I am meeting some friends for lunch today. I will have a Reuben with chips, one of my faves. It will be joined with Iced Tea.
I am a retired dude and as many of you know our band is older than dirt. Almost all are retired although if we use 6 people one is still employed. Thanks to those of you who are employed for keeping some of my retirement funds coming. I spent 37 years in the computer industry and am a techie. I'm sure some of you are sick of technical info by now. This week I will share some of my passion for recording with you and some more techie BS.
Three years ago I announced to Ginny that I wanted to do my own recording. She asked, how much will it cost to get setup? My reply was 7 to 800 bucks.Right!! By the time I turned the computer on, it was 5 to 6 times that. I decided to do it right, up front, as I knew that once I tried it, it would be an expensive upgrade. She didn't blink and kept pretty quiet. That is a sign that I had better produce some results and BS won't cut it. I purchased a DIgi 002 rack, a Mac and monitors, and Pro Tools LE. This resulted in purchasing a subwoofer a week later. Keep in mind that I was not trained in Pro Tools. I had a sick feeling in my stomach when I first loaded Pro Tools. The screen went blank and back to the get started manual. It is 135 pages long . That is a long way to get started. The next night I figured out how to open a session. Now I get a screen with all kinds of things. Ginny went shopping one evening and I had the guitar and bass tracks down when she got home. It actually sounded great and she was impressed and it probably meant that we would be together in retirement. So I go from nobody, to recording engineer in less than a week. We were cooking! Just one more thing, The first songs I recorded I had to play perfectly as I didn't know how to edit. I finally figured out how to edit and it got easier by the minute.
So with that, the recording began. I did my first CD doing all the guitar work myself and our drummer did the percussion. When I was finished I sent a copy to each of the band members and I think the general reaction was "How in the H-ll did he do that????
Don't be afraid to do this folks. It is fun. I am playing the tracks this week from the second CD I did which is of our band. I did the recording, engineering, editing, mixing and mastering right here in our garage where I have my studio setup. I paid royalties and had copies made professionally. Our lead player, is a terrific arranger, and he and I did the arrangements. We are a cover band and do not necessarily want to sound like the original but, do our own thing. I do the bass work, some lead and some backup vocals.
This is a song that I first heard about 4 years ago. I was smitten and knew that I wanted to record it. I did it on my first CD and we added a rhythm track by Steve for this CD.
A Duane Eddy classic form the early 60s, Dance With The Guitar Man. A friend of mine, Jo Klein, does the vocals.
06 Dance With The Guitar Man.mp3
We change the pace with a Buddy Holly song, with Steve doing a harmony lead with me. Jerry, our singer does the vocals.
Its So Easy.
02 Its So Easy.mp3
Final song for today is Under The Boardwalk. The vocals on this are done by Mike who does some gigs with us.
01 Under The Boardwalk.mp3
G&L content today is my project this weekend. I received my Roland Guitar Synth on Thursday evening. I had a chance to install it Friday afternoon and it is a well thought out product as it is non invasive and mounts under the strap button. The tricky part is installing the pickup and CGT posted some great advice and pictures to my question last week. Here it is:

Some may think it is a kluge but I am okay with it as it is out of the way and intuitive to use. It can be straight guitar, blended with Synth, and Synth only. Here is a picture of the GK 3 pickup control assy.

After calibrating the pickup, I tested it and it does a mean Sax and many other things. It is a blast and I will probably use it for some recording but also for Sax while gigging. It is on one of my favorite Legacys and is going to stay there. The ultimate solution is to have a Roland ready guitar for the GR-20 but this is next best.
Finally, a question for today. Does your band do cover songs or are you really into performing original songs. If you are doing originals, what kind of an audience are you performing to? Sorry for such a long post today, but I wanted to give some background on the recording venture. Ginny wouldn't let me ramble this long, but would put me to work!-- Darwin
