I’m about to head down to “The Outhouse” – my personal studio, which frankly is stretching the term quite a bit to use it in my context – and thought I’d jot down something that has been floating around in my head for a while.
Once upon a time when you recorded an album you wrote the songs somewhere else, and then EVERYTHING happened at the studio – all the parts got recorded, edited, mixed. You probably sent the master tapes to a Mastering Studio via mail or courier or UPS if they existed.
But most of the work got done at the Studio.
It Should be called CHRIST-mas has had a real hybrid approach. “Love came down at Christmas” was all recorded in the Outhouse, and I brought in a DVD with the audio files (they are MICH too large to bother with the internet transfer process). Some of the other tunes – Away in a Manger, Go Tell It – were recorded Live with a few overdubs, although we were all in separate rooms.
Others – the title track, Break Forth, While Shepherds did What? – were recorded piecemeal. Mostly that means Piano and Drums were recorded, then we added Bass and Saxes at different times.
In addition, some of the recorded tracks have been burned to disc so I could bring them back to the Outhouse and do some audio editing – shift notes that were slightly out of time or out of tune. Fortunately it’s the kind of stuff that I enjoy doing, and will really make a difference in the listenability of the final product.
I can’t say it was planned that way from the start. As Joey Stuckey and I mapped out the process, it became apparent between ALL of the schedules involved that the way we did it was going to be the best way to make this album happen.
