Everything was delivered Sunday for Shannon Kennedy's latest recording effort - Never My Love. Shannon and I spent all week working, editing, picking and choosing parts to keep and parts to cut. 12 tracks total made the final cut. Shannon had most the tracking done and much of the project done. She brought me in last Sunday to help sort the tracks, listen to everything and record a couple of parts.
It was a brutal week with a lot of editing and general production. The schedule was crazy. I was getting to bed around 4:30 AM every night and many mornings started by 8 AM or earlier. It takes a long time to listen thru every part and how it all fits together.
For instance, the Bass and Drums are the most basic part of the groove. Listening thru drum parts for good shape - loud to soft - ride cymbal or hi hat - the pattern on the kick drum or snare - the combination of how these elements shape the rest the instrumentation - maybe taking the drums out of the intro all together. You see the options? How you put this together shapes the whole tune. Bass and Drums - kick drum patterns playing with the bass player - just important hits - more options.
Once the Bass and Drums seem logical and shape the emotion of the tune, we start adding other instruments in to the mix. We might arrange the different parts as the rhythm section parts are included. Maybe the Piano carried the whole thing in the early stages, then Guitar, Synths and acoustic instruments were added. As you listen to all the chordal parts, the Guitar stands out as being the primary sound on the Verses. Now the shape of the Verse is making the Intro sound way too big and out of place. Some more tweaking and you get a concept that feels good, creates more space and better color.
One basic rule is, more and more color turns gray at some point. Often you must remove some of the color to see any of it. Makes sense when you think about it. Any interesting painting will have places where there is more of one color or another; if not the whole canvas would be red or blue - not very interesting. To see anything, it requires one thing to stand out against the other. Colors and depth perception can be amazing tools in Art or Music.
Once the Rhythm section feels great, the acoustic tracks need to be placed in and often adjusted to fit with the band. All the parts have to work together. As you add something new, many things need to be adjusted again.
The process can take a long time. It does take a long time.
The other issues are preparing the files and organizing them with logical order and good comments for the next guy to work on the project. Shannon and I handed off the full sessions, as together as we could get them, to the guy the will do the actual mix and then master. Shannon will let this guy mix everything and then go in and listen to tracks, making minor adjustments and then giving the OK to start mastering once it's all sounding great. HE then Masters the CD and delivers a disc that is 100% ready to be delivered to the manufacturing plant to duplicate the CDs for resale.
A little education on how Shannon has been doing her CDs.
Everything is delivered to the mixing guy. I am done with the project at this point. Shannon has a release date set for September 21, 2007. Finishing touches on artwork, printing, manufacturing, and planning release parties are the Artists jobs until the release date.
The CD sounds really good! The artwork is always amazing! The rough mixes we handed to mix sounded great. I look forward to seeing this CD all together and done next month! Should be amazing...
So - Shannon's NEW CD is on to mix and master.
Greg Vail CDs are a topic of discussion again. I hope to get some recording done and see a new Greg Vail release later this year.
I have been working on other peoples CDs. Mars Lasar has sent new tracks for me to record some sax on. Mars is very cool - kinda World Music vibe. I have been having fun tracking for him. He finished mixes on the first track he sent and I recorded on - SOUNDED VERY COOL!
I will be recording with Damon the Gypsy later this week and will be doing the 4th record for Chris Barber tomorrow. Stay tuned for details.
Gotta get back to work.
Greg Vail SAXBOY
