The Crew, Part 2: Engineering

Elliot Simpson continues this curious trend of multi-
talented people involved with my project. A fellow student of David Tanenbaum at the Conservatory, Elliot can arguably dance circles around me while playing, yet he graciously accepted to provide his services as an engineer; he works both as one of the in-house recording people at SFCM and as a freelancer. Whimsical, resourceful, and otherwise adorable, he's just the best kind of person to have on the other side of the glass window. Keep your eyes and ears open for his own musical endeavors in the near future.

The Crew, Part 1: Photos

Matthew Washburn is one of those rare people who can do several things incredibly well. A talented double-bassist, with an active involvement in the San Francisco Chamber and New Music scenes, Matt also takes photos. As a matter of fact, he takes killer photos. Nearly every student at the Conservatory goes to him for headshots and the likes; given his uncanny ability to beautify, I thought I'd better make sure he was the one to take the album's pics. Matt will be shooting the Sunday session and then we might pick a location and do another shoot, depending on what we get. His use of lighting is absolutely striking to me, and I invite you to visit his website to see for yourselves.

A Great First Day of Tracking

Today was probably the best day I've EVER had in front of a mic. Everything (well, almost everything) went smoothly, and Elliot and I got all of the Scottish Lute stuff, the two Da Milano pieces, the Beatles tunes, and Genteel done. The guitar sounds warm and clear in the Osher Salon - actually even better than I was expecting!

We settled on using two mics only, a nice pair of Neumanns set up a couple of feet away, on tall stands. This gave us a very desireable tone with a minimum of fuss, and it proved to be quite forgiving with my slight swaying/moving while playing, alongside with my less-than-clear execution some times. They also seemed to pick the natural "sheen" of the room quite nicely - some would say that in this case less was definitely more!

There were a few disruptions, namely some overhead lights "clicking" from the heat, some unsolicited use of the adjacent freight elevator, and the occasional less-than-gracious interloper opening the door to the hall. Even with all that, we definitely should have enough material to go on to the next batch of pieces.

Now there will be a sort of 'break' until the next three sessions on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday if needed. I'm thinking of splitting up the remaining six pieces in two groups of three, and then see what happens. That will still give me about an hour for each piece, and even though the remaining material is harder than what I've done today, with some preventive practice I should be in shape for it.

Next, a series of posts introducing the people involved with this project.

T minus one

Tomorrow will be the first day of tracking; I really meant to take some pictures of the room during the weekend but two things happened:
1) I was busy working and practicing most of the day on Saturday;
and
2) I forgot that this would be the last Sunday of summer hours of the conservatory, meaning the building would be closed.

In any event, I should have some pictures taken during the next couple of tracking sessions, again partly for posterity and partly to see if something 'booklettable' turns out.
Still working on figuring out a title for the whole thing. I have a couple of ideas, but, as usual, this sort of process never seems to be easy.

I almost forgot - the idea for tomorrow would be first of all to scope out the sound, and then, hopefully, to track all of the Renaissance stuff (DaMilano+Scottish Lute rep) alongside with some of the "tried and true" things that I've been playing the longest (Genteel and the Beatles tunes). Of course, this might all go down the drain according to my actual form in front of the mikes. Here's wishing for a flowing and productive session!