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Well, even in a recording session, being a one-man act is more of an art than science.  While I know how to sequence life-like drums and play (or pretend to) all other instruments well enough to create full-band recordings on my own, doing it well is definitely not an easy affair.

One of the things I have problems with is setting the right tempo for my songs.  Even though I play them often, in the process of programming drums and recording the rhythm guitar, I sometimes forget to sing — and the resulting song has tempos that felt perfect when it was just guitar and drums, but unfit for vocals.  Tiny Toon, arguably the simplest among my songs on my first album, was recorded 3 times before I got close to being in the right tempo — and to this day I still wonder if the recording’s a bit too fast.

So, with these lessons in mind, I’m going to propose this following sequence for my upcoming sessions:

1. Sequence the basic drum grooves
2. Record scratch rhythm guitars.  And I do mean scratch — the purpose of these tracks is to set up the next step, which is,
3. Record the (scratch) lead vocal.  Fine tune and redo #1 and #2 if necessary. Build in micro-tempo changes for transitions, different sections of songs, etc.
4. Build out the real drum sequences, complete with all the fills.
5. Record the real rhythm guitars.
6. Record bass,
7. Backing vocals (and redo lead vocals if necessary)
8. and finally, lead guitars.

This ought to be a fool-proof and efficient way to record.  The only concern I have is how early in the process lead vocals come.  Lead vocals are often the last thing in normal recording sessions, for a reason.  It’s just hard for singers to really get into the songs when the backing tracks are so bare.  So I fully expect to redo pretty much all of lead vocals at the end.

Truth be told, steps 6-8 are really my favorite parts — so until I get there, recording a song is a rather grinding hard work that requires a lot of patience.  But I tell you, the pay off is great!  It is super fun to experiment and build arrangements once the tempos are right and the basic tracks are kick-ass.

I’m mostly finished writing the sound track for America’s Next Felon.  All that remains is just fleshing out the sketches, mix ‘em and master ‘em.

The end is near — but this stage always takes surprisingly long. Like this week I spent over 2 hours polishing up drum sequencing to one heavy metal track that’s about 1.5 minutes long. It’s still not great, really, but it’ll have to do — with film music, I focus on the task at hand, which is to create an aural backdrop to what’s going on the screen. The music is not the focus — as long as it’s polished enough not to be distracting, it’s fine. But it’s one thing to sketch out music, it’s quite another to make it sound solid and “finished!”

Still, I enjoy this part of the process. It’s fun to see the ideas turning into realized pieces of music. A recording is a process where it just doesn’t sound good until the very end — until then, what I’m hearing is what the music can be, not what it is.

I’m slugging away at it. It will end.