Brian Baker Session
2 weeks ago I recorded Brian Baker who is a guy I work with. He happens to bear the distinction of being from one of my 10 favorite cities in the US, Austin, TX.
A few weeks prior to the session I recorded I hosted a little mini-jam with Brian, Ed (another co-worker) and myself. We had never played with Brian before and had no way to assess his talents without playing with him, so we invited him over and went for it.
Brian plays a nice G&L guitar and sings, Ed played bass, and I sat in on the kit. I didn't spend any time setting up mics and figured we would just play and see how it goes, but 2 songs into the session I Imediately regretted not setting up or pressing record.
Brian is a talented dude, he is an excellent guitar player in the alternative, punk/pop kind of way, and in addition to having a ton of original material he is creative enough to make stuff up. He is able to just go with a thought and a chord progression and make a song on the fly.
So now to this session that I recorded. I played drums, Brian played guitar and sang. The idea was to record the session freeform (which I am getting better and better at) and see what would come of it. What we got was about 13 songs of Brian playing solid solo guitar with me doing my best to keep time. The songs are all good (interesting and creative) albeit raw. The recording is pretty good too, although I am still struggling with the vocal levels. I clearly am having troubles dealing with the proximity issue still, and without having someone ride the faders I can't imagine that I could do better. I might try some limiting/condensing as a postprocess step, but I really like the natural sound that comes from leaving tracks unprocessed.
So I pulled a handful of track off and burned a cd for Brian, and it occured to me to ask him if it was OK to share the tracks and post them here on my blog. He replied "let me finish going through them to see which ones I won't be embarrased to share". So if Brian isn't too embarrased I will post a track or two here on the blog.
Needless to say it was fun, and educational for me.
Here are some sample tracks:
Brian Baker One
Brian Baker Two
Brian Baker Seven
You can find Brian's Texas TISM project here.
A few weeks prior to the session I recorded I hosted a little mini-jam with Brian, Ed (another co-worker) and myself. We had never played with Brian before and had no way to assess his talents without playing with him, so we invited him over and went for it.
Brian plays a nice G&L guitar and sings, Ed played bass, and I sat in on the kit. I didn't spend any time setting up mics and figured we would just play and see how it goes, but 2 songs into the session I Imediately regretted not setting up or pressing record.
Brian is a talented dude, he is an excellent guitar player in the alternative, punk/pop kind of way, and in addition to having a ton of original material he is creative enough to make stuff up. He is able to just go with a thought and a chord progression and make a song on the fly.
So now to this session that I recorded. I played drums, Brian played guitar and sang. The idea was to record the session freeform (which I am getting better and better at) and see what would come of it. What we got was about 13 songs of Brian playing solid solo guitar with me doing my best to keep time. The songs are all good (interesting and creative) albeit raw. The recording is pretty good too, although I am still struggling with the vocal levels. I clearly am having troubles dealing with the proximity issue still, and without having someone ride the faders I can't imagine that I could do better. I might try some limiting/condensing as a postprocess step, but I really like the natural sound that comes from leaving tracks unprocessed.
So I pulled a handful of track off and burned a cd for Brian, and it occured to me to ask him if it was OK to share the tracks and post them here on my blog. He replied "let me finish going through them to see which ones I won't be embarrased to share". So if Brian isn't too embarrased I will post a track or two here on the blog.
Needless to say it was fun, and educational for me.
Here are some sample tracks:
Brian Baker One
Brian Baker Two
Brian Baker Seven
You can find Brian's Texas TISM project here.
posted by Juniorrocker at 5:13 PM
1 Comments:
Can I just say how rocker you sound when you write things like "ride the faders?"
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