Wednesday - January 14th, 2009: 10am to 2:30pm - Somewhat of a blur as far as my memory is concerned. I will do my best to recall the day. Rich and I arrived at the studio early in order to do a couple of edits and track bounces on the song, 'Pray'. Russ arrived at 11 am and we listened to the day before drum track. After we all agreed that it was good...we decided to lay down a snare drum part on the chorus of the song.
We set up the snare drum out in the hallway in order to capture the natural reverb from the cathedral ceilings. We recorded a wooden snare drum march on one track, then we doubled it with a brass snare recorded the same way. The two drums play together, plus the natural reverb of the hallway made the two drums sound like a marching band. Russ wanted to record a rockabilly drum part on the end of the song, which we doubled. After listening to what we recorded we decided that the ending was getting to noisy...so we dropped it.
With the chorus snare drum parts recorded, we decided to add a Timpani drum part to it. We spent much time looking for the perfect timpani part and getting it to sound just right. Once we recorded the timpani, Russ recorded a cymbal part to rhythmically accent the percussion part. The cymbals sounded alright but there was something missing. So, I had an idea of reversing the cymbal so it actually swells in backwards...between this and the cymbal hit of the drum set...we got a pretty beefy rhythm section that we were all happy with.
After a long day of recording, we were all pretty tired and decided to call it a week. Recording will resume next week, Tuesday, January 20th, 2009. We plan to record an ending drum track, at this point not sure what it's going to be. Hopefully inspiration strikes! Rich is working on writing a fife part that will lay over the bridge and chorus, which I'm excited to hear...this session will probably be, Wednesday, January 21st, 2009.Until next time, Hutch
