Back on It

 Finally!  A productive weekend!  I knew one of these days it would happen.  I lightly promised myself last year when I started working on the "jazz machine" album that I would get it done within one year's worth of time (which would be a first for me), and with the deadline now in the not too distant future, I was beginning to sweat a bit.  I have a rough list of what I need to get done on it and the list IS dwindling, however I still have one track that needs some serious work so all attention must turn to focus on that particular issue.

Work on "Didn't I Tell You?", my most recently composed track on the album, did commence this weekend and the track is sounding pretty good.  It's not exactly finished, per se, but it's in a spot where I feel comfortable with it.  My soloing went well this weekend and I completed it in a more true fashion, where I improvised the whole thing and then just did some polishing of it here and there.  That's the approach I want to be able to take more in the future but I still have some mountains to climb in order to get there.  The only other thing I'll say about it is that, while the solo and playing are great, I haven't yet found the right spot for it to sit in the mix so I'll need to tweak that a bit.  Apart from this task, I also finally fixed the intro lead guitar on the track "Tonight, You Reached Me" since there was just something about it that didn't sound quite right to me.  I had thought it was the drum; I think in the end it was that the guitar part was too complex that early in the song, and so I simply kept dumbing it down until it sounded right.  Weird, and once again, I had to pull back on how much I'm playing.

Besides music related news, I'm also now fully vaxxed!  The second vax hit me semi-hard and kept me off my feet on Friday so I of course was concerned that it would screw up yet another weekend of mine.  It didn't so all was good in the nd.  I will add that I still can't believe how much my arm hurt once the sick feeling was pulsing through my body.  It literally felt like someone had put a bullet into my arm and it made me check more than once, just in case.

Per checking my notes yesterday, it looks like I started the "jazz machine" sessions around 8/9/2020 so I actually have more time than I thought.  For some reason, I thought I started recording last July but maybe I did the writing sessions then?  Who knows.  The answer's probably in this very blog somewhere and I'm simply too lazy to go look for it.

Scratch It

 Today's small recording tip, of which I've only just recently completely embraced as well, is fully utilizing the concept of scratch tracks when recording new material.  I don't know why I haven't been doing this myself all of these years but my best answer is that I simply got into a habit of worrying about space on tape (back in the old days, that is) and hadn't really given it much thought since then.  I sometimes tend to get into these ruts with doing things and can't always 'unthink' my way out of them easily.  Since no one is really using tape anymore, well, wasting space on tape has completely gone the way of the dodo, and the idea of using scratch tracks is something I picked up from someone a couple years back.

I've been using this concept largely on my current "jazz machine" album and it's been quite helpful.  I even use scratch drums, if you will, in order to get an overall layout and feel for the track with the drums included.  I usually find or create the main pattern for the drums up front (I use EZDrummer) but I just use it as is, with little to no mods, embellishments, etc., and loop it across the entire song.  I then go back later and work on making the drums more interesting, adding fills and what not, and since these are all what they call virtual instruments, it's as simple as can be and no harm is done at all to the track.  In short, it's pretty slick.  I also usually commit the looped scratch track to dedicated audio, just to free up memory in my Mac since running too many virtual instruments gets rather resource intensive, and then I'll delete it later on once I have my final track created.  It's simply a great way to get a feel for the drums on the song right up front.

For guitars, I purchased a Digidesign Eleven a few years back when they were pretty much giving them away brand new and I use this heavily for all of my scratch guitar tracks.  The unit has a fairly decent amp simulated sound right out of the box and since the unit is already connected to Pro Tools via the interface, it's super simple to just plug in a guitar, choose a setting, and hit record.  Once that's complete, and maybe it's not the best approach but is certainly easy and quick, I then tend to use a keyboard based bass synth patch to help me work out a rough bass track, and the end result is a fairly good representation of what the song will sound like with guitars, bass, and drums.  I then give this rough version of the song quite a few listens.

Another wonderful advantage of using scratch tracks in this manner is that I sometimes decide to move whole sections of the song around after being able to listen to it a bit, and sometimes I might add, say, a second or third bridge, and I'd personally rather do this with the scratch track versus the real track.  You can do it on the real track, mind you, but sometimes getting the pieces to meld together can be slightly tricky.  My overall goal lately, though, is to get my scratch track laid out on the Pro Tools grid as close as possible to how I want the real track to be, and only then do I start working on recording the real parts.  It also allows me to spend more time and focus on microphone selection, placement, preamp settings, and what not when recording the real parts since I already have all the other stuff worked out.

Just thought I'd share that tidbit.  Scratch tracks are definitely your friend so have no fear of them!