Caught Up In The Fable

And The Beat Goes On...

2009-07-02T10:35:00.002-05:00

Project update: Donna Beasley's next record, 'Under The Rushes" is coming along nicely. Yesterday we went to Anthony Aquilato's home studio and recorded a keeper vocal on a tune using the AT 4050 microphone. I had just purchased a 4050 for my own studio (and used it with great success) last week, so we tried it again and it fit the tune perfectly.

The day before, the amazing Kenny Vaughan (of Marty Stuart's Fabulous Superlatives) stopped by to pick up his D'Addario string order. I asked if he was free to throw a guitar part down on a song, he agreed and 45 minutes later we had a vibey guitar track that took the tune to a new place...very cool. In a room full of nice guitars - Les Pauls, Teles, ES-125s, Strats - Kenny opted for my Teisco Del Rey. Plugged into the 3 Monkeys Orangutan, he dialed up a killer guitar tone and had the part within a few passes.

On my most recent road trip, I was able to have "Pro Tools Guy" Mark Dobson rough out a mix on one of the more complicated tunes on the record. He showed me several tricks on getting a naturally ambient drum sound to be a bit drier, using gates and EQ and compression. With that session saved as a template, I can apply those settings as a strating point for any other song on the record tha needs "less room and more drum". All of the drums were cut on the same kit on the same day with the same mics.

I'm also getting a Pro Tools laptop rig together for a friend and will be out buying more RAM for it today. Stay tuned, I'll post a few snippets of what we are up to soon.

The Groove Is Dead And Gone

2009-06-25T17:59:00.003-05:00

The King of Pop died today. I wasn't a huge fan...didn't own any actual records, downloaded a few singles of my favorite tunes of his and the Jackson 5. But he was undeniably a masterful musician and performer, and since I'm at least tangentially in the same business as he was, I must pay my respects.

I grew up with Michael Jackson. He was 3 years older than me, so I was about seven when he hit the charts with the J5. "ABC" was my favorite at the time and remains so. Back then I liked the shout-out chorus, I guess. Nowadays I love the bass line and the exuberant groove.

I really started listening - as a musician - when "Off The Wall" came out in 1979. I was a junior at Mauston Area High School, and was way into The Cars, UFO, Van Halen and hard rock. But the radio played "Rock With You" and 'Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" and "She's Out of My Life" a lot and there was no denying the brilliant songs, performance and production. I really liked the vocal phrasing on "Rock With You", especially the way he says "girrrll" as an aside on the outchorus. It was cool.

Three years and a ton of awards later, we got "Thriller", the most succesfull album ever made, with estimates of world-wide sales to be between 47 and 100 million copies and 28 million in the U.S. alone. Seven Top Ten singles. "Billie Jean". "Thriller"."Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'". "The Girl Is Mine". "Beat It". "Human Nature". "P.Y.T."

He mastered the music video art form, ushered in the extended video re-mix with the title track, and became the King of Pop with that record. He never needed to do anything else.

But he did.

After that came "We Are The World", the re-united Jackson's massive "Victory" tour, and the Paul McCartney collaborations. The follow up album "Bad" (imagine the pressure!) had five number one singles on it. After that I lost interest and only heard bits and pieces of his output.

RIP, Michael. I hope you find the peace you sang about.

O Breather, Where Art Thou?

2009-06-02T08:08:00.010-05:00

Hmm...well talk about being caught up in the fable. It finally feels like I can take a breather and it's been six weeks since I posted last.

The Keith Urban tour has been going great. We've been to the East coast and Canada, then St.Paul, Chicago and Green Bay (where I made a pilgrimage to Lambeau and the Pro Shop). Then a week off, which I spent in Wisconsin, and then shows in West Virginia, Virginia and Alabama.

Here are a few shots from the rehearsals we had in Nashville:

Ken "Cubby" McDowell, Audio Tech

There's about 80 of us out here putting the show together including carpenters, lighting guys, video guys, audio guys, back line techs, tour management, trainers, masseuses, catering people, bus and truck drivers, etc.

Trace Foster, Guitar and Keyboard Tech

Joe Keiser, Monitor Engineer

Mark Dobson, Pro Tools Guy

Dobson, Steve Law (Front of House Engineer),
Chris McHugh (Musical Director/Drummer)

The Rehearsal Set List

We've had some great opening acts so far: Little Big Town, Jason Aldean, Zac Brown Band and Dierks Bentley. We'll be seeing Sugarland, Taylor Swift and LeAnn Rimes in the future.

Pocketses?

2009-04-19T23:02:00.003-05:00

Pocket. The word is now a verb in the audio world, meaning to "place a sloppy or loose performance in time". In my case (although all of my playing could be more in the pocket), it refers to a different intro that I came up with for one of the songs on the new record.

It was supposed to be an unaccompanied, atempo introduction with the band entering on the downbeat. I did not like the way the random tempo was making the rest of the song sound off. I think the ear locks into a tempo at the beginning and a noticeable groove shift is judged to be "wrong" even though the intro itself might be at fault.

What I want to do with it now is have the intro stand alone. The last chord rings out for two bars, so I can tack the song on afterwards and the time gap between seems to erase the memory of the intro's tempo. I previously added some harmony slide guitar diads (ala George Harrison) underneath the Wurlitzer solo (courtesy of Michael Webb).

I figured these slide licks would sound great as pickups to the tune proper, so I copied them and moved them to follow the ringing intro chord and lead to the tonic downbeat. But... they occur on the "1" of the solo section and I need them to start on the "and" of "4", with the destination note of the slide being the "1" of the tune's downbeat. They don't fit.

Enter Pro Tools 8 and Elastic Audio. You can specify the amount of time you want a piece of audio to take up, and place it in the track already stretched to fit. Amazing, but I don't know how to do it very well.

Enter Mark Dobson, famous engineer with better things to do, no doubt. He has, however, graciously agreed to help, so sometime this week (hopefully) I will get a master class in PT pocketing, and another track of the album will be very near completion.

Mr. Green Screens

2009-04-02T21:29:00.004-05:00

Video may have Killed the Radio Star when talkies first came about, but these days videos can make a radio star. Luckily, it's not just cool videos that account for the success of the new boss, but great music accompanied by great videos. This was the first video shoot I witnessed that used the green screen technique of shooting the principals and adding the background later. Pretty disorienting to see the floor become the wall.

I have no idea what the final result will be, but here are some shots of the video shoot for "Kiss A Girl", all shot against a "green screen".

Chris "Rodge" Rodriguez with his Deering 6-string banjo.

Brad, Jerry, Rodge, Chris, Brian...looking a bit Beatlesque.

A Day on the Green...

Me In Front Of Something Significant

2009-03-20T22:44:00.004-05:00

Now that everybody's got a camera on them 24/7, everything is a photo op, every event a 3D backdrop for you to pose in front of.

Hence this photo from the iPhone of crewmate Trace Foster:

Daytona 500

In Clubland

2009-03-15T11:12:00.002-05:00

The rest of the month finds us in various clubs and TV shows from coast to coast. A bit of a whirlwind promo tour for the new album, then we settle down to prep for the Summer tour. The boss has the #1 Country single right now, and there's at least a few more on the album that will probably reach that apex over the next months. It's a really strong collection.

We played a show last night in Valdosta, GA at the Wild Adventures theme park. A few rusty spots - quickly laughed about and left behind -but the band sounds great already and it's going to be fun to see and hear that kind of energy coming off a small club stage. The old-timers out here tell me that's a normal show, but being the new guy, it's all fresh to me. I watched the show last year on the Kenny Chesney tour, but seeing and hearing it up close is a whole 'nother thing. I've been lucky to only work for bands and artists whose music I enjoy listening to, night after night, and the new gig is no different.

There's a few guys on the crew I've worked with before, and many that I've met at gigs, so I don't feel like a complete stranger. It's fun to go to work when the pay off is a screaming crowd full of happy and satisfied people who have no idea who you are or what you did to make the show happen - and they shouldn't. The only time we get noticed by the public (hopefully) is when something goes awry and we have to fix it, and we like to keep those times to a minimum.

We were also blessed with a bus driver so skilled that I could not even tell we were moving and I slept like a log and (probably) snored like a chainsaw, there and back. Nice.

Practice Makes Perfect

2009-03-15T07:02:00.004-05:00

Here's a few shots from last weeks rehearsals:

Together Again

2009-02-04T18:19:00.004-06:00

Tom Brumley, famed pedal steel guitarist with Buck Owens' Buckaroos passed away today in Texas. He was 73 years old.

Brumley was renowned in the steel world for playing the solo on Owens' "Together Again", a heart-felt ballad of reconciliation punctuated by the beautiful melodic solo that perfectly captured the sentiment of the lyric. Much like George Harrison's "Something" the solo is so intrinsic to the song that it sounds wrong if a band covers the tune and does not at least nod to the original.

Brumley's father, Albert E. Brumley, wrote the gospel classic "I'll Fly Away". Only drummer Willie Cantu is still left from the original Buckaroos line-up, a combo that is largely acknowledged to be among the finest road bands to ever perform. I suspect there's going to be a hell of a jam in Heaven tonight.

This Year's Model

2009-02-03T00:29:00.003-06:00

Well, it is with sadness and fondness that I finish up this week with my last dates with the LeAnn Rimes band and crew. I signed on almost exactly a year ago, did the very fun and successful Kenny Chesney tour and many more headlining dates, but I've decided to accept an offer from the Keith Urban gang to be one of the guitar techs for them this Summer.

LeAnn and her husband Dean have been kind, generous and honest with me at every turn and I thank them and their management, band and my fellow crewmates for that experience. This is a family of friends that I have spent a lot of time with, and that's not something easily walked away from. So to all of LeAnn's band and crew, past and present, thanks for making the job seem like a hobby. I will miss all of you and will bug you frequently.

Keith was on many of the stadium dates we did with Chesney, and his show last year was pretty amazing. Lots of great guitar playing and a road band that holds it's own against any I've heard. I first met him when I was teching for John Fogerty and he and JF did the CMT Crossroads in California.

I look forward to adding to my road experiences with a new cast of characters, details of which may appear on this site from time to time and town to town.

The Latest

2009-01-25T22:04:00.006-06:00

The new Donna Beasley album, "Under The Rushes" is coming along nicely. I've been working on guitar overdubs, which is always big fun. I've been trying to think outside the band, and by that I mean - try to think of parts that serve the song even if they cannot be reproduced live on stage. That requires some doing, as I need to get past my familiarity with the demos and treat these master versions as fresh songs.

Even if you try to copy the demo, it always sounds different once different people play their instruments. I played all of the instruments and programmed the drums/loops on the demos, so I had an inside-out view. When you hire a band to play those parts, it's always different, usually better.

I've been trying to approach these songs as wide-open, with no conscious limitations to radio or genre or whatever...if I glimpse and idea, chase it and catch it, I'm trying to let my creative side be satisfied with it before I begin to edit. This means some favorite parts might fall by the side, but that's OK.

There's some OmniChord on this record already, and may be more to come. Probably get buried in the final mix, but that's the kind of thing I am looking for...a bit of ear candy to make the listener want to hear it again.

I've been using my Deluxe Reverb for most tracks, and the 3 Monkeys Orangutan head into my DR's Celestion Vintage 30. Stuart Mathis loaned me his Orange AD15 and a very old and cool Supro, so I'll get some of that vibe onto this record eventually. Guitars have been the Epiphone Casino, Gibson ES-350T and Fender Esquire.

The Vox ValveTone overdrive pedal has been a regular choice with the Deluxe. The Orangutan has that chimey grind in spades without a pedal.

The Venerable Rule of 78's

2008-12-20T18:29:00.004-06:00

This is just awesome. Music.

We have a rich legacy of music in this country...have you been listening?

The foreign stuff ain't bad either!

I Like Mic

2008-12-17T11:42:00.008-06:00

Tech specs for geeks.

Kick(close mic)......Sennheiser 421
Kick(far mic)..........Neumann FET 47
Snare......................Echolette 419
Tom........................Neumann U87
Floor Tom...............Neumann U87
Room (far)..............Bang and Olufsen BM5
Room (drum geek)......Sony 330

Bass..................Music Valve D.I.
Bass amp..........KMR81i

AcGuitar m/s.......AKG 414 brass capsule
AcGuitar..............Neumann KM84
AcGuitar..............Royer 122

ElGtr.................Royer 122
ElGtr.................Neumann U87SP

Vocal.................Soundelux 251/Avalon 737 Mercenary Edition/LA-2A

Tracking The Record, Part One

2008-12-15T17:23:00.012-06:00

Tracking the record means, conversely, recording the tracks, in this case the "basic" tracks. Typically, sessions are cut with a basic group of musicians consisting of a rhythm section (bass and drums and rhythm guitar/keyboards) and perhaps another guitarist/soloist. The singer is usually on hand to provide guide or "scratch" vocals. This entails singing the song all the way through to let the players hear where they are in the arrangement. They could just play the chart, but certain vocal phrases may give them hints on how to play the song better, so it's great to have a singer run down the tune at the same time. Catching a great guide vocal or getting the singer inspired enough to try a few "keeper" takes is a bonus. Of course, the machine is always in record at all times on all tracks.

Paul Griffith

We got in early the night before to set a few things up, patch the tracking room and control room and load in the electric guitar stuff and a few of my acoustics. I brought a small electric rig (Deluxe Reverb, pedal board, Tele, Les Paul, Casino, Danelectro 12-string) and my Guild jumbo 12-string, J-200 and J-45. I wanted to have a rig ready in case I felt a flash of brilliance...which I guess I did not! I played a little on the first song, to give the electric 12-string feel to the track and didn't really play again all day.

Scott Neubert

Scott Neubert brought his collection of guitars and ended up using his J-45 and a Collings. and added banjo, mandolin and Dobro after we got the basic tracks cut. We decided to tackle all of the basic at once before overdubbing. As it turns out, we needed to re-track all of the acoustic parts due to excessive drum bleed into the acoustic guitar mic. We found this out early on and did not have to back track, re-visiting songs from hours before, which can kill the vibe for the guy having to re-track. We tried a take or two and determined which one was best (we never did more than three complete takes on anything), then added the new acoustic guitar on, and Donna sang it for keeps if she was feeling it. The early takes were good and I let the band decide what was the best, if I was ambivalent about two takes.

Steve Mackey

Our pre-production efforts really paid off here. Donna and I had demoed the whole record in Garageband, rehearsed with Steve and Paul and played half of these songs at a gig on December 2nd. Everyone had the demos and many of the charts for at least a week in advance of the session for most every song. This allowed the guys to soak in the vibe we were going for and get some ideas in their heads about what to play.

My Guitars, a happy Steve Mackey

I'm all for spontaneous creativity, but I prefer the basic tracks to have some thought and logic behind them, a more processed approach than hitting record and getting the best moment from three or four people at once with minimal preparation. I figured since we only had one day to ct all of the songs, the pre-production before coming to the studio was equivalent to spending a day per song in the studio. It's a fine line between spontaneity and over-thought and you don't want to kill the vibe with too much planning. Steve and Paul get what Donna is trying to do, Scott has gigged with her many times and Anthony and I have discussed the sound of the record and what kind of mood we were going for at length. We narrowed our options down and it made the whole project fun, quick and exciting. Things went so smoothly - we just hit a groove, stayed in it without stopping for lunch or long breaks, and knocked out nine tracks in 8 hours.

Anthony Aquilato

Anthony brought a ton of stuff from his collection including a pair of Amek CIB (channel in a box) preamps, an Avalon 737, a re-furbed and modded LA-2A and several microphones, including the Soundelux 251 that we used for the keeper vocal tracks. The studio had several channels of Neve and API pres, but we used the board pres for almost everything, with little or no EQ and very little compression. There was at least one mic on everything, three on most things, so we did not leave much to chance, and now have several usable options come mix time...stereo, mid-side or mono acoustic guitar; if mono, which mic: mono KM84 or mono Royer 121. Lots of that kind of thing going on. We also opened the sliding glass door to the 9-foot grand piano room open, taped down the root and fifth of the tonic chord of the key we were in and mic'ed the room in stereo. Theoretically, we should have a room reverb sound with perhaps a slight harmonic content.

My area of the desk

Well, that's it for now. The project continues on into overdub mode. Time to get the strings changed on all the electrics, intonate them and start tracking guitars this week.

London Calling

2008-12-05T17:25:00.005-06:00

The folks at Radial Engineering Ltd. in British Columbia have got a few things figured out. I've been using their products for years, both personally and professionally - and sometimes both!

Their D.I. boxes are legendary and legion. Their rackmount switching systems like the JD7 are on the gear list of most major guitar and bass players. Their stompbox series of ToneBone pedals are industry standards in quality of sound and quality of build. I've blogged about my love for the Hot British and Classic pedals before. And now, this:

Radial has just released a new line of pedals, based on the ToneBone concept, called Bones. Smaller, lighter, non-proprietary power supplies no tubes - lots of things different from their big brothers. What's not different is the sound...big, fat overdrive and distortion.

I have a London here at the house that I've been putting through it's paces all afternoon. I'm plugged into the new 3 Monkeys "Orangutan" model head, using my Deluxe Reverb with a Celestion Vintage 30 as a cab. The 'tang has it goin' on tone-wise, so the London needs to boost that sound, not obliterate it. It does so...and then some.

For starters, let's look at the jacks: The In and Out jacks are next to each other, at the far right of the back of the pedal, not on the sides. This helps keep it's footprint down on a crowded pedal board.

The 9-12 volt DC jack is the common "Boss" model, which means you can use any similar power supply, including One Spots, that have a minimum of 100mA. No battery power is available, due to the Class A circuitry - which is so power hungry that you'd spend more time swapping batts than playing if it did.

There are two footswitches, labeled Toggle and Bypass. As expected, Bypass turns the pedal on or off. The London is not "true bypass" keeping with Radial's philosophy that active buffers are good things in a pedal chain. It's quiet, switches silently and does not "suck tone".

The Toggle button switches between two settings, 1 or 2. Setting 2 is indicated by a red LED. Each setting has it's own Level control and they share a two-band EQ, Low and High and a Drive control that ranges from Bluesbreaker combo distortion to a raging Plexi.

The 2 setting has a slight (non-adjustable) mid boost to boost your solo with a bit of EQ hump as well as volume, using the Level knob. There are also two 3-position slider switches for tonal tweaking. The Bite switch offers flat, boost or cut of the high end. If your amp lacks or exudes Presence, tame or taunt it here. Kick is a stepped mid-range boost with 3-positions: 0 (flat), +7 or +12dB of juicy gain.The thinking is to offer you ersatz channel switching in a pedal. By setting your amp to it's optimum Clean sound, you can use the London to get a Crunch rhythm sound and a mid-boosted Lead channel.

Careful tweaking of the Bite and Kick controls with the Low and High can get you from Led Zeppelin II to Boston to Back In Black and beyond. Marshall and Vox characteristics are found within a couple of minutes twiddling the controls. This pedal can be transparent or highly colored thanks to it's wide range of available EQ, which is one of the things I really like about the Radial line.

I tested it with my Les Paul VOS, a 1985 Fender Japan Esquire with Fralin pickups, a new Epiphone Casino and a Mexican Fender Strat with the EMG Gilmour pickup configuration. With minor tweaks to account for the variance it guitars, the pedal worked with all of them, the Les Paul being especially nice... which is no surprise as an LP into a Marshall is the sound of my childhood (and arrestedly developed adulthood).

As the clever and informative manual reminds you, small movements and thinking interactively will reward you with great sounds for the time spent. It's not a set-it-and-forget-it pedal, it's much smarter than that.

12 Jangly Mien

2008-12-01T14:07:00.005-06:00

Guitars are on my mind these days as I am "casting" the sounds for the next Donna Beasley record. Some tunes need Teles, some need Les Pauls, some Casinos, some a combination of whatever. One stand-out sound that almost requires you to play in a certain style is the electric 12-string. I have a Danelectro model, a cheap made in Korea guitar that sounds amazing and plays great. I've owned Rickenbackers in the past, but their necks are a little too narrow for me. The Danelectro feels like the Jerry Jones models that I really want, but for less than half the price, the Dano suits me fine. I blogged about it a couple of years ago here.

We're going to track with just bass (Steve Mackey), drums (Paul Griffith) and acoustic guitar (Scott Neubert), with Scott overdubbing some mandolin, banjo and dobro. I'll play more guitars and all electrics at home. This will allow me to concentrate more on the takes than trying to listen to the take AND play guitar at the same time.

One of the things I learned from making the last record is that producing is best done - in my case at least - by listening and giving direction from the other side of the glass. I might venture out to give an example of what I want, but I'm going to try to stay in the control room most of the time.

I had been following a strict "no demos, only masters" attitude for a while, and I think that approach can work. On this record, however, we found it easier and more efficient to demo the songs quickly in GarageBand, giving the players something to listen to and get ideas from. The demos are not something I'd want anyone to hear - out of tune at times, out of time occasionally, just a fast and easy way to get the basic feel down and e-mailed to the players. Of course, there are a couple where the feel is so good we may have a hard time beating it in the studio, but overall, they are more "worktapes" than real demos.

We rehearse tomorrow afternoon for a gig that night, playing most of the new record, then go into the studio on the 12th to track it.

Casino

2008-11-21T18:51:00.003-06:00

Another day, another guitar. I picked up a 2006 Epiphone Casino today, in a beautiful Cherry finish. Made in China at an Epi-only factory, the build quality and finish detail is excellent.

No photos yet, but here's a stock picture:

It's completely hollow, unlike the famous Gibson ES-335 which has a center block running from the base of the neck to the end pin. Lots of Beatle guitar sounds started with a Casino, notably "Day Tripper" and "Don't Let Me Down". The lack of a center block makes the guitar decay quickly, meaning it is well-suited for rhythm guitar duty, though the Fabs used it for everything, with Lennon playing his almost exclusively post-Revolver. Paul uses his to this day.

Historic Films

2008-11-20T20:20:00.004-06:00

Here's a great link to watch some classic music video from the vaults of Historic Films. Click on the "Online Comp Reels" tab on the left and catch some prime footage of Ralph and Carter Stanley, Muddy Waters. The Byrds, Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin and much more. The interview with the nerdy guy at the end does not turn out like you might initially think it will.

I found this place because they bought the rights to "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert" and have apparently been transferring the quad tapes to digital for a while now. I want to buy this stuff...hurry up!!!

GarageBand '08

2008-11-13T22:44:00.016-06:00

Regular readers of this blog will be aware of my penchant for digital audio software - Pro Tools, Cubase, Reason, Live, etc. I'm most proficient with Cubase 4 and am easing my way into Pro Tools gradually. The rest I just dabble with for fun.

The GarageBand app that comes free with your new Mac - as part of the iLife bundle - was always a fun little diversion, but not really all that useful.

Until now. I traded in my refurbed 15" MacBook Pro for a new, 17" MacBook Pro last week. My old one had just had a logic board replaced ($688) and started running hot...within Apple tolerances, but not mine. The new Mac, actually the model before the brand new one, was on sale for $1699, a full $1k less than the NEW new model. I got 2.4gHz and 2gb RAM with a 160gb hard-drive. Nice.

GarageBand '08 is the latest, greatest version of the program and in my opinion it raises GB into useable pro audio recording device...at least for demos. Apple's flagship DAW, Logic Studio has a little brother called Logic Express....GarageBand is Logic Express Lite.

These new features make all the difference for me :

Multiple takes with comping option

Built-in tuner

Automatable effects

For those of you not savvy to studio jargon, "comping" is short for compiling. You can comp several takes and use the best parts of each one to make up a master take. Let's say you were singing "Happy Birthday to You" and you loved the way you phrased "Happy Birthday", but did not care for that take's "to You". You like the "to" on Take 3 and the "You" on Take 2. Now you can use each of those favorites and consolidate them into one new track of a perfect vocal. Not a small thing. The same, of course holds true for guitar solos, bass lines, whatever.

The built in tuner may be minor to some, but it's one more piece of essential gear you can leave home as part of a mobile notebook-based studio.

Automatable effects is a really pro feature. You could already automate the volume and panning of any track. Panning refers to the placement of the instrument on the left or right stereo field. Very useful in crafting a professional mix.

Now I'm sure some will claim that this is not a pro app, that it is a toy to play around with and write EurodiscoTranceHouseAcidJazz beats with. Fine, suit yourself. To me, it is the ultimate demo machine. I can get a track up and running in minutes, and take the next couple of hours refining the drums and bass parts into what I envision.

My attitude toward demos has changed a bit. I used to think that it was a waste of time and that you might accidentally get the take doing a demo...and if you were in a hurry and cut corners on tonal quality, you might get a take that, while perfect, is sonically unusable. I remedied this by always using my fill-blown rig to record demos or worktapes with.

For this record, my wife Donna' s second effort, we decided to rent some studio time in a real commercial studio to cut the bass, drum and acoustic guitar tracks. You can't get a better sound than that at home, usually, and it will help the record compete with other albums in the marketplace. We're scheduled to go in the second week of December. We will still do a lot of overdubs at home - vocals, electric guitars, pedal steel, fiddle, etc.

But to save time in the studio, we are demoing the songs, giving the players a pretty good idea of what we want while not tying them to my feeble attempts at drums and bass programming. We can create the general vibe of the song well enough to pass it along for reference. The bonus for me is that I get inspired by the great sound in GarageBand and start playing parts that I might never have come up with if I only allowed myself the tracking day or "guitar overdub day" to be creative. I can re-visit the song over and over, adding and subtracting ideas until I get a rough image of the finished product.

I'm using the Line 6 KB37 as a front end for GarageBand. 2 mic pres with phantom power, a 2.5 octave keyboard, a USB audio interface, and access to the Gearbox Gold bundle of guitar, bass and mic pre models. The Gearbox effects show up as AU plugins in Garageband, meaning I can apply them to any track, not just guitar or bass. Bus-powered, so no power supply.

You can hear the rough version here: "Can I Get a Ride". Some of the parts are out-of-tune, some out of time, but I was getting ideas and I just recorded them as they came to me. It's a demo!

I cut all of the acoustic guitars and Dobro with an M-Audio Pulsar II mic or B.L.U.E. Bluebird mic into the KB37 through a Gear Box model of an API mic pre. The electrics (Crunch rhythm, Clean Lead and 12-String Jangle) went into the KB37 and through my own tweak-as-needed preset of a Mike Campbell tone I call "American Girl", essentially an AC-30 with a bit of compression and reverb. The drums and bass are samples from the GarageBand library that I modified to fit our song.

I also just figured out that my Waves Musicians Bundle II plugins that I bought for use with Pro Tools and Cubase work with GarageBand, so I can access world-class EQs, compressors, delays, etc.

A Macworld commenter put together this list of new features:

Full effect automation. You can alter any parameter of any effect over time
Automation points (e.g. Volume curves, Pan curves, etc) can now be "locked" to their region so that they move along with it when dragged or duplicated
Each track now offers 4 AU effect slots per track instead of only 2
Multi-Take: You now have the ability to loop and record your performance on a "Real" (Audio) track over and over, later selecting which ones to keep, combine, and/or delete without having to stop your recording session.
"Software" (MIDI) tracks also offer Multi-Take, if you wish, or you can choose to have them work as they have in previous versions, combining each pass into a single take
Software Quantization is no longer "All or Nothing" there's a slider for the amount of Quantization.
Effect slots in Track info can be rearranged to effect a track in different orders
Exports to disk can now be AIFF, AAC, or the often asked for Mp3
Uncompressed AIFFs can also be exported as 24-bit files for further Mastering
Loop Families: A quick and easy way to swap loops between similar ones of the same name (Family)
GB can now show you the name of the chord you are playing on a "Software" (MIDI) track
In notation view, along with the proper note being displayed (1/4, 1/8, etc), a small bar visually shows the note's duration when the note is selected.
You can delete a region and have all the regions to its right move to the left, the duration of the deleted region
There is an "Arrange" track that let's you create and name sections, like Verse, Chorus, Bridge, etc. These sections can be dragged, duplicated, or deleted as a chunk
Software tracks offer an Enhance Timing feature now that can even be used while recording
There is now a Fade Out option to fade out songs in a curve
The Master Fader and Master Volume Curve now operate independently
There's the new Visual EQ, a hybrid of a Graphic EQ and a parametric EQ, with a built-in spectrum analyzer
The somewhat useless "Simple" compressor has been replaced by a real one with parameters that can be set
The length restrictions have been vastly increased, in theory, over 16 1/2 hours without any hacks needed to get there.
The Digital display under the timeline offers some new, and some improved options.
GarageBand can now burn CDs
Ability to edit AND print notation.
Timeline control over tempo.

I'd highly recommend GarageBand '08 to any musician looking for a quick, easy and comprehensive demo solution.

That Was the Year That Was

2008-11-02T21:39:00.002-06:00

Last night LeAnn Rimes played her final scheduled show of 2008 in Frisco, Texas at a benefit for the Boys and Girls Club. And so ends a blur of a year of touring the country with a great bunch of people. LeAnn and Dean were consumate pros and I thank them for hiring me for the tour. Tour Manager Steve Emley has been a constant source of good info and had taken care excellent care of us in the band and crew. Production Manager Anthony Aquilato kept the crew moving with his inimitable Bronx panache.

My fellow crewmates: Shamus Bacon, Steve Hoover, Josh White, Danny Blazcak, Zeke Clark, and Daryl Dixon gave each other hours of fun and only a few minutes of un-fun as we supported the Kenny Chesney tour all Summer long.

Unless something interesting pops up in the next two months, I'm diving head-first into making Donna Beasley's new record. I'll be trying a few new things this time around... Stay tuned!

Where The Hell Have I Been?

2008-10-25T20:29:00.003-05:00

Well, let's see....Lake Charles, Lufkin, New York City and points in between.

Woke up last night on the bus ride back to Nashville with the worst case of dry mouth I can remember. Two bottles of water, no relief. Finally got up at 7:00 a.m., made some coffee, drank that and watched the sun come up over the misty ponds and rivers of West Tennessee.

Got home at 9:00 a.m. to realize a full-blown head cold. Dripping nose, aching body and what I call The Hot Ear, a temperature rise so sudden and fervent you could mistake it for a tent revival. Today it's the whole damn Irish head a' blazin'. Cold packs and compresses are in order, one for the bean, one for my swollen and bruised foot that had a Marshall 2x12 combo amp in a road case fall on it last night druing load out. Hurts to wear shoes.

Fabulous Wife brings me pot roast, biscuits, Vegetable Beef soup and Mucinex with a Tylenol 3.

Fabulous Friend Elizabeth Cook brings over Ricola, Vitamin Water, soft tissue and NyQuil.

Fabulous Self-Medicating Me sips a W.L. Weller and Coke Zero concoction. Bourbon has it's own healing properties.

LeAnn finishes up the year next week...back to Texas...and then we start the next Donna Beasley album. Assuming the Hot Head goes away by then.

Americana Music Association

2008-09-20T13:36:00.003-05:00

My wife, Donna Beasley, was selected to perform a showcase at the Station Inn as part of the Americana Music Association conference here in Nashville. Somebody in the crowd had a camera and posted our rendition of Donna Fargo's "Happiest Girl in the Whole U.S.A." on YouTube.

That's me on electric guitar (occasionally lumbering into view from the left), Paul Griffith on drums, Dave Jacques on bass, and Tony Paoletta on pedal steel guitar.

He also grabbed "Cotton", a Beasley original from her album "Good Samaritan".

I'm guitar teching the stage at The Cannery, one of the other venues hosting performances this week. Tonight is a Glen Campbell tribute, featuring Glen himself!

Da Pack

2008-09-14T17:58:00.003-05:00

So, Game Two of the post-Favre era and how does Aaron Rodgers do? After engineering a 21-3 halftime lead, he rallies the team from being down 25-24 in the 4th quarter, to win -with the help of some opportunists on the Defense - with a final score of 48-25. The Packers keep the division lead. With the Lions loss (0-2), along with the Vikings (0-2) getting Paytonized at home and the Bears (1-1) losing their close game, the fabulous Pack are 2-0 in 2008.

It's tough to watch the pressure Rodgers is under, though I think the Green Bay fans are much more patient than any other team in the NFL. I can't imagine what it would be like to replace an icon like Favre if he was a 17 year starter in, say, Philadelphia? Cleveland? Pittsburgh? Of course, those cities don't really spawn legendary players these days, but noone was more beloved by the fans than Brett.

There's a great debate - still raging - on whether the idea was a sound one or not; whether letting Favre go in favor of the good of the team was the correct or even polite thing to do. I think they made the tough choice and the right choice. I hope Brett has an amazing year, sentimentally and because if he does, we get an even higher draft pick for him. If Rodgers can win 8 or 9 more games this year, Green Bay made a deal they couldn't refuse.

When You're Hot, You're Hot

2008-09-02T19:21:00.006-05:00

Jerry Reed

Jerry Reed (Hubbard) died yesterday at age 71. Peter Cooper at The Tennessean has the definitive obit. Reed is probably known by most folks under 30 as an actor. He starred in a series of Burt Reynolds-Hall Needham car chase movies, including the genre-classic "Smokey and the Bandit".

Others will remember Reed as the guy who had a few novelty hits on Country and Top 40 radio in the '60's and '70s. 'Amos Moses", "Guitar Man", "When You're Hot, You're Hot", "She Got The Goldmine, I Got The Shaft".

I'll remember him as an ace guitarist. No less a virtuoso than Brent Mason calls him "my favorite guitar player ever". With a thumb-picked contrapuntal style, he sounds like a cross between Merle Travis and Fats Domino. Here's a YouTube of Jerry on "The Porter Waggoner Show". He trades cornball humor with Porter then plays a funky 'Wabash Cannonball". Check out his version of Ray Charles' "Hallelujah, I Love Her So" at 4:o5. (Porter seems slightly unconvinced at the beginning...)

Jerry Donahue (The Hellecasters) introduced himself to the guitar world with his rendition of Reed's "The Claw", a tour-de-force of funky bends and shifty double-stop phrases.

One of my favorite Country records,"Country Willie", features Reed as a session guitarist on his gut string guitar. The inherent mellowness of the nylon strings perfectly blended with Willie's voice and the classic songs on that record.

R.I.P., Jerry.

Doyle and Debbie

2008-08-25T12:52:00.001-05:00

Shot at the famous Station Inn in Nashville, this parody/tribute duo give a lexicon lesson in L'Amour. Genius.