Tuesday, August 7, 2007

My life in a busy studio

Wow. My last post was 2 weeks ago! Oops! So, let's see, what has Will been up to? Well, last Wed and Thurs evening I had the pleasure ow working with a talented young man named Abe Roberts, who came on to record a collections of his songs on piano and voice. When folks call up for sessions like this you never know who will walk in the door. Abe turned out to have a bunch or very nice songs that he played well and sang to beautifully. Abe has a voice that will make young girls swoon and think about marriage, and his heartfelt performance and sensitive lyrics only make it worse! I suspect he'll be back...

Last week I also had the wonderful opportunity to work with one of my favorite singer/songwriters Jay Mankita. For a long time I have admired Jay's songwriting and delivery, blending sharp humor with a a keen insight to life as a human. We worked together on a mixing a song for a compilation of kids's music relating to good nutrition and health. Jay made the topic fun and intersting in his music. Looks like Jay will be back in the fall to mix his upcoming CD with me. Yay!

Over the weekend I worked again with an amazing modern percussion duo called the Marassa Duo. Jim Armstrong and Nick Papadour rolled in once again with marimba, vibes, bata drums, pans and congas. We spent the weekend recording and mixing a 12 minute piece called Marassa 2. For this session we rolled up the carpets in the big room to make a more reverberant environment to create more of an "event in a space" feel. I love working with these guys not only because they are great guys but also because the compositions are interesting and the recording is a fun challenge. Most of the time for me percussion is something you add to an existing track, rather than the entire focus of the project, so I have to think about the instruments differently.

So that's all I have time to write this morning. I'm off to Wilburland to mix the upcoming HorseFlies CD!!!!