Finally the Weekend

[TonyB]

Been working on this one with a young female singer. Listen closely and you'll hear that she has a cold! Once she's over the cold we'll re-track the vocals.

We collaborated on this one. She wrote the lyrics and basic melody.

I played guitar and bass. Had friends lay down the pedal steel and drums.

GUITARS:

For the rhythm guitar (which also plays the guitar hook), I used my Les Paul Standard through a Line 6 Pod XT direct into a Grace Design 101. For the Line 6 Pod XT settings I used the Line 6 amp with Screamer distortion.


For the guitar solo I used the Les Paul / Line 6 as well as a Fender Telecaster through a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe amp. They're doubled for the 2nd phrase and play an octave apart for the final phrase of the solo (ala southern rock style).

For the guitar part in the third verse (after the guitar solo) that was the Tele through the Fender Amp.

PEDAL STEEL:
A friend of mine who played steel for Shooter Jennings came in and joined the fun. I'm not a steel expert but we went direct from a pre-built preamp that he had.

BASS:

Used a Fender P-Lyte through a Sansamp Bass DI. Nothing special.


DRUMS:

Used a Sonar, except the drummer brought his own snare (which I forgot what it was. Duh!). D112 and 52A on the kick (112 on attack side, 52A on front side). Probably too much attack coming through, no matter how much I tried to blend it with the front side. Snare and tom had 57's. Floor tom had a 421. High hat had a Shure 109 SDC. Overheads were a pair of NT-5s.


MIXING:

For drums I manually cleaned up as much bleed as possible, mostly by going in on the toms and cleaning out the clutter. The drums were fed to two busses: one for the toms and the other for the rest (kick, snare, cymbals).

For the guitars, it was pretty much one rhythm guitar (whether it was the Les Paul palm muting for the first two verses or the Tele in the third verse), so I panned them hard L-R, with an 8msec delay on one channel (checked to ensure there was no phasing induced by doing this). Guitar solo and guitar fills were also wide L-R, but favored one side or the other to give some feeling that two guitarists were on each side of "the stage."

For the pedal steel, I placed it 60% L so as to not interfere with the guitars or vocals. Also the high hats were panned on the right side. Didn't want to give them a chance to clash.

MASTERING:

No really mastered.
- Mixed down with nothing on the 2-buss. Brought the mix back into Sonar and set the fade-in and fade-out (obviously very slight for this song; the song starts immediately, so put a slight fade so the song doesn't break any ear drums).
- EQ: 3dB high shelf starting @ 5K. Add'l 2dB at 10K. Slight roll off @ 40Hz. Nothing else on EQ, although tempted to cut some mid-freqs.
- Compression: Very slight. Ratio: 1.01, <1dB reduction, Fast Attack, Longer Release
- SPITFISH for sibilance control
- Boost11 (could've taken more time with a UAD Precision Limiter or Voxengo Elephant)

That's about it.

[shackman]

Tony: where'd you find her? Not a sexist question. My day job is reviewing Country music. She's got IT!

[TonyB]

Originally Posted by shackman

Tony: where'd you find her? Not a sexist question. My day job is reviewing Country music. She's got IT!

Not a sexist question at all.


Even with a nasty cold?

She's a little young and green yet, but I'm working on growing her.

sounds good Tony. the drum sounds a bit just a little bit too high eq. and a hair loud on the drums. just to tone those drums down a hair. but sounds good.