A good engineer can make all the difference in the flow and success of the recording experience. Saving time, money, and energy can become crucial, not only in terms of dollars spent, but in the ease with which you feel you can navigate the subjective and mercurial process that making a record is. So to have an engineer who is also a musician, who has a good sense of “time” (meaning rhythm), and a good sense of pitch, the process of standing in front of a microphone becomes much more inviting. If the guy on the other side of that window knows if you’re in the pocket or not, if he has those sorts of ears and can guide you a little, it could not be more helpful. The engineer can tell you, for instance, if you’re not in pitch, and you should go for it again, or that you sound tired, and to call it a day. Because it’s going to take time, many weeks of getting stuff down, and then throwing it out, and if you over do it, before that time is up, you can reach burn out, and the work ultimately suffers. It’s not his job to judge your esthetics, but to help you with achieving what you have in mind, even as it changes. As well, recording is somewhat an unconscious process at best, and your mind can take erroneous trips, while the rest of you gets the job done -- only you may think its terrible. I recorded several songs and thought the first takes were crap. A good engineer (or producer) can hear that some take had all the information, and not let you record over that take, until you’ve heard it, later. Because later, you’ll hear how good it actually was, in spite of how bad it may have seemed to your distracted mind, and be awfully damned glad you didn’t follow that mind. Scott Cadenasso was a great engineer.
Scott Cadenasso (Joot’s Group Records): 505/984-2301
Once the CD is recorded, and its all on a dat (a small high quality cassette tape) the songs can have little glitches, where you might have made a physical sound that was not organic to playing, or I you hit the mic and a small tick is in there, or a low level pop from breathing into the mic on a P or B sound which was at too low a level for you or the engineer to pick up. Or there can be an unintended touch of a string just before the first note of a song, or a distant echo from counting off, cause I counted too close to the first note. And then every song will have different dynamics some louder than others as they’ve come out of the process. The mastering of a CD is the final finishing touch that evens everything out so each peace sounds like it belongs with all of the others, and all of the incidental none-musical erroneous sounds are cleaned up, and the right tone for the entire production is achieved. The transitions as far as fades and tone quality is balanced so that the overall quality draws you into the work. All this is accomplished by the fellow who masters the work, who makes it sound like it will when it comes out on a CD. I had only heard single tapes of each song in the process of recording the elements of all the arrangements, and then, at the end, a final tape of the album as I finally programmed it. Some songs were louder in relation to others, there were marked differences in sound-feel between the different arrangements that each song demanded. When I got the finished work back from Bob Stone, I could not believe the difference. It now was an album and it sounded, by God, like the idea I dreamed of achieving, but never quite knew for sure what it was. There’s no way I can explain the difference it makes when an album is mastered correctly. It’s something you just have to hear all in pieces and then altogether, in balance.
To contact Bob Stone, email bob@bobstonemastering.com, or visit his website at bobstonemastering.com
I wanted to make the “Child,
Child” CD with a nylon string guitar. Not classical, though,
or Flamenco, but a cross between the two. A Flamenco guitar has a
much more percussive and bright sound and would lend itself to
the way I think now. As synchronicy would have it, one Keith
Vizcarra who builds guitars to fit musician’s physical and
musical peculiarities: hand size, tone style they’re looking
for, the size, shape, and look of the instrument, happened to
live in Santa Fe, where I make my home base. So, Keith built this
country cutaway/Flamenco/Jazz/Folk guitar. The bracing is more
like a Flamenco than a classical guitar, but at the same time,
it’s more solid and less delicate than a Flamenco. The top
is made of Engleman spruce, the sides and back are flame Koa, the
bridge is dark rosewood, and the finger board, ebony. When I
first picked up this instrument, after I got it home, the sounds
of the theme to “Tradewinds” just drifted out of the
guitar as I figured out something to play with, and that was the
start. (Photo: Keith Vizcarra's Guitar Shop)
Keith Vizcarra: 505/988-1221
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| The head and tuning pegs, Keith. | |
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| The Koa wood sides. | |
Copyright © 2006, Erik Darling. All rights reserved.