It wasn't without headaches. The original "Head Games" tracks were accidentally erased and I even lost the original BIAB .SGU file. Sarah and I redid the .SGU file, then we re-tracked Shannon Dyer's acoustic guitars, and Sarah did final vocals. I then added the final Real Tracks (Drums, Bass, Organ, and two Electric Rhythm Guitars) and did the mix - all this in one day. I settled on the "Jamerson slap bass" at the last moment. I took down the levels of the guitars during the verses and brought them up for the choruses.

"Come Closer To Me" and "Do It Completely" took a lot more time - several days, in fact. There are 3 different BIAB strings tracks (Slow Strings, Tremolo Strings, and Pizzicato Strings), Organ, Drums, Bass, and two Lead Guitar tracks on "Do It Completely".

The Pizzicato Strings worked fine for one hit per measure, but I wanted four hits per measure at certain parts, so the chords were duplicated to 4 chords per measure. ("Copy" and "Paste" is your friend.) I muted them for all the rest of the song.

I used two different Blues Guitar Leads for fills, but matched them to make it one guitar (It comes back in and builds at the end of the song.) The "swells" on the other strings occurred naturally, due to the A/B markers and only needed moderate editing.

For the acoustic tracks, I sometimes had Shannon Dyer double his rhythm tracks, or play a high strung (Nashville 6) acoustic, a 12 string, and even an electric sitar for one song. Sarah sang up to four harmony parts and I sometimes blended her main vocal with her scratch vocal at various points for some emphasis.

Sarah's scratch vocals were done with a Beyer Soundstar MK II, her main vocals and harmonies were through an MXL 960, and all acoustic guitars were recorded with one MXL 603S - all very inexpensive mics.

Last edited by Harvey Gerst; 01/11/11 10:45 AM.