Thursday, August 25, 2011

Take the Time

I'm still learning to use my BOSS BR-600 recording "studio".   Here's a Freddy Jones Band cover. That's me on guitar, me on lead vocals, and me on backing vocals. :-)



Update: learned the auto-punch-in/out feature. Went back and edited out some of the really bad off-key warbles, and changed the harmonies on the "a matter of your pride" to lower harmonies which is more like the original, and fixed my big guitar flub-up near the end. Not sure I like the lower harmonies as well as the higher ones I used before. And I can hear a couple of editing errors in there as well. But ... progress.

Ok, now I re-did the whole thing because I liked the higher harmonies better, the repeated "matter of your pride", and this time it's consistent guitar all the way through, baby. Added a couple more harmonies and took the thicker ones out.



3 comments:

  1. Pretty neat! The new, digital recording studios are a lot nicer than the cassette tape kind that I have.

    There are a couple of times that it seems there are three Phils singing at the same time. The idea of three Phils is disconcerting to say the least. Did you sing a track while playing, or record all the vocals separately?

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  2. Yes, there are a few places there are three Phil's singing at the same time, and I am toying with adding another track smattered with a few more backing vocals that might bring it to four in places ... maybe still three.

    On this one I recorded all vocal tracks separately. Which is harder for me than one migh think... I have to sing in my head while I play to keep track of where I am. I don't think in "bars" ... and then I have to remember "did I leave some space in there between verses? How much did I leave for the 'break' if there was one?

    On other songs I know very well, I've recorded some self "demos" where I do the sing and play at the same time. But especially when you don't know the song like the back of your hand, it's easy to throw myself off with a bad chord or a forgotten lyric, and while my mind works on recovering - a vocal warbles off key because apparently I don't have enough brain power... at least not enough brain power training, to hold it all together while making a correction or spending too many cycles thinking ahead.

    I should re-do this one as I came in too hot on the vocals, and there's one spot where the vocals are particularly warbly and they shouldn't be.

    But if I knew how to use the thing correctly, I could program in punch in and punch outs and get those parts right without starting over.

    It'll, ahem, "take time". :-)

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  3. The other big advantage of recording the instrumental track and lead vocal track separately (outside of doubling your chance of getting through the whole thing without screwing up, and the increased quality of each with one less distraction ... if you screw up on either you don't have to re-record both.

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