Adding Bass & Drums
After all the base guitar tracks and scratch vocals had been done, it was time to begin adding the remaining instrumentation. Producer Michael T. and I had discussed which bass player I would use and I had said that my friend Steve R. would do just fine. On November 15, he and I rode down to Lexington for the session.
As often happens, the bass guitar he brought had a ground fault, resulting in a nasty hum in the signal. Michael T. got a bass the studio kept around and gave that to him to play but the hum remained. The students and engineer chased the hum for a bit, finally running it down and resolving it.
This is a very common problem with instruments and gear used to perform out: hauling instruments and gear around results in repeated beatings, so that even the best instruments and gear frequently develop similar problems, which are a bit hard to hear in a noisy bar. They’re not hard to hear in a studio and can ruin a session, not to mention the recording. A professional engineer should not allow you to use an instrument with a ground fault, even when the studio has software that will remove that particular noise, because it will also remove any desired signal in that frequency range as well. Before going to the studio, check any instrument you plan to use for hum: plug it into a clean amplification system and listen using headphones, if at all possible.
If you are up in years (as I am), be sure that all the loud music you listened to over the years hasn’t damaged your hearing. A hearing test is simple and not expensive and the odds are you will find some hearing loss in the upper registers. Contrary to the belief of many classical players, performing in orchestras can most definitely result in hearing loss, particularly for players sitting in front of the brass section. If you are still young and have all your hearing, it is a most excellent idea to purchase a pair of custom made earplugs. These are molded to fit your ear canal and reduce the overall decibel level without cutting out particular features. They are great for talking in noisy bars, too, because you wear them, you can hear just fine, while others around you are shouting and straining to hear.
Back to the session: Steve R. and the drummer, Eric W., got straight to work and laid down the tracks for six tunes over the course of about seven hours, with a one-hour lunch break. Eric, who plays in a band with Michael T., was very fast to pick up a tune, so that retakes where quite limited. Steve R. knew most of the songs and was also very fast at working out the bass parts. There was a bit of fixing up here and there along the way but the whole session went along very quickly.
Of course, having a drummer work on a tune can reveal flaws in the structure of a song. One of my earliest tunes, called “I Can Sing a Country Song,” turned out to have several measures of different length. (Blush) I blamed it on my ignorance at the time of writing, when I just wrote what I heard in my head. Eric charted the errant measures and adjusted his drumming accordingly and the whole thing sounded perfectly fine. Score one for a ‘real’ music education.
Eric also added congas to several tunes (Producer Michael is a Caribbean music lover), which added excellent flavor to the tunes, particularly to a G-minor blues tune called “I Got My Doubts About You, Boy,” which is a song about a musician I used to know. Michael got into the tune and dug up several percussion instruments to add, so that by the time we were done, that tune had really stood up. Steve R. said that before this session, he hadn’t really cared for the tune, but afterwards, he really liked it.
We wrapped up the session by about 5:30 p.m. and Steve and I headed back to Louisville, in the dark and in the rain, not my favorite weather for driving. Even though I didn’t ‘do’ anything during this session, I was worn out from pacing around and bagged it early.