Studio Session with Grammy Winning Producer Aaron Lindsey

Here's a chronical of a week of studio work I did with Grammy winning producer Aaron Lindsey

A Day in the Life – Day 1 – June 18, 2007

Hello all,

I have an upcoming recording session and I thought I would take you all along with me on the adventure. It's a 4-day recording session and I will try to write something every day about the experience.

I got a call last week from a good friend, Ken who does production services for recording projects. (In other words, he books musicians, writes out the contracts, makes sure everyone gets paid, makes sure the contracts are filed with the appropriate places, handles the copyright licensing needs and etc.). A client of his needed a guitar player for a session in a couple of days. They had called all of their normal guys to no avail - probably because it is being booked so short in advance. The really top "A" list players have recording sessions booked weeks in advance. So, I got the call of which I was grateful for. I was able to juggle some things around to make the session, which is happening today and the next few days.

The recording session is for a project that the keyboardist Aaron Lindsey is producing. I have played with Aaron a couple of times over the past few years. Aaron won a Grammy last year for being a producer on the Best Gospel album. The other players on the session are the great Dann Needham on drums. (Dan has played for everybody from Michael McDonald to Amy Grant and is a staple in the recording session world here in Nashville.) The bass player is being flown up from Atlanta for the week and I don’t know him. And the last of the four is me on guitar.

In a very rare occurrence in the recording world, I actually received a couple of reference MP3's to listen to before the session. I downloaded them on the ipod and I will listen to them today. I have not received any music yet and probably can assume that I will not which means we will be frantically scribbling out chord changes and accents while we are in the studio.
The session is for a gospel recording of a big church from somewhere. (I am constantly amazed how me, a balding middle-aged white guy, gets consistently called to play on these hip gospel projects. But I am thankful for the call, and will make more in the next couple of days recording than in a month of teaching.)

I have all of my guitars loaded up in the car, not knowing what awaits me. We can't get into the studio until afternoon so we probably will work from mid-afternoon till well into the night. The goal is to get 3 songs done each day. I have a tendency to get a little nervous before big sessions like this with players that I don't know and this one is no exception. But I'm sure it will be fun and go well.

A Day in the Life – Day 2 – June 19, 2007

Hello again, well it's day 2 of the recording session. Yesterday didn't go at all like planned but by the time it was over with (at 1:30am) we had recorded 3 songs, which was the goal. We were supposed to get started around 3:00pm but then it got pushed back to 5:00pm start time, which means a load in of 4:15pm. I showed up at 4:15 to a studio filled with people still there from the previous session.

The previous session was a recording session with video behind the scenes clips which took a lot longer than originally planned to film. The artist that they were videoing was Carolyn Dawn Johnson. She is a relatively new country up-and-coming artist. You can see her website here... http://www.carolyndawnjohnson.com/home/ . She was very nice and apologetic that things took so long.

I was the first of the musicians to arrive (I think everyone else must have gotten the memo that we weren't going to start till later.) I loaded my guitars in. Since I wasn't sure what I was going to be recording, I brought just about everything. I think I had about 7 guitars there - a various assortment of acoustics and electrics. Finally about 6:00 the other musicians got there and started milling about. But the drums had not arrived yet.

In Nashville, you have "cartage" which means that the drummer has all of his drums and equipment with a cartage company. He calls the cartage company and tells them where and when to drop off and set up his gear. So that when the session comes, the drummer just walks in, sits down and he's ready to go. You can get cartage agreements for guitarists, keyboards and whatever else as well but I have not needed to do that as of yet.

Finally, the drums arrive and the cartage folks set it up and Dann Needham (the drummer for the session) walks in and starts tweaking the adjustment of things. Setting up drums and getting all of the sounds right is a lengthy process in the studio so we were in for another hour of him hitting the bass drum or the tom while the studio engineers tweak the sound.
Finally, about 7:30pm we start working out the charts. So, I am by the piano with the producer and the artist representative while we hash out the last minute chord and key changes. Thankfully, by the time we actually sat down to record we had charts to all of the songs that we were recording.

Once again, sorry all you TAB guys, in the real world you read music, not TAB.

The drummer, Dann, just came off of a recording session with Amy Grant a couple of days ago. The bass player and the B3 organ player both play with the R&B artist Usher. (In the R&B world, Usher is about as big as you get.) As long as we're name dropping, the production coordinator, my friend Ken, popped in for a few minutes and told us about his trip that he just got back from where he flew with Michael W. Smith over to the legendary Abbey Road Studios to record his up-coming Christmas project with the 65 piece London Session Orchestra.

We sat on the couch in the studio looking at pictures that my friend Ken took a couple of days ago of the room where the Beatles recorded "Abbey Road" and several of their other albums. The pictures that were the most interesting to me were the picture of the actual 8 track recorder that the Beatles used to record on as well as a beat up Steinway piano that Paul McCartney recorded Lady Madonna on. And behind it was another beat up piano in the corner that played the famous piano parts to "A Day in the Life" by the Beatles. If you are into Beatles, seeing these things is about like the Holy Grail. My buddy, Ken played on these instruments while he was over there and he said it was incredible.

Anyway, back to the session. We did 3 songs. Actually they were a long medley of songs that we recorded in 3 different sections. All in all it probably was about 10-12 minutes of music when it gets all put together. Since it is gospel and R&B in its sound, the keyboards are really prominent, so the guitar plays a more supportive role. So, I just did a lot of Paul Jackson Jr. type one or two note rhythm accompaniment grooves with an occasional lick here and there. At times, the song gets rather big and orchestral so I would switch to distortion and double the bass line. On the more Pop sections I would use a Strat sound with some chorus and delay.

Basically, we would go through the song once, maybe twice as a band just to make sure the chart was correct and then we would record it. Usually we wouldn't like the 1st take so we may record it another time or two. Then we go into the control room to listen to it and then a person may go back in to fix one thing here or there.
We start again today at 11:00am roughly an hour from now. Today we are supposed to do the challenging songs so it should be a fun day but hopefully we will be done at a decent time.

A Day in the Life – Day 3 – June 20, 2007

Well, yesterday was a good day. The goal was 3 songs, and these were "the big songs", and we got done 4. The session went from 11:00am to 8:30pm. These songs were much trickier and more musically interesting than the first day’s material.
We are in the "tracking" stage of recording. What that means is that we are laying down the initial rhythm section bed to each of the songs (drums, bass, guitar, keys, organ). After this phase, then I will go in on Thursday and lay down "overdubs". Overdubs are where we go back in and add additional guitar parts or keyboard parts or horns or whatever.
Yesterday’s songs, I tracked with steel string acoustic on 2 of the songs, nylon string on one, and my telecaster again on the last funky song.

The first two songs were up songs, the 3rd had a little bit of a Pop Latin sound so I used the nylon string, and the last song was basically a funk riff with a bridge part built around it. (Think early Stevie Wonder and Prince mixed together.) On the last song, I recorded with a new effects pedal that I just got off of Ebay, a "Robotalk" pedal by Xotic. You can read about it here. http://www.prosoundcommunications.com/english/robotalk/ . It gets a very funky volume sensitive Wah effect that worked out pretty cool. I didn't use it on everything, but for the opening lick it really sounded funky. It was the first time I recorded with it. I really cranked up my compressor to tame down the volume fluctuations with it as well as to give me a little bit more of a punchier tone.

My friend, Ken, popped his head in again because he is overseeing the production end of the session. I got him to send me some of his pictures of his trip last week with Michael W. Smith to record his new Christmas project at the legendary Abbey Road studios. I will try to post these on my personal profile in the community section. I tried to upload them here but I'm having trouble doing it.

There is also a recording studio across the street from the studio that we are in, and I watched musicians filing in and out of there all day as well.

Today, we are going to try to do 4 more songs which will leave all of Thursday for overdubs. It's been a lot of fun and so far pretty relaxed. Everybody's having fun and playing well.

A Day in the Life – Day 4 – June 21, 2007

Hello,

Yesterday at the studio began at 11:00am and ended at 10:00pm. We got a lot done - 5 songs. I ended up charting out (writing out the music) to almost all of the songs yesterday. It took us about 30-45 minutes to write out the chart, then about 20 minutes to record the song.

We have finished all of the basic tracks for all of the songs and I am going to do overdubs today. Hopefully it won't take too long. Yesterday, I did a couple on acoustic capoed up and a couple on electric, 1 strat & 1 tele, and I did one on my new Godin Nylon string guitar that this session is going to pay for.

Playing music is exhilarating. I hope you feel it too as you play. I'll close this blog out tomorrow with a recap.

A Day in the Life – We’re Done! – June 21, 2007

Well, overdubs didn't take as long as I thought it might. I did a few additional tracks on acoustic and one on electric. On the acoustic tracks it was a little tricky. Here's why. The original chart was in the key of F. But we decided when we were recording it the other day that it was too high so we switched it to Eb, so the other day I had to transpose everything to Eb. If I had time I tried to write in the chords in the correct key but often there would be no time to write in chords so I would have to transpose on the fly while we are recording.

On simple progressions, which most of these were not, transposing on the fly is a skill that I can do pretty well. But on songs this complex, the chords and hits came a little faster than I could keep up with the transposing.

Now comes to today, we want to add acoustic to this song - remember that it was in F but was changed to Eb. Well, acoustic doesn't sound as great in Eb as it would in D, so I decide to capo at the first fret and play the song in D. Now, my chart already has two sets of chord changes (one in F and one in Eb) now I am frantically writing in the changes again, this time in D. But now there is even less time because it is just the producer, engineer and me. So, on parts that were easier I wouldn't write them in, but when it got tricky, I just couldn't keep up with all of the transposing so we would have to stop recording and I would write in the changes. So that didn't leave much time to think about what I am going to play once I know the changes. But it all turned out well.

These sorts of musical calculations when capoing is something that I wish I were faster in. To put it into perspective it would be the equivalent of you taking a song you have never seen before and having to transpose it (down a half-step or even a step and a half occasionally) correctly on the fly with no rehearsal while recording. And by the way did I mention the pressure to deal with as well because it's just you that the producer is listening to so closely he that can hear every voicing of every chord. And did I also mention that time is money, so the time of me writing out the chords and figuring out the voicings is very costly. Welcome to the studio world!

This session was pretty relaxed but I have been in situations where things are a whole lot more uptight. It's like, you panic and come up with this great guitar part just in the nick of time, you play it flawlessly, giving it your all, you finish and you hear the producer's voice questioningly in the headphones "OK, I see where you are going with that, but can you do something else." And then you are back to the drawing board with trying to create a different part.

But, they seemed to particularly like my acoustic work on this session, so I guess all went well. The last song I did was adding some rockin' electric guitar to one of the fast songs. First I laid down some power chords with distortion throughout the song and then we doubled it and panned both tracks left and right. This makes the guitar tracks sound huge but the tricky part is that you have to be careful to play exactly the same thing on both guitar tracks.

After we did that then I laid down a lead line as an opening signature riff at the start of the tune and then again at the end. Add a little delay and a little more distortion, a riff or two and a dash of attitude and there you have it, one smokin' lead intro.
So there you have it, one recording session down.