[Bob Womack]

Now, to the session. I was able to hold onto the final mic compliment, three TLM170s and one TLM103 for the bass. The producer arrived at 1:30 and the musicians at 2:00. As they began looking over the charts, I began setting the mics, setting trims, and honing the headphone mix per the requests. I switched out a stand to accommodate cellist's request for a position shift. Finally it was time to start recording at 2:25.

We began with two-note drones under the intro on the double bass. I tracked those independently. Just for purposes of depth, I decided to double track everything. The real fullness of a string ensemble comes alive with slight pitch and timing errors that produce the choral effect when blended together. When you are dealing with excellent, union-scale musicians who are sight-reading, you are going to get great results but there will be gaffs and clams that have to be punched in and a second pass helps blend things down.

The basic tracks involved the whol quartet and were written two-deep, ie., the arranger often wrote two parts for each instrument to be played in two separate passes. We'd then double each pass for a total of four sets of four tracks, one for each instrument, or sixteen tracks. Add to that specials or solos (doubled) and a typical section had eighteen tracks of strings. We punched in a few times and broke the sections up into legato (slow, deliberate) and staccato (faster) sections, to make it easier on the musicians. The violinist was excellent and had just the right touch. My sight-reading is rusty, I'm distracted by operating the gear, and darn it, the measure numbers in a multiple-take time line never match the silly score, so I'm constantly trying to figure out where we want to go. If I could trust that we wouldn't revisit any take other than the master take, I'd dump the others and pull the master to the head of the project so the measures matched. I may fiddle with that next time around by moving the unused takes out past the master in the time line.

Eve with a ten-minute break in the middle, the recording was finished right on time at 4:00. The violinist asked me to audition a few mics for him and suggest possible mics for him to record at home so we spent a few minutes fiddling and talking. When he was gone, my co-producer asked that I spit out a mix for her to share with the vocalist who'll be doing the tracks. Reconfiguring the workstation from split outputs for monitoring to stereo summing to generate a mix took about fifteen minutes and whipping up a quick scratch mix took me beyond 5:00. From there it was a matter of returning the sundry mics, mic stands, and music stands to their homes and putting the studio back to bed for the night. I made it out at around 6:00pm.

We've got a really good start on the song, now, and I'm looking forward to the next overdubs. I'll probably be taking in some of my electric guitar rig to record subtle accents here and there. We're looking for some rhythm accents as well. From there it will be vocals, final touches, and a mix.

Bob