In The Studio

[Sailor Steve]

DAY SEVEN

I'm sort of out of the loop now, but we're keeping each other posted as to what's going on. Charles, Clay and Kelly discussed the pros and cons of either having them go in one at a time or both together. They decided that to discuss it the three of them would meet at the studio yesterday. They started working on different sounds through Kelly's new processor. They liked some of the sounds they were getting, but for feedback they are both going to need their amplifiers, micced (see, I'm learning) up to the mixing board. Charles and Clay started bouncing ideas off one another, and Kelly decided that they would probably accomplish more together than separately, so that's the way they're going to do it.

They had some problems with one song, mainly because Clay has some ideas he hasn't worked out yet. In four hours they only got the rythm tracks done for one song, plus a fill run (one that goes while all the other instruments stop). Not much, but they're still figuring out how they want to do it.

Charles had a funny side-note, similar to one of mine. I told the story about active and passive pickups, and how my processor is giving a good active sound with passive electronics. When they were first meeting Kelly, Charles was worried about CuBase, the program Kelly prefers, compared to ProTools, "The Industry Standard". Some people feel that ProTools is the industry standard solely because they were first, and did the best advertising. True or not, Kelly asserted that any program could be ported into any other, and it was the guy twiddling the knobs that made the difference. The proof is in the pudding, which means that the final result is the only thing that counts.

So Kelly confided to me at one point that he doesn't really like EMG pickups, and he's not that fond of Scheckter guitars. So Charles is playing his Scheckter with EMGs and Kelly is listening to the playback and is absolutely praising the sounds he's hearing. The final answer is in the player; not so much that some people can make any guitar sound good, but that some instruments and some players are just suited for each other. I'm getting just the sound I want out of my bass now, and Charles gets the sound that's right for him out of the Scheckter.

I guess it's the same with anything, really. Others may not like your car, but if it's the one that fits you then nothing else matters. We are getting the sounds we want, and the engineer is picking up on that, and we think we have something special. And if not, at least it feels right to us.

So, four hours down the drain, not a lot accomplished, but we feel like we're on the right track. We'll see.