The project that Jim was working on when I got to the studio was for his client, Wes. The client was in the process of making a rock oriented album. Jim was starting the mix for the first song so when Wes came in to sing he would be able to do it. The song has a lot of guitar tracks and too much of it could be distracting or not what Wes wants to hear while he sings. While Jim edited the song and listened to the instruments on the program, he sometimes muted one instrument in order to hear another better. He did that to hear what it sounded like as a single instrument as opposed to hearing all of the instruments together. Perhaps he also did it to get it to sound exactly the way he wanted. There were timing issues with the guitar that was played and recorded on the song. There is a lot that Jim could do, but since the chords were “hanging over” he couldn’t do much to fix it. Jim prefers to re-record the musician in order to capture best performance, rather than having to do a lot of editing. That is a great thing, in my opinion. What he decided to do was create an effect by putting in a delay. There was a part in the song that was “dead” and “dry” so Jim decided to add reverb/delay to it. He explained to me that messing with multiple effects to mask issues was not his favorite part, but sometimes has to be done.
Jim explained to me that this was a nine song project that had not been worked on in a couple of months. In addition, it had taken a while to even do the guitar parts, which makes the editing process a bit more challenging. He says usually it is easy for him to remember exactly the style and sound the client is hoping to achieve, but it gets difficult when hasn’t worked on a project in a long time and works with other clients in between. I can definitely understand why that would be complicated. In the second song, Jim edited out the “noise”, when the guitar is not playing, by deleting it. After adding effects to the guitar parts and making sure they sounded the way he wanted them too, he rendered it. Next was the third song, and it sounded different than the others. Jim said that he used mixes from a different song as a template for this song. I didn’t know you could do that, but it seems like it would save time during the process. For two of Wes’ songs, he has raw vocals. That means he recorded a vocal track before the final and perfect one, so he could remember the melody and specific way he wanted to sing it. Wes now has to come in and record the vocals to complete the songs.
Another client, John, came in for an appointment. He talked about his background and let Jim, and the bass guitar player, Chris, know why he wanted to start a project possibly at Allusion Studios. He had made a few songs for his family in his home studio. What he wants to do now is take the original songs but make them more professional maybe even more modern sounding. It was interesting for me to see Jim and Chris interact with this new client. I had never seen a new client start at the studio before. I really enjoyed hearing how much this meant to John and why he wants to make his music better. When we listened to some of his songs, I noticed that they only had lead vocals and a limited number of instruments. What Jim discussed with him was prices, dates for the project to begin, and the number of musicians needed to help with the songs.
The last client to come in today was Alisha. This day really showed me how packed and crazy one day at the studio can be! Jim and Alisha went through all three of her songs and listened to them. I could see the positive changes from the beginning of the process to what it has become now! Both Jim and Alisha made final edits on the song while listening. For example, in the first song, Alisha noticed when she sang the word “face” you could not hear the “c” sound. Instead of having Alisha sing it back in, he went to the trash can, on his computer, and took out one of the old tracks that she sang from the same line. He edited in only the word “face”. Then Jim rendered all of the virtual stuff and the first song was complete!
For the second song, they listened all the way through and then make final touches to see if there was anything they wanted to change, just like they did for the first one. I saw how Jim is a fair and professional person. He allowed Alisha to have so much say in the decisions made for her songs. I was not surprised because he had done that during the entire process but it was just exciting for me to see someone close to my age accomplish this. Once they finished, Jim rendered the different parts of the song, and then the whole song.
Lastly, they edited the third song. For example, at one point Jim asked Alisha if she liked the vocal volumes and she did. Jim mentioned that he thought he heard a wrong chord in the song. It turned out that he didn’t, but I wonder what would happen if there really were any wrong chords. Would she have to re-record them? How often does that occur? There was a certain part in the song where Alisha kind of sing/screams, and after that she wanted to add an interesting wind sound. Jim went to a website online and typed in what sound he was looking for. Many options were available and some sounded a lot better than others. Jim saved the one they agreed on liking and added it into the song. It was added like any other track would be and Jim faded it in and out. I believe this is called cross fading. In order to hear the new sound better, Jim put on the headphones, which he does from time to time. Then he had to make sure he and Alisha liked the volume of it. Finally, Jim rendered the song and mastered the CD. When doing this, the artist has to consider the order of the songs, meaning how they will appear as a final product. Also, Alisha had a picture that was going to go on the CD. The songs were finished and they sounded great!
