Janis' Diary - Part 4
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It's kind of refreshing to read Tina's take on everything, since she's seeing it all for the first time! Here are some of my own reflections. Overdubbing and editing are, for me, the most tedious part of the process. Particularly now, when we work in a digital environment (meaning we put the music into a computer, and then edit from there) that's really the engineer's forte. I've worked around studios and computers most of my life (I actually worked on programming in New York back in 1968, when I was just a kid!), but about a decade ago I decided to stop learning the music software programs. It was software or writing, and I made the obvious choice. So for me, when I lay down a guitar part in ten minutes, then Marc needs an hour to edit around it, it's very boring. I got a big stack of books out of the library for this phase, because even though it's boring, I need to be there. If Marc thinks a cymbal is a little out of time and moves it, I need to be the one to say "Yep, right" or "No, I liked it like that". If someone thinks a note is a little out of tune, and wants to fix it, it has to be my call whether they should, or whether it needs to be left alone. Even the extraneous noises Marc takes out - the sound of birds in the background of a guitar lick, for instance - are sometimes things I want left alone. If I sound really bossy, I'm not. Fortunately, Marc usually agrees with me! After Brock's overdubbing I took two days off, while Philip and Marc built a "guitar station". The home studio has low ceiling, cement walls, just about everything you don't want for good sound. They covered one wall with cloth and foam, stacked guitar cases on another, and in the middle, put three guitar microphones, a chair, a stool for my picks, and all of my guitars, spread in a circle all around my chair. We kept some of the guitar parts I'd recorded during the sessions, but others really had to go, so that week we did nine main parts and a bunch of smaller overdubs. We had to wait until Sunday for the nylon guitar on "Mary's Eyes", because there wouldn't be any trucks going by then! Ah, this glamour life…. |
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