Sessions

Pretty much all of the time I spend on musical stuff, is my own material, my band’s stuff, or at the least a something I’m invested into for long term. I don’t often work on other people’s musical projects. Last year I was asked to help out on something and I wanted to share it with you. It’s not specifically guitar related, but more of an overview of the recording process, and how it related to my guitar playing.

My singer, Rob, has a really nice studio. Since I've known him, which is approaching 2 decades, he has always done his own recordings, and we’ve done about 8 official recordings for the bands we’ve been in together. He’s also done a lot of recordings for other artists. In most cases these projects usually have their own dedicated guitarist, so I’m usually not involved in those adventures.

However Rob was approached for an interesting project. A local author, Tony McMillen, had a book coming out, and it’s centered on the bass player of a fictional band, named Frivolous Black. The band is supposed to be very “Black Sabbath” esque. Tony had 2 songs he wanted to be available to download, as a companion piece to the book. Rob asked me if I wanted to play some lead guitar on it, and I was flattered.

Tony came down one night, and Rob set him up to play some rhythm guitar. After dialing in a great dirty rhythm guitar tone, using Rob’s Fender Hot rod Deluxe and Rat Pedal, Tony jammed along to a click track, outlining the song. Afterwards Tony did some vocal takes for reference.

Anytime when I record at home, especially when doing instrumental parts, I like to have a cue to signal a change is coming to the next part. It may not end up in the mix, but it’ll help me keep the flow. Tony’s vocal takes helped a lot in this manner.

Rob & I gathered on another night to map out some stuff that would help out the recordings in the future; arrangement tracks, as well as some clean-up. Some guitar parts had to be moved around, just to get them to line up more with the beat. It’s a lot of tedious stuff, but it makes adding other tracks in later easier if the source tracks are nice and tight with the beat. Rob ended up doing some rhythm guitar tracks to compensate and adjust for some glitches that sometimes occur when moving stuff around. It could have been done through cut and pasting, but it was easier, time wise, to do it this way.

The next session was Drums. Rob’s wife, Tia, plays drums in our original band “The Goodbye Theory”. Her style was a good choice for this 70’s heavy rock feel. They set up some mics on her drum kit one evening, and on the next day started to track her drum parts. Since everything was now aligned to a click track, all she had to do was play along to the Rhythm guitar and vocal tracks.

In the past we would try to track the drums, while putting down a rhythm guitar scratch track, and vocal scratch track at the same time. About 2 years ago we switched it the other way around. This gives the drummer a consistent backing track to play to, with cues. So far we’ve been able to do a couple of EP’s as well as other demo’s and recordings and get some great tracks this way. In a couple of hours Tia was done.

The next session our bassist, Jen did her bass parts. I had gotten some Ampeg Bass pedals, and we fooled around with them. The Fuzz bass pedal was nice, but a bit over the top. It was more Motorhead than Sabbath, so we used their bass preamp pedal, rather than a fuzz, and it gave that warm tone, with just a bit of grit.

After that it was up to me. I got one of Joyo’s “Californian” pedals for xmas that year. It’s basically a knock off of Tech 21’s Boogie DI pedal. We ran that into the DAW, and the only other effect I used was my Vox Wah. Tony had requested the feel of Faries wear boots by Sabbath. Thankfully My Wah pedal still worked. It hadn’t been on my board for a long time. One issue came up though: one of the songs didn’t really have a “solo” break, just a few parts between the choruses and verses. I put some stuff in those spots, each time playing a similar line that varied a bit. I tried to imagine 70’s Birmingham.

Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi lost his fretting hand’s finger tips just before they were to get signed, in a machine shop accident. Once he healed up, De-tuning his guitar to C# with light gauge strings, and some rudimentary fingertip prosthetics enabled him to play. I can certainly see how that made them sound different, and I tried to capture some of that. Slower guitar parts, bigger notes, not a lot of flash.

The next session Tony came up to add some rhythm guitar tracks and vocals to the completed bits. It’s a lot easier to play along to an actual backing track than a click track, and it certainly worked, bringing a lot more of the 70’s feel to it, while reacting off of a real rhythm section.

I showed up to this session, and brought my lil rig again, just in case he wanted something extra. It was a good idea, as he had me do some extra bits on both songs, as it’s his project, and I’m there to help bring his idea to life. I listened to some of his vocal takes, and he did some doubling that captured the essence of the early 1970’s in England’s industrial area. He doesn’t SOUND like Ozzy, but he really nailed that feel and color that comes to mind.

At this point I was done, and as always it falls on to Rob to sift through and mix. It’s not the most exciting part to me, it takes a trained ear, and a lot of perspective to deliver a great mix. it can be a lot of work, not just getting levels, but making sure the EQ of each instrument doesn’t intrude on another. Even more daunting is making this have the feel and approach of a 70’s British proto-metal band. My hat’s always off to him in this arena.

Overall it was a fun project to work on. I never knew Tony before this so, it certainly adds to any stress of “am I giving this guy what he wants?” element. Thankfully I have worked with everyone else before, so that eased things a bit.

Here’s a link to Tony’s book, and a link to the tracks we did.

LINK - Book

LINK - Music

I don’t think this project will turn me into a session player like Steve Lukather, or Mike Landau, but it was fun working with Tony, as well as going a bit outside of my comfort zone.