S
Simon Beck
Member
Had a fun recording session with my elder son Thomas today. He is 14 and a keen folk and blues guitarist. He decided to record the classic New Orleans song "Iko Iko" - he recently heard Dr John's version and really liked it.
The first track was vocal and rhythm guitar. Thomas has a late-1960s E-Ros flat-top electro-acoustic that has a built-in magnetic pickup at the end of the neck, like a Gibson J-160E. I put a unidirectional mic in front of him primarily to pick up the vocal, but also the acoustic sound of the guitar. We also plugged the guitar into a solid-state amp with reverb, cut off the speaker by putting a plug in the headphone socket, and took a line out to channel 2 of my Fostex MR-8.
So now we had vocal and acoustic guitar on track 1 and the feed from the pickup via the amp on track 2. When this was finished, Thomas recorded the lead guitar on track 3 with the same guitar, just using the feed from the guitar amp.
I transferred tracks 1 and 2 to tracks 5 and 6 (the latter are permanently configured as a stereo pair) and recorded a Wurlitzer electric piano vamp using my Nord Electro 3 keyboard with tremolo on the now empty track 1. Last of all, I played my Stagg electric upright bass DI'd on track 2.
Once all the recording was finished, I transferred the tracks to Audacity on the PC and made some minor edits with Thomas overseeing the editing. For the most part we adjusted the level of the guitar/vocal track and deleted a couple of lead guitar licks that "trod on the toes" of the vocal. We mixed in a small amount of the electric signal from the rhythm guitar, which gave a nice trebly "jangle" to the overall sound.
Finally we mixed the song to mono (as you may know, that's my preferred way of working, and Thomas was fine about it).
All in all, a fun afternoon.
The first track was vocal and rhythm guitar. Thomas has a late-1960s E-Ros flat-top electro-acoustic that has a built-in magnetic pickup at the end of the neck, like a Gibson J-160E. I put a unidirectional mic in front of him primarily to pick up the vocal, but also the acoustic sound of the guitar. We also plugged the guitar into a solid-state amp with reverb, cut off the speaker by putting a plug in the headphone socket, and took a line out to channel 2 of my Fostex MR-8.
So now we had vocal and acoustic guitar on track 1 and the feed from the pickup via the amp on track 2. When this was finished, Thomas recorded the lead guitar on track 3 with the same guitar, just using the feed from the guitar amp.
I transferred tracks 1 and 2 to tracks 5 and 6 (the latter are permanently configured as a stereo pair) and recorded a Wurlitzer electric piano vamp using my Nord Electro 3 keyboard with tremolo on the now empty track 1. Last of all, I played my Stagg electric upright bass DI'd on track 2.
Once all the recording was finished, I transferred the tracks to Audacity on the PC and made some minor edits with Thomas overseeing the editing. For the most part we adjusted the level of the guitar/vocal track and deleted a couple of lead guitar licks that "trod on the toes" of the vocal. We mixed in a small amount of the electric signal from the rhythm guitar, which gave a nice trebly "jangle" to the overall sound.
Finally we mixed the song to mono (as you may know, that's my preferred way of working, and Thomas was fine about it).
All in all, a fun afternoon.
