HG&BG Session 4 - Tuesday is my turn in the barrel
Ah yes, and oldy but a goody.
The view from the 'other' side of the window as I took my turn in the recording area today.
Howdy folks! We got another session in the studio today, ostensibly for vocals but, well, I wasn't quite up for it. Achoo. Sniff.
I had to go borrow the Uber Microphone from R. and arrived at the studio to find the boys at work on Texas Rosie.
After the boys finished guitar work, we took a moment to review the vocals takes from the location recordings and decided we'd revisit half a dozen or so and see if we could get a better take, but despite cold and flu remedy and a cup of tea, Pete wasn't happy with my pipes, so we opted to start work on the harmonica stuff.
There was discussion about choice of sounds (clean, dirty, use the bullet mike, use the vocal mike, etc.) so we tried a few different approaches.
One thing about the combination of Shure Green bullet and a valve amp - almost anything you do with one of those rigs sounds good, it almost feels like cheating. I fiddled around with some Little Walter licks that come to life with the right amp/mike combo and was eventually persuaded by the guys to use it for a few songs.
I've been so used to a straight clean sound through a vocal mike that it takes a bit of getting used to.
With the luxury of time in the studio , we messed around with some new ideas. I hadn't planned on adding harp to every track, but Mr Wizard was keen on trying it out on a few songs that I thought were fine as they were, including adding a harp solo to Black Crow, which I think unnecessary as A: Rosie has yet to put his solo down, B: I've never done a solo in that song and C: I thought the harp should only play a chordal 'organ' like pattern (when I grow up I want to be a Hammond).
Nonetheless, down it went. When we finished, Pete asked me what I thought. I opined that I was looking forward to hearing the Guitar solo ;-) (Rosie, help me out here dude, they're making me play extra stuff)
When we tried the same thing with Hard Times, the song took on a new dimension. Same old blues and Suit Yourself got the Green Bullet treatment and the rougher sound fits in nicely with the songs.
Lastly, we decided to try and add some experimental harmonica sounds to Light In The Distance, with some interesting results. I don't think we nailed it yet, but there were some ideas that might bear fruit.
Taking a cue from Guitarist Land, I tried adding masses of delay a-la Led Zeppelin's version of 'When The Levee Breaks' , but the chord structure of the passage from the verse to the chorus is a strange progression and took me way out of Cross Harp style. I spent some time and various harps trying to find a position that suited it. On my next session, we'll try some Chromatic Harmonica, whack a bunch more pedals in the chain and see how far we can push the idea before we fall about laughing.
We're off to the Yackandandah Folk Festival this weekend but will be back in studio next week for another session or two.
