Hi There! Thanks for visiting my CD page and reading about my brand new CD, “Sunny Side Up!” I really appreciate you taking the time and I hope you like what you've read/heard so far.
If you are a bit of a geek like me you might enjoy a behind the scenes look at the recording process I used for “Sunny Side Up.”
As I mentioned on the other page, "Sunny Side Up" was recorded at a show at John. D. MacArthur Beach State Park in North Palm Beach, FL. I had been recording some of my shows on and off for about a year and a half hoping I could eventually compile enough live songs to put together an entire live record. I never dreamed I'd get it all in one shot! Now for the geek stuff! :-)
I perform using a Bose L1 Model 2 sound system with 2 B1s (subs) and a T1 (the matching Bose digital mixer) The night I recorded this I was singing into an Neumann KMS105 vocal mic and playing my Taylor 810ce. I had my vocal mic in channel 1 of my T1, the ES pickup system of the Taylor in channel 2 and a Schertler Dyn-G in channel 3. The Schertler Dyn-G is a contact microphone that adheres to the bridge of the guitar. I blend in just enough of the Dyn-G to round out the tone and give just a bit of microphone quality to it.
The Bose T1 has a USB port on it. I took a USB out of the Bose T1 into my MacBook. I love using GarageBand but I learned the hard way that GarageBand will only let me record 1 hour and 6 minutes worth of material before it stops the recording. Maybe they've changed this but I'm not taking the chance to find out! So when I record live I use Apple's Logic Pro. Plus the sampling rate of the Bose T1 is 48.0 kHz. Logic Pro allows me to select the sampling rate of my audio interface. GarageBand only accepts the sampling rate of 44.1 kHz so for me, Logic Pro is the way to go. I create a new music project and give it the title of the venue for that show and I'm all set.
Recording with the Bose T1 is fantastic. You get out EXACTLY what you put in. One of my favorite parts about recording a live show is when I sound check, I record part of a song and then play it back through the L1. I then walk around the venue and hear how I sound! This also gives me a chance to adjust the balance of the guitar and the vocals. I can only record one track so I need to make sure the balance is right before I start. Just before the show starts I click record on my computer and I'm up and running. I've recorded over 4 hours of non-stop music like this using my Bose T1 and Logic Pro. I don't know how long Logic will go before it stops the recording but I know it will go for over 4 hours!
The only downside to recording direct like this is that in the recording you can pretty much only hear my guitar and my voice. This is great during the song but not so good for hearing applause, laughter, room noise, audience interaction or any of the other things that make a live record a live record. If the acoustics of the venue are good I'll sometimes get some applause on the recording through my vocal mic but not enough to really sound right. So I augment my direct line with a room "mic." My room "mic" is an Zoom H2 handheld digital recorder. I put the H2 on a mic stand and try to find an out of the way place that will allow me to capture the room and the crowd without someone bumping it or sitting right under it and talking the whole show!
On this particular night I put it right at the end of the staircase of our little amphitheater. I can get three hours of recording from the H2 and that was plenty for this show. So by the time I started playing I had hit record on my H2 and on my computer. Right before I start I mute my strings and make 4 chunking sounds on my guitar. This will allow me to line up the direct recording with the room mic later on. Then I played my show!
I let a few days go by before I listened to it but right afterward I felt pretty good about the recording. I already knew of a few spots where I screwed up a bit but I didn't mess up any of the songs too badly and I thought that overall, it might be a decent recording. I dumped the file from the H2 into my computer to be sure I had that saved and I exported the direct recording from Logic into GarageBand. I know that may sound funny but I love working with GarageBand I'm so comfortable with it and I still haven't taught myself anything more than the basics with Logic. Anyway, I cut the extra from the beginning and end of the show (the time between when I hit record and started playing and the time between the end of the show and when I hit stop) and sent a raw .mp3 version of the entire show to iTunes. I dumped it on my iPod and listened to it twice on my long drive from Florida back to Northern Virginia. Not too bad!
My wife and I listened to it a couple more times on a trip up to New Jersey and we were both convinced that the concert would make a good live record! I worked with Baker Vaughn at Digital Express Mastering in Maryville, TN again on this project. He mastered Sunshine State Of Mind for me and we had been in touch about doing a live CD. I sent him the direct recording and the room mic recording with tons of notes and he went to work. The idea was to give the record the right amount of room and audience at the right times. Obviously we wanted to hear the crowd when they applauded after a song and we wanted to hear them laugh when I said something hilarious! :-) We didn't necessarily want to hear them during the song if there was anything that could be distracting but we didn't want to eliminate the room recording and loose the sound of the venue and the vibe of a live recording.
With that in mind, Baker carefully pieced together the direct recording and the room mic and created what I think is a great representation of how it sounded to be sitting there with us that night in Florida.
That's pretty much it on the technical side. The biggest challenge for me was figuring out what to do with the introductions. For me, the whole point of doing a live record is to give people a chance to hear a recording of exactly what I do live. And when I play my songs live, I talk about them. I've been doing it for years and it's a big part of my show. I needed to keep the intros! With that said, I don't expect people to want to hear the introductions each time they listen to the songs. After weighing my 3 options (no intros, intros on the same track as the song or intros on separate tracks) I decided to go with the choice that gives the listener the most flexibility. I put the introductions on separate tracks. Even the short ones! This way people can hear them if they want, skip them if they don't or even make a CD or iPod mix with or without the intros.
So there you have it. Just a bit about the creation of “Sunny Side Up.” I'm thrilled to have it done and thrilled to be able to share it with you.
Thanks for reading!
