Wanting to remember how recording1 even worked, I decided to cover this canadian tune at some point during last fall. Took me way longer than I care to admit to finally come up with something vaguely interesting, and I hated the sound I was getting, so I shelved the project.
Had to plug in the microphone again last week for my last mandolin article, and I thought I'd try my hand at it again.
Well, here's what I ended up with:
I learned the tune at a local jam session about a year ago, and immediately fell in love with it. It's a dance piece, the kind where everyone just plays the melody over and over until everybody gets sick of it. I didn't expect that approach to work so well with only plucked strings, so I figured I'd turn it into a fiddle tune and have the intruments take turns improvising over it.
Which turned out more difficult than I thought. It seems that the simpler the melody, the more I'll struggle to come up with interesting things while staying close to it. So that's where I spent most of my time when I first tried it.
I made a point to improvise each break, so no take was ever the same as the previous one (although ideas from previous attempts obvisously crept up). In retrospect, that's a bit silly, and I could have used the opportunity to write down structured solos. Would have been a good exercise and I probably would have ended up with something cooler. Must be some stupid pride thing, like I don't want to "cheat" or something. Oh well.
Not a huge fan of the mix, but I'm no sound engineer, and that's the best I can do given my crappy room and crappier skills. I can hear most of what's going on, but that's because I know what I played, and I still wish things were a bit clearer.
The banjo track is from my first attempt back in October or November.2 Everything else was redone over the last few days. I reluctantely did a bit of editing magic, mostly to redo the guitar break3 and the mandolin ending (it was fine in the take I'd kept, but sounded like crap for some reason. I'm guessing I moved in a wrong spot while recording, and I couldn't fix it with EQ).
Track by track recording is weird, and I know I'll always miss the energy of a live band, but hey. It's its own kind of fun until perfectionism kicks in and you get lost in tweaking things forever.
Hopefully I've learned a thing or two in the process. We'll see when I get to the next tune.
Here's a picture of the whole crew, from low to high:
Purists will have to forgive me for the electric bass. Ain't no way I can fit an upright in my appartment.
Oh, and if you don't speak French, the title means something like "The cute air", which sounds like crap in English. "The cute melody" ? Meh. What matters is that it's pretty cute indeed.
Hope you'll like it. See ya when the bug bites again.
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As in "serious recording", with a DAW and all.
Setting up the old zoom recorder is simple enough, but it won't do for multi tracking. ↩
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I know it is slightly off-beat in the first section, but fuck it.
It won't sound anything like the old take if I try to fix it now, so I'll have to redo the entire track if I want to fix it, and I just can't be bothered. ↩
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That took an embarassing number of takes.
Beyond the actual playing, it took me ages before I could get something that didn't sound like garbage.
In the end, that's the instrument I like the most, tone wise, but boy, that took some luck. ↩