Laying down the first tracks
The first “actual” recording session was Thursday, May 11, 2006. Michael T. had charted “Once-In-While Love,” using the Nashville Numbers system, based on the version I had sent earlier, although my first run-through revealed a couple of differences in how I played it. The tune had changed slightly since the earlier recording; playing the song with other musicians had knocked the rough edges off, as it were, so Michael noted the differences on his charts.
There were a couple of folks in the studio: Steve Nall engineered and a young fellow named Byron was sitting in, as he was interested in how bluegrass was recorded. There was a job in Hyden he was trying to get which required that he have some knowledge of bluegrass. I told him that I only played a little bluegrass, though I knew a fair amount about it.
Because my Taylor guitar has a pretty good onboard pickup, we just plugged it into the board and did the recording without me getting into isolation. That meant that I could listen to the click track (actually drums) without headphones, which made the task a bit easier. Even so, it took four or five passes before I got two satisfactory recordings (left and right) and even then, I had to re-record just the chorus, which uses an Am chord at the fifth position, so it could be punched in. The jump from open position to the closed fifth just didn’t happen smoothly enough. Bless Pro Tools, though, for making that much easier than in the old days, when an artist had to play along with the prior recording and the engineer had to literally punch the ‘record’ button at the right moment to add the new section.
After getting the tracks down, I got in the isolation booth and sang a ’scratch’ vocal track. Nall burned the quick mix to a CD and the session was over. Total time: slightly less than two hours.
Here’s a tutorial on the Nashville Number System, in case you are not familiar with it: http://www.alanhorvath.com/LSN5.php