In 2012, when my son David was home from college for the Christmas break and for the summer, I cajoled him into letting me record him playing the drums. I played bass along with him and then overdubbed guitars later.
One of them I put up here shortly after, but then found myself unable to get my overdubs done on the other couple, and they sat around gathering dust, until after the COVID-19 pandemic was in full swing. I listened to them, and I realized a couple of them weren't that far from being finished, and decided to do so.
So here they are...
We did this recording on the second weekend of the New Year, if I remember correctly. It's a tune most associated with Ray Charles, but my main inspiration in wanting to do it came from an instrumental version that John Scofield did on his 2005 tribute album That's What I Say: John Scofield Plays the Music of Ray Charles. I stole the basic grooves that Scofield used, but left the structure of the verses, chorus, and bridge the way they are originally rather than the slightly altered way Scofield did it. I decided, perhaps unwisely, to sing it rather than do it instrumentally.
This was recorded into the computer using three microphones on the drum kit: one on the bass drum (a.k.a. the kick), one on his left side near the snare drum, and one on his right side above a bit. I played bass along with him through headphones.
Over the next couple of weekends, I overdubbed a better bass part, a couple of tracks of guitar, and a vocal. Then I sat down and tried to mix it all together and get it to sound good. That was the most time-consuming part, since I don't really know what I'm doing, and it required a lot of trial and error to get it presentable. Posted 7 April 2020.
This one also came from the January recording session. This is a version of "That Road," an instrumental by Robben Ford that was recorded on the album Live in Tokyo – Larry Carlton & Robben Ford from 2007. We recorded this by listening through headphones to the original and playing along with it. It's mostly a one-chord groove. There's a melody of sorts, with a really cool turn at the end, followed by a guitar solo (Carlton), followed by another guitar solo (Ford), then the melody gets repeated at the end. As a result, our version also has two guitar solos, both by me. I should probably have edited it down to one, but I couldn't decide to actually expunge either of them. Posted 22 April 2020.
This is a version of "Cucumber Slumber," a jam tune by Joe Zawinul and Alphonso Johnson from the Weather Report album Mysterious Traveler from 1974. As with "That Road" earlier, we recorded this by listening through headphones to the original and playing along with it.
The drums on this and the next tune were recorded into the computer using four microphones on the drum kit: one on the bass drum (a.k.a. the kick), one on the snare drum, and two overheads.
When I picked this up again this year, I decided it would be fun to try to cop a few parts from some of the solos that Zawinul and Wayne Shorter played on the original. I learned the parts and played them on guitar. Then I used a new plugin I bought, MIDI Guitar 2 from Jam Origin, to convert my playing from audio into MIDI note messages. Then I assigned the MIDI tracks to a Fender Rhodes piano patch in the Lounge Lizard electric piano synthesizer, and to a sax patch in the Dimension Pro synthesizer. In most of the sax parts I left the guitar sound in too so it's more like an effect, but the keyboard solo section has just the synthesizer sound. Posted 15 May 2020.
"Red"
This is a version of "Red," a number written by Robert Fripp from the King Crimson album Red from 1974. As with the previous couple of recordings, we recorded this with David listening through headphones to the original and playing along with it.
I poked a stick at it now and again over the last eight years, and finally knuckled down and learned the bass and guitar parts, and tracked them this summer. Posted 7 September 2020.This was a lot of work but also a ton of fun. There are a few inevitable flat spots, but all in all I'm pretty happy with the results. I'm particularly proud of my bass playing back there in 2012 :-)
Last updated 7 September 2020