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Jared R Hewitt
Last night I went to my first studio session (vocal session) with an individual who wrote a song to encourage the police force. I took note of everything that occured and what was used to run the session. Kevin's DAW was Cubase and the session started with vocal recording. A take had already been recorded and Kevin told me he was "comping vocals". Comping is short for compiling: "the perfect vocal performance from multiple tracks is one of the most common editing tasts that DAW users undertake." Kevin took a second take of the vocal line for the intro, verses, choruses and end. All takes were recorded on a separate channel and I noticed that the singer was good enough that he didn't have to do many takes to get the melodies to match up pitch-wise with his original vocal line. After the vocal was laid, Kevin tracked out guitar using Kontakt's Native Instruments Strummed Acoustic. He recorded the verses, and chorus (copying and pasting the chorus parts) and added different strums to the changes and breaks to the song. I also noticed that he triggered the track with one of the keys on the board inside of SA. I'll have to ask him how de did that. He then recorded keys using NI The Giant which he said is good for recording Country tracks. He laid organ after articulating with slides and utilizing the pitch wheel to give it a real organ feel. Last he pulled out Moog's Grandmother and doubled a synth bass on top of the live bass track that was created and added a synth line towards the end of the song. The Grandmother is an analog synthesizer and Step Sequencer. I'm still a little unclear on the difference between Analalog and Digital Circuits. The end of the session consisted of dry mixing. - Session End
Discussion: Kevin stated to me that one of the most important things to do as an AE and Producer is to create a template of sounds that give you your musical identity. I saw this to be a type of "fingerprint" that is identifiable to listeners. People should know your sound by your "fingerprint". He told me when I track, not to spend so much time searching libraries. I need to create on a consistant basis and do hundreds of covers (within the genre I'm looking to produce) professaional mixes. He told me to make comparisons to professional mixes and reference my tracks on different speakers, (studio monitors, phone, car). Kevin told me that, "everything around me is creatively inspiring or transparent." I saw that as creativity can come from what's around you and some things are just to be appreciated for what they are which also adds to the creative process. He also implied that many people are only one step away when it comes to producing effectively with what they have. You just have to get past that one hurdle and practice consistantly and the rest will come with time.
Action Items:
-Create a sound template that give me a "fingerprint"
-Begin Tracking Covers
-Focus on making great use of the equipment that I already have.
