grooves, feel, tempo, key

a couple of disclaimers. one, this is the way we did it, not the way you have to do it. two, if i have repeated myself at all, my apologies.

"bed" tracks are not something you do from your bedroom (but you could) or at night (but quite often you do). bed tracks is a term referring to the "bed" to upon which all other tracks shall be recorded, superimposed, or overdubbed.

you see, you might think that when you hear a song on the radio that whatever you are hearing in terms of instrumentation, was recorded by putting a bunch of musicians in a room and hitting the red button labeled record. it seems natural that whatever you are hearing like bassists, violinists, triangle players, percussionists, background singers, etc., were all sitting together when this sound was made. in fact, it is sometimes. this is called a "live recording". a live recording can be made in front of an audience and that is what most people think of when they hear "live" recording. but in fact, a live recording is referring to the recording and not whether they are at the gig right in front of you. now, sometimes, often times, people will fix after the fact, or, doctor up live recordings and call them live. so , there you have it. the one big advantage of recording live, especially with a rock band, is the energy gotten from playing together or being in front of a "live" audience. but, the disadvantage of recording live is that the control of sound is compromised by being recorded in big live venues. of, course i'm not saying live albums aren't good, i'm just saying to compare for instance an example of a band that you love their live recording and compare it to the studio version. the studio version's sound is usually a lot tighter among other things. for example freebird live/album version. stairway to heaven....etc.

but sometimes and especially since say sgt pepper's lonely hearts club band in 1967, the ideas bands would have to put into song would be too complicated for them to replicate on stage. well, along comes a guy named les paul (1940's and 1950's) and inventes a process whereby you can record your band and add parts to it later. they call it multi-tracking and it is the practice of over-dubbing more instruments on the recording. crazy, huh?

my last cd 'finally home' was recorded with many overdubs of pedal steel guitars, background harmonies, lots of guitars and percussion. it sounded great. this cd is more of a live recording. there are a few parts to be added but it is mainly just us 4 or 5 guys sitting in a room playing.

so, to make these bed tracks you get the main 4 or 5 guys in there and play the song as well as you can, then to that you will add whatever extra instrumentation you think you need to make it groovy.

these bed tracks are all important. if they suck, the whole thing does. i don't know if there is any exception to this. if you can not get the beds to sound great, you will never get the track as a whole to sound good.

sometimes you can have a great song that won't make a great recording. sometimes this is because you have not found one of these factors:

groove, feel, tempo, key

brown eyed girl in a reggae style, stairway to heaven in a swing style, or i wanna rock and roll all night and party every day sung by robert goulet or pat boone.

many songs we did had to be dug for. i often would come in with things too fast. usually i was singing in the key i needed but sometimes moving it up a key or two might add excitement. one song called "the magnolia tree down on highway 7" i wrote as a straight ahead old school country song but it sounded just ok when we laid it down. buk and joe and david and i tried different ideas until david asked joe vitale what groove he does on "teach your children", and joe is the exact guy to ask that question to, and we tried that. bingo. the groove popped. but then we moved it down a key and a half and buk had me sing it like i was just about going to sleep. so i went in there and yawned and mellowed out, turned the light down and i nailed it. but without the direction of those around me, the recording just wouldn't be as good as it turned out. this is a good example of a recording we did live. but i actually went back and fixed a few things on this one, but that's all it needed- an acoustic, a bass, me and oh yeeeeah,,,, joe vitale played his black upholstered drum seat instead of a snare. he tried all kinds of sounds and wound up on hitting his drum throne with two sticks.

but on another song of mine called "everything happens on saturday, buk added a chorous of guitars with 2 tracks of 12 string jangle. wait until you hear it. so  i guess we have both live recordings and overdubbed songs on this cd.

i know this we have done well in picking the grooves, feel, tempo, keys.

ok i guess next step is the overdubs.. i'll tell you what i know about that next time. thanks for reading.