have it's own "space" in the mix. We've only got one more song to finish up keys on ("Worthy of the Call") and a couple of rhythm electric guitar parts that are out of tune that need to be re-played. So that's the plan for tomorrow afternoon, then Coop will be mixing while I'm out of town next week. He'll be sending me MP3z to listen to and I'll be emailing him my thoughts throughout the week.
Almost there...
Almost there...
Wednesday, May 2nd
We're definitely in the stage of the project where it's just work! Today I listened to the first rough, rough mix of the album on my iPod and took meticulous notes on every part of each song. I'm listening for anything I don't want, anything that's out of tune and anything that's missing. It's tedious but it's the type of work that makes a project sound really good when it's all done. Check out the scan I did of the song sheet for "Star Maker" below and you'll get an idea of what I'm doing...
Wednesday, April 25th
We were planning on finishing up the keys today but we decided to do some pre-mixing work instead. This means basically going through all the songs and doing the first round of cuts (taking out the parts we know we don't want , which could be a guitar part, a background vocal etc.) We labeled all of the tracks and burned the first rough, rough mix of the songs for me to review.
Coop has to take a break for a week to work on a PBS project, so we'll pick thing sup again late next week. I'm honestly really looking forward to having a week's break!
Coop has to take a break for a week to work on a PBS project, so we'll pick thing sup again late next week. I'm honestly really looking forward to having a week's break!
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Monday, April 23rd
We were supposed to record yesterday (Sunday) afternoon but Coop cancelled our session on account of the weather being too beautiful to work inside. I'm pretty sure that wouldn't happen in Nashville! It was great having the afternoon off to hang out with the family and almost kill myself on our new trampoline...
Today we went "the distance" (6 hours - which is about all you can take) and finished up all of the background vocals. It's a big deal to me because it means that my vox are done! It was an interesting process as Coop's ear really helped me fine-tune the harmony parts and prevent them being too predictable or interfering with the melody. He's got an particularly great ear for vocal parts.
I would often only hear one harmony part to the melody and then, after recording that harmony part, would hear a 2nd or 3rd harmony part in relation to hat we had just recorded. We ended up recording 2 or 3 harmony parts for each track just to give us options as we head into the mixing stage of the project.
Tomorrow we should finish up all of the keyboard parts and then it's on to mixing!
Today we went "the distance" (6 hours - which is about all you can take) and finished up all of the background vocals. It's a big deal to me because it means that my vox are done! It was an interesting process as Coop's ear really helped me fine-tune the harmony parts and prevent them being too predictable or interfering with the melody. He's got an particularly great ear for vocal parts.
I would often only hear one harmony part to the melody and then, after recording that harmony part, would hear a 2nd or 3rd harmony part in relation to hat we had just recorded. We ended up recording 2 or 3 harmony parts for each track just to give us options as we head into the mixing stage of the project.
Tomorrow we should finish up all of the keyboard parts and then it's on to mixing!
Monday, April 23, 2007
Saturday, April 21st
A GREAT day of recording! Everything was clicking today and we hammered out ALL of the lead vocals. This leaves us with just background vocals and keyboard parts for the final 8 songs.
Coop uses this incredible Pro Tools plug-in called Antares Auto-Tune - it's basically the standard in studio pitch correction. When anybody goes into a studio to record vocals, the vocal will go through several "filters" (e.g. compression, reverb, EQ) during the mixing stage of the album. One of those filters is pitch correction. It's not as amazing as you think - it can't make Britney Spears sound like Christina Aguilera but it can smooth out all the tiny imperfections in a vocal track. Hearing it applied to my vocal was pretty neat - it just gives it that little "pro" touch.
We're almost done!
Coop uses this incredible Pro Tools plug-in called Antares Auto-Tune - it's basically the standard in studio pitch correction. When anybody goes into a studio to record vocals, the vocal will go through several "filters" (e.g. compression, reverb, EQ) during the mixing stage of the album. One of those filters is pitch correction. It's not as amazing as you think - it can't make Britney Spears sound like Christina Aguilera but it can smooth out all the tiny imperfections in a vocal track. Hearing it applied to my vocal was pretty neat - it just gives it that little "pro" touch.
We're almost done!
Friday, April 20, 2007
Thursday, April 19th
We had yesterday off from the project and had an incredible night at the Student Ministry. It's neat to be involved with students and realize that a lot of these kids could be playing on future Sunday morning worship teams and CCJ albums...
It was just a relatively quick 3-hour session this afternoon, which we used to complete lead vocals on 3 more songs ("Praise", "So In Love With You" and "Star Maker"). We have tomorrow off as well before marathon session on Saturday and Sunday. We're hoping that by the end of the weekend we'll have everything recorded and can focus on mixing next week.
When you're recording vocals, you realize that every little inflection and note you sing comes through with crystal clarity - sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes it's a bad thing! We've pushed a couple of the lower-range, slower songs to the end because they're so tough to nail vocally. On the other end of the spectrum is a song like "Alive", which is in such a high range that it requires me to be in great vocal shape to sing it. That means I can't sing it with a tired voice, I probably have to sing it first-thing and I can probably only go at it for about 20 minutes before my voice started quitting on me.
Hopefully Friday's rest day will let me voice recover enough to check off "Alive" and a couple of other harder songs...
It was just a relatively quick 3-hour session this afternoon, which we used to complete lead vocals on 3 more songs ("Praise", "So In Love With You" and "Star Maker"). We have tomorrow off as well before marathon session on Saturday and Sunday. We're hoping that by the end of the weekend we'll have everything recorded and can focus on mixing next week.
When you're recording vocals, you realize that every little inflection and note you sing comes through with crystal clarity - sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes it's a bad thing! We've pushed a couple of the lower-range, slower songs to the end because they're so tough to nail vocally. On the other end of the spectrum is a song like "Alive", which is in such a high range that it requires me to be in great vocal shape to sing it. That means I can't sing it with a tired voice, I probably have to sing it first-thing and I can probably only go at it for about 20 minutes before my voice started quitting on me.
Hopefully Friday's rest day will let me voice recover enough to check off "Alive" and a couple of other harder songs...
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Tuesday, April 17th
A great day of recording - which was sorely needed after yesterday. We completely finished the first 3 songs! "You Deserve It All", "Reckless" and "Marvelous" are officially wrapped and ready to be mixed. We finished up background vocals, lead vocals and keyboard parts for all of these bad boys.
The vocals require a ton of focus - it's singing the same line or words over and over again, listening with complete attention to make sure it's on pitch, singing with genuine passion without singing flat or sharp etc. It's tiring!
It feels incredible to wrap up some songs. It's good to have the feeling that the end is near and all the work is totally worth it...
The vocals require a ton of focus - it's singing the same line or words over and over again, listening with complete attention to make sure it's on pitch, singing with genuine passion without singing flat or sharp etc. It's tiring!
It feels incredible to wrap up some songs. It's good to have the feeling that the end is near and all the work is totally worth it...
Monday, April 16
Today was the first really frustrating day in the recording process. My voice was still tired from yesterday (Sunday) and so the first 2 and half hours of today produced nothing but flat vocals before we finally decided to let my voice rest before trying again tomorrow.
We spent the rest of the time working on synthesizer tracks for 4 or 5 of the songs with fantastic results (fortunately)! We've come up with some parts that are guaranteed to make you smile when you hear them. As I mentioned before, I'm completely in love with the synthesizer sounds that The Killers are coming up with and hopefully we've managed to get a little bit of that modern, fun sound going on some of these tracks.
Hopefully, better vox tomorrow...
We spent the rest of the time working on synthesizer tracks for 4 or 5 of the songs with fantastic results (fortunately)! We've come up with some parts that are guaranteed to make you smile when you hear them. As I mentioned before, I'm completely in love with the synthesizer sounds that The Killers are coming up with and hopefully we've managed to get a little bit of that modern, fun sound going on some of these tracks.
Hopefully, better vox tomorrow...
Monday, April 16, 2007
Saturday, April 14th
Nothing too exciting to report today... Just a couple more hours of vocals with a focus on the mid-range parts. I've still got 3 or 4 songs to go with these parts, then we start tackling the high-range parts which should nicely trash my voice! After that, I'll sing some background vocals and we'll lay down the keyboard parts for all the songs.
We're going to take tomorrow (Sunday) off. It'll be nice to relax for the afternoon by putting together a trampoline we just bought for the kids and doing some reading. "Mere Christianity" is that book for me right now - the one that's hard to finish because it's so intensely profound. I simply can't read half the book in one sitting because my mind is still trying to process something I read 2 chapters ago. C.S. Lewis has a unique ability to reveal the glory that lies in the most well-known aspects of Christian theology that we often grow numb to. Here's the highlight from my most recent reading...
On the whole, God's love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him. Nobody can always have devout feelings: and even if we could, feelings are not what God principally cares about. Christian Love, either towards God or towards man, is an affair of the will. If we are trying to do His will we are obeying the commandment, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God." He will give us feelings of love if He pleases. We cannot create them for ourselves, and we must not demand them as a right. But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever the cost to us, at whatever the cost to Him.
We're going to take tomorrow (Sunday) off. It'll be nice to relax for the afternoon by putting together a trampoline we just bought for the kids and doing some reading. "Mere Christianity" is that book for me right now - the one that's hard to finish because it's so intensely profound. I simply can't read half the book in one sitting because my mind is still trying to process something I read 2 chapters ago. C.S. Lewis has a unique ability to reveal the glory that lies in the most well-known aspects of Christian theology that we often grow numb to. Here's the highlight from my most recent reading...
On the whole, God's love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him. Nobody can always have devout feelings: and even if we could, feelings are not what God principally cares about. Christian Love, either towards God or towards man, is an affair of the will. If we are trying to do His will we are obeying the commandment, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God." He will give us feelings of love if He pleases. We cannot create them for ourselves, and we must not demand them as a right. But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever the cost to us, at whatever the cost to Him.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Friday, April 13th
We started out by working on some vocals today. A couple of days ago we just did one or two vocal takes on all of the songs as a starting point. Today, I wanted to go through all of the low-range vocal parts and re-record any dodgy bits. The reason I wanted to do this is because some of the hardest vocals to sing are in the low-range as it's tougher to get power and stay on pitch when you're not pushing as much air out of your lungs.
Coop and I were both pleasantly surprised with how little tweaking we had to do and after just a couple of hours, we had all of the low-range vocals taken care of! After that, we decided to hit up the final 3 songs that are still missing lead guitar...
The first one, "Glorified", has about 5 different lead guitar parts. the first one is a haunting eBow part that's easily one of my favorite musical sections of the album. The song also has this massive instrumental part where I just went nuts with some awesome octave solo-ing. One of my main goals is to convey passion in the recordings, so I'm constantly reminding myself to not play it safe. On lead guitar, it means living with some imperfections so that the album doesn't sound robotic, sterile and over produced. I think we're hitting it right on the head.
"You're Beautiful" has a massive crescendo at the end but I'm going to let some synthesizers carry that over simple rhythm guitars. The final song, "Unchanging" is simple and very acoustic in it's sound. The only lead guitar pops up in a chilled-out instrumental part. It's a little Stevie Ray, blues-y riff that isn't that hard to play but has to sound a little "dirty" in order to work properly - it's basically the guitar equivalent of spending an hour on your hair to get the coveted "bed head" look...
Lead guitars - done!
Tomorrow we'll track more lead vocals until I'm horse, then work on piano, strings and synthesizers. I've been on a massive Killers bender for the last month and I'm completely in love with the way they've made 80's synth cool again. If you think I sound crazy, just listen to the way their latest album, "Sam's Town" starts and you'll instantly get what I'm talking about. Anyway - that's the kind of sound I'm talking about when I mention "synthesizers" (In case you were wondering).
Coop and I were both pleasantly surprised with how little tweaking we had to do and after just a couple of hours, we had all of the low-range vocals taken care of! After that, we decided to hit up the final 3 songs that are still missing lead guitar...
The first one, "Glorified", has about 5 different lead guitar parts. the first one is a haunting eBow part that's easily one of my favorite musical sections of the album. The song also has this massive instrumental part where I just went nuts with some awesome octave solo-ing. One of my main goals is to convey passion in the recordings, so I'm constantly reminding myself to not play it safe. On lead guitar, it means living with some imperfections so that the album doesn't sound robotic, sterile and over produced. I think we're hitting it right on the head.
"You're Beautiful" has a massive crescendo at the end but I'm going to let some synthesizers carry that over simple rhythm guitars. The final song, "Unchanging" is simple and very acoustic in it's sound. The only lead guitar pops up in a chilled-out instrumental part. It's a little Stevie Ray, blues-y riff that isn't that hard to play but has to sound a little "dirty" in order to work properly - it's basically the guitar equivalent of spending an hour on your hair to get the coveted "bed head" look...
Lead guitars - done!
Tomorrow we'll track more lead vocals until I'm horse, then work on piano, strings and synthesizers. I've been on a massive Killers bender for the last month and I'm completely in love with the way they've made 80's synth cool again. If you think I sound crazy, just listen to the way their latest album, "Sam's Town" starts and you'll instantly get what I'm talking about. Anyway - that's the kind of sound I'm talking about when I mention "synthesizers" (In case you were wondering).
Thursday, April 12th
Long day today - 5 and a half hours sitting in front of the Pro Tools rig playing lead guitar. That's just about as much as you can take before dementia begins creeping in and you start convincing yourself that air guitar makes for just as good a recording as real guitar...
We've only got 3 more songs to finish up before all of the lead guitar stuff is done! I've been getting incredibly close to my ideal guitar tone (I don't think you ever really get "there" if you're a guitar player) using my Line6 rig (which I mentioned in previous posts) and have been getting a lot of mileage out of the recently released amp model of the Orange AD30TC. When I left Texas a couple of year's ago I had a good buddy who had an Orange guitar rig - the tone completely blew my mind when I heard him play through it with his Les Paul! The sound I'm getting with my Les Paul through my Line6 gear in unbelievably close to the real thing...
We should wrap up lead guitars tomorrow.
We've only got 3 more songs to finish up before all of the lead guitar stuff is done! I've been getting incredibly close to my ideal guitar tone (I don't think you ever really get "there" if you're a guitar player) using my Line6 rig (which I mentioned in previous posts) and have been getting a lot of mileage out of the recently released amp model of the Orange AD30TC. When I left Texas a couple of year's ago I had a good buddy who had an Orange guitar rig - the tone completely blew my mind when I heard him play through it with his Les Paul! The sound I'm getting with my Les Paul through my Line6 gear in unbelievably close to the real thing...
We should wrap up lead guitars tomorrow.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Wednesday, April 11th
This morning we started laying down lead vocals for real. We ran through each song, doing 1 or 2 complete "takes". Things went really well and we'll use these tracks a starting point to tweak from. Over the next week, we'll listen intently to each vocal track for words that I want to enunciate differently and melody lines that need to be polished. Then we'll go song-by-song, line-by-line until we get the vocals where we
want them.
After I had sung myself horse, we started on lead guitars. It's fun and challenging at the same time because I'm no Jimi Hendrix. Creatively, coming up with lead guitar parts is really cool. I get to play over drums, bass, electric rhythm guitar, acoustic guitar and the vocal tracks we just laid down earlier this morning. After the success we had with the amp simulator I mentioned in the last post, I decided to try lead guitar using our Line6 Pod XT Live pedalboard. Again, the results were incredible.
So I spent about 4 hours sitting in front of the soundboard figuring parts, practicing them and finally recording them. We only got the first 2 songs done ("Marvelous" and "So In Love With You") but we're ready to go strong again tomorrow. I can save every tone I come with onto the pedalboard's memory, so as I come up with each new sound, I label accordingly. This will give me access to all of the tones we use for later recording tweaks or playing the songs live. Technology rules...
If you have no job, no life or just too much free time, you can check out a live webcam of us recording tomorrow, from around noon to 5pm, right here.
Monday, April 9th
Today I decided to try something completely different to get the electric guitar rhythm sound I'm looking for...I'm a firm believer that nothing sounds quite like a tube amp when you're standing right in front of it - warm, clear, alive. The problem we'd been having was getting that warmth to translate over the microphone and into Pro Tools. So, like I said, I decided to try something different - using my $30 Behringer amp simulator pedal instead of a real amp. I use this little bugger on Sunday mornings to keep my guitar rig as small as possible. I'm a complete gear junkie and I've tried out all kinds of pedals, amps and amp simulators. For some reason, this cheap pedal has one amp setting that's simply incredible.
The results? The warmth we were looking for - right on target. So $3,000 worth of amps sat in the next room over while we laid down tracks for all the songs using a $30 pedal instead. I was able to dial in just the tone I wanted on each song because I could sit right in front of the soundboard and hear through the monitors EXACTLY what guitar tone was being recorded in Pro Tools. This is so much easier than messing with amps - even if it is sacrilegious to most guitar players...
We finished up the day by getting set to lay down the final vocal tracks.
Monday, April 9, 2007
Saturday, April 7th
Into the studio at 10am this morning for a full 6 hours of recording - that's pretty much as much as we can take before we become so tired, we stop caring! Recording actually requires a huge amount of focus to both play the music and then listen intently to what you've just recorded.
We finished up all of the acoustic rhythm parts on my Martin D16, which Coop has sounding incredible. He's running 2 condenser mics and a direct line out from the guitar, so we get 3 different acoustic tracks every time I lay down a part. The end result is 3 options for each "take". We can also blend 2, or all 3, together for a really full sound. My dream acoustic guitar sound can be found on the Shane & Shane album, "Clean". It's one of the best recorded albums I've ever heard with no fancy effects, just incredibly "true" recording and mixing. 'Worth checking out...
Anyway, 2 of the last acoustic tracks were "Glorified" and "Worthy of the Call", which both feature a lot of guitar picking. I managed to get through them pretty quick and I'm real pleased with the results. We still may end up dropping some of those recorded parts in favor of a some piano parts but we record everything we can think of so that we have tons of options when it comes time to mix the album.
After finishing up the acoustic tracks, we moved on to the electric guitar rhythm parts. It gets more and more fun to record as we go along because I'm able to play along with more recorded tracks on each song. I'm already playing along with drums, bass, acoustic guitar and my out-of-tune "scratch" vocal (that's what happens when you're trying to save your voice for Sunday).
I'm using my '99 Fender Telecaster Deluxe for the electric rhythm parts. It has a killer "dirty" sound to it and is the best rhythm electric guitar I've ever played. Today we're running it into my Mesa Boogie Nomad 55 (direct) and Fender Custom Vibrolux Reverb (via a Line6 DM4 pedal) amps (click the underlined words for product info links). Here's where it gets crazy technical...
Not only that but Coop also runs a third line from my guitar directly into Pro Tools. He saves these third recordings of my clean guitar in case we later decide that we don't like the guitar tone we recorded. We can find a "virtual amp" tone that we like, right in Pro Tools, or we can play the recording out of Pro Tools, back into one (or both) of the amps, dial in a tone we do like and re-record the part into Pro Tools. I told you it was crazy technical! Seriously, Coop's a genius.
Today's been tiring as we've worked on tuning issues with the Telecaster's G-string (insert joke here) brought on by my tendency to tune the guitar a half-step down, play in the key of "C" and use 13-gauge strings on my rhythm guitars. It's also been tough getting the amp tones we want as there's always a discrepancy between what an amp sounds like when you're standing in front of and what it sounds like through a mic.
Electric rhythm is now done for 3 of the 11 songs. Tomorrow's the big Easter service and then 6 more hours on Monday...
We finished up all of the acoustic rhythm parts on my Martin D16, which Coop has sounding incredible. He's running 2 condenser mics and a direct line out from the guitar, so we get 3 different acoustic tracks every time I lay down a part. The end result is 3 options for each "take". We can also blend 2, or all 3, together for a really full sound. My dream acoustic guitar sound can be found on the Shane & Shane album, "Clean". It's one of the best recorded albums I've ever heard with no fancy effects, just incredibly "true" recording and mixing. 'Worth checking out...
Anyway, 2 of the last acoustic tracks were "Glorified" and "Worthy of the Call", which both feature a lot of guitar picking. I managed to get through them pretty quick and I'm real pleased with the results. We still may end up dropping some of those recorded parts in favor of a some piano parts but we record everything we can think of so that we have tons of options when it comes time to mix the album.
After finishing up the acoustic tracks, we moved on to the electric guitar rhythm parts. It gets more and more fun to record as we go along because I'm able to play along with more recorded tracks on each song. I'm already playing along with drums, bass, acoustic guitar and my out-of-tune "scratch" vocal (that's what happens when you're trying to save your voice for Sunday).
I'm using my '99 Fender Telecaster Deluxe for the electric rhythm parts. It has a killer "dirty" sound to it and is the best rhythm electric guitar I've ever played. Today we're running it into my Mesa Boogie Nomad 55 (direct) and Fender Custom Vibrolux Reverb (via a Line6 DM4 pedal) amps (click the underlined words for product info links). Here's where it gets crazy technical...Not only that but Coop also runs a third line from my guitar directly into Pro Tools. He saves these third recordings of my clean guitar in case we later decide that we don't like the guitar tone we recorded. We can find a "virtual amp" tone that we like, right in Pro Tools, or we can play the recording out of Pro Tools, back into one (or both) of the amps, dial in a tone we do like and re-record the part into Pro Tools. I told you it was crazy technical! Seriously, Coop's a genius.
Today's been tiring as we've worked on tuning issues with the Telecaster's G-string (insert joke here) brought on by my tendency to tune the guitar a half-step down, play in the key of "C" and use 13-gauge strings on my rhythm guitars. It's also been tough getting the amp tones we want as there's always a discrepancy between what an amp sounds like when you're standing in front of and what it sounds like through a mic.
Electric rhythm is now done for 3 of the 11 songs. Tomorrow's the big Easter service and then 6 more hours on Monday...
Friday, April 6, 2007
Wednesday, April 4th
Just 2 and a half hours of recording this morning before Coop has to head out of town for a few days. I'm actually looking forward to the Thursday/Friday break from recording to regroup my thoughts on the project and get things together for Sunday morning's Easter service. We're going to be doing some really cool things with worship. I don't want to give anything away, so let's just say that it involves me coming up through the stage floor, smoke and lots of lasers...So, back to my friend the bar stool for more acoustic guitar. The most testing song was "Glorified", which as rhythm acoustic parts in addition to rhythm parts played with a bare hand (as opposed to a pick) and some definitive finger picking parts in the verses. There's almost nothing harder, when it comes to recording guitar, than picking a similar pattern over and over without a mistake. "Glorified" has that in spades! After 50 bazillion takes, I think we finally got some really good takes.
Only 2 more songs are missing acoustic guitar parts, which we'll knock out on Saturday when we pick things up again. Then it's on to rhythm electric guitar, which is going to be a lot of fun. The whole process of finding great guitar tones is something every guitar player LOVES doing. We'll be using my full arsenal of guitars and amps next week, which is going to be ridiculously exciting.
I'll be giving the guided tour through my gear collection in an upcoming post...
Tuesday, April 3rd
This afternoon I headed over to Coop's place to record some acoustic guitar parts. It's an incredibly cool vibe to sit on a bar stool, look out on Jupiter inlet and record some music. It was a gorgeous day and reminded me that this whole living in Caribbean thing ain't half bad...Mark came over for the evening and finished recording all of the bass parts. It was neat tweaking all the bass parts that had been "serviceable" and making them really tight. Bass is such a subtle instrument, especially in recording. It takes a lot of focus not to be cheesy with runs and licks but to be really thoughtful in the arrangements. I feel REALLY good about what we came up with - it's not life-changing bass guitar but it's rock solid and really gives a great foundation for the guitars and keys coming up.
After a marathon 5-hour session of recording bass parts, Mark can barely move his fingers but the job's done...
Monday, April 2, 2007
Monday, April 2nd
Today was a catch-up day for my energy level. I had the usual Monday things to do at the church office (mostly following up on stuff from Sunday) and didn't feel like sitting on an un-padded bar stool for another 6 hours!
So Coop and I sat down to double-check all of the drum recordings before moving on the the rest of the tracks. The drums are basically the foundation of all the recordings - if they're off, we'll be building on a faulty foundation. Fortunately, Matt was right on with everything. Not only that but it sounds incredible. No timid, half-hearted drumming here. I can personally guarantee that this album will have you air-drumming like an idiot while you listen to it in your car.
After that, we had to pack up everything into the church pickup truck and haul it back to Coop's place, where we'll finish up the rest of the recording - starting with the rest of the bass tracks tomorrow night.
Coop's place is right on Jupiter inlet and has a deck right on the water. It's a great environment to record in and I can't wait to get going!
Tomorrow I'll be working on arranging bass parts for the remaining 9 songs in order to maximize our efficiency when recording tomorrow night. Hopefully we'll also get in some acoustic guitar as well...
So Coop and I sat down to double-check all of the drum recordings before moving on the the rest of the tracks. The drums are basically the foundation of all the recordings - if they're off, we'll be building on a faulty foundation. Fortunately, Matt was right on with everything. Not only that but it sounds incredible. No timid, half-hearted drumming here. I can personally guarantee that this album will have you air-drumming like an idiot while you listen to it in your car.
After that, we had to pack up everything into the church pickup truck and haul it back to Coop's place, where we'll finish up the rest of the recording - starting with the rest of the bass tracks tomorrow night.
Coop's place is right on Jupiter inlet and has a deck right on the water. It's a great environment to record in and I can't wait to get going!
Tomorrow I'll be working on arranging bass parts for the remaining 9 songs in order to maximize our efficiency when recording tomorrow night. Hopefully we'll also get in some acoustic guitar as well...
Sunday, April 1st
Another LONG day!
Church in the morning, race home for lunch and then back to the Worship Practice Room at 2pm for day # 2 of recording. Matt got right to it and nailed "Alive" in 2 takes, followed by "Worthy of the Call" in 1. After "Glorified" and one other song (it's kind of a blur in my memory) the drums are done!
Matt leaves, after a ridiculously fantastic 9 hours of session drumming - mission completed. Or so we thought... One of the first songs we recorded "So In Love With You" has a few tempo issues that we missed in playback yesterday. It was early on and we were all getting used to playing with the click-track. Matt had already left, so we simply used the Inspector Gadget of our worship team, Mark, on drums to re-record the track.
After sorting all that out, we nailed the bass part for it (including a WICKED new bass line in the bridge) and "Marvelous" (with a great new verse bass line). Coop recorded the bass direct and with a Shure Beta 52 about 3 feet away while surrounding the bass amp with baffling panels. The blended sound of the 2 feeds is SWEET!
Church in the morning, race home for lunch and then back to the Worship Practice Room at 2pm for day # 2 of recording. Matt got right to it and nailed "Alive" in 2 takes, followed by "Worthy of the Call" in 1. After "Glorified" and one other song (it's kind of a blur in my memory) the drums are done!
Matt leaves, after a ridiculously fantastic 9 hours of session drumming - mission completed. Or so we thought... One of the first songs we recorded "So In Love With You" has a few tempo issues that we missed in playback yesterday. It was early on and we were all getting used to playing with the click-track. Matt had already left, so we simply used the Inspector Gadget of our worship team, Mark, on drums to re-record the track.
After sorting all that out, we nailed the bass part for it (including a WICKED new bass line in the bridge) and "Marvelous" (with a great new verse bass line). Coop recorded the bass direct and with a Shure Beta 52 about 3 feet away while surrounding the bass amp with baffling panels. The blended sound of the 2 feeds is SWEET!
Saturday, March 31st
And we're off!
Today involved moving copious amounts of equipment from Coop's (the recording guy) place to our Worship Practice Room to record drums and scratch bass/guitar/vocal. "Scratch" just means that we're not planning on keeping it on the final recording.
We all play together, live, to get as much energy out of the drummer as possible. You just don't get the same energy when you tell a drummer "IMAGINE you're playing with a rockin' band!"
I recruited Mark Kukkamaa to play bass. He's a musical beast who can basically play anything. We work really well together when it comes to coming up with ideas, arrangements and musical parts, so he'll be dropping in later on in the project to throw around some acoustic guitar ideas and more.
I also enlisted Matt Shepard to drum for the project. Matt's one of my regularly-scheduled Sunday morning drummers who recently went to the Pacific Northwest with me to play at some worship events. He's the real deal - a fantastic, hard-hitting rock and roll drummer who would still secretly like to play in a really cool jazz band.
He started out by requesting a "cow bell" sound for his click-track. I thought he was joking (some sort of reference to the infamous Will Farrell "cow bell" skit on SNL) but he was totally serious! It turns out that the cow bell sound "cuts" through the mix, while recording, much better than the traditional click-track sound. Who knew...
It's always nerve wracking recording with somebody for the first time. People respond in radically different ways to the "red light" (which traditionally comes on in studios when the "RECORD" button is pushed). Matt was simply unreal... We thought we'd just dial in our tones, set the position of the mics and then start things tomorrow but Matt was in a zone and things were just clicking. We recorded non-stop from about 2pm to about 8:30pm before finally hitting "the wall" of exhaustion. When it was all said and done, we had drum tracks completed for 7 of the 11 songs!
Coop has the drums sounding unbelievable. He's a total pro who just knows all the recording tricks in the world...
Today involved moving copious amounts of equipment from Coop's (the recording guy) place to our Worship Practice Room to record drums and scratch bass/guitar/vocal. "Scratch" just means that we're not planning on keeping it on the final recording.
We all play together, live, to get as much energy out of the drummer as possible. You just don't get the same energy when you tell a drummer "IMAGINE you're playing with a rockin' band!"
I recruited Mark Kukkamaa to play bass. He's a musical beast who can basically play anything. We work really well together when it comes to coming up with ideas, arrangements and musical parts, so he'll be dropping in later on in the project to throw around some acoustic guitar ideas and more.
I also enlisted Matt Shepard to drum for the project. Matt's one of my regularly-scheduled Sunday morning drummers who recently went to the Pacific Northwest with me to play at some worship events. He's the real deal - a fantastic, hard-hitting rock and roll drummer who would still secretly like to play in a really cool jazz band.
He started out by requesting a "cow bell" sound for his click-track. I thought he was joking (some sort of reference to the infamous Will Farrell "cow bell" skit on SNL) but he was totally serious! It turns out that the cow bell sound "cuts" through the mix, while recording, much better than the traditional click-track sound. Who knew...
It's always nerve wracking recording with somebody for the first time. People respond in radically different ways to the "red light" (which traditionally comes on in studios when the "RECORD" button is pushed). Matt was simply unreal... We thought we'd just dial in our tones, set the position of the mics and then start things tomorrow but Matt was in a zone and things were just clicking. We recorded non-stop from about 2pm to about 8:30pm before finally hitting "the wall" of exhaustion. When it was all said and done, we had drum tracks completed for 7 of the 11 songs!
Coop has the drums sounding unbelievable. He's a total pro who just knows all the recording tricks in the world...
At the end of the day we were all exhausted and I definitely have a bruise on my right butt cheek from sitting on an un-padded bar stool for 6 hours!
Well, home to bed for tonight...
Introduction
We're making an album!
After being at the church for 2 years, it feels as though we've clearly defined our worship "sound". We're progressive and passionate... which is a concise way of saying we love God and loud music!
We've also reached the point where original songs are being written and sung by the church on a regular basis. It's an incredibly cool thing to be singing songs that are birthed out of what God is doing HERE at Calvary Chapel Jupiter. So we want people to be able to listen to the songs outside of Sunday morning services. We want people to know them, be blessed by them and worship with them throughout their week.
It's our hearts desire that CCJ would grow and develop a thriving community of musicians who love the creative process and are committed to musical excellence. This is a massive step in working towards that goal.
So we've started recording the presently untitled project of 11 original songs and hope to have you listening to the first ever "Calvary Chapel Worship" CD sometime in May!
Praise
Glorified
Reckless
So In Love With You
You're Beautiful
You Deserve It All
Star Maker
Worthy Of The Call
Alive
Unchanging
Be sure to check in for daily (or near-daily) reports on how the project is going...
GB,
Jeff T.
After being at the church for 2 years, it feels as though we've clearly defined our worship "sound". We're progressive and passionate... which is a concise way of saying we love God and loud music!
We've also reached the point where original songs are being written and sung by the church on a regular basis. It's an incredibly cool thing to be singing songs that are birthed out of what God is doing HERE at Calvary Chapel Jupiter. So we want people to be able to listen to the songs outside of Sunday morning services. We want people to know them, be blessed by them and worship with them throughout their week.
It's our hearts desire that CCJ would grow and develop a thriving community of musicians who love the creative process and are committed to musical excellence. This is a massive step in working towards that goal.
So we've started recording the presently untitled project of 11 original songs and hope to have you listening to the first ever "Calvary Chapel Worship" CD sometime in May!
Here's the 11 songs we're doing, in no particular order:
MarvelousPraise
Glorified
Reckless
So In Love With You
You're Beautiful
You Deserve It All
Star Maker
Worthy Of The Call
Alive
Unchanging
Be sure to check in for daily (or near-daily) reports on how the project is going...
GB,
Jeff T.
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