Benjamin Session 2 - “…Music To My Eyes”
Yesterday, I finally managed to get back into the studio to record another new song for what I’ve decided would be a new EP (currently still untitled). I’m hoping for it to have at least 5 tracks and at this point, it seems like it’s going to be 100% instrumental.
It’s been just over two months since I joined Jacob Israel at his studio Benjamin, to do “Maybe Tomorrow…”. The new song I did yesterday is called “Green After So Much Blue, Was Like Music To My Eyes”, a title I stole from Yann Martel’s “Life of Pi” as I’ve mentioned in a previous post.
It’s probably the most “up-beat” track I’ve ever done. As far as instrumentation goes, it’s got the obvious programmed electronics, electric and acoustic guitars but also some upright bass as well as some Wurlitzer piano. I think I might have overdone the glitch a bit, but I’m still marinading in the mix I have, so we’ll see. Basically, here’s how the session went down:
Jacob and I exchanged working files, Jacob prepped all the tracks for recording, we replaced some of my shitty samples with his awesome samples and enhanced some of my beats (Max for Live FTW):
I had some piano that I combined with a synth in two major parts of the song. Jacob recommended that I replace the programmed piano with a Wurlitzer piano, which we could record (as he owns one) and which would sound a lot better and more real.
So we moved some cars out of the driveway and carried the Wurlitzer from the garage into the studio. Luckily the little melody loops I had to play were really simple, so I quickly practiced a bit and tracked the two parts in. It sounded epic.
After this, I recorded the guitars as my fingers had slightly defrosted by then :) I started with the electric stuff.
I then did the couple of minor acoustic parts, powered by Benjamin coffee :)
By then, ears were getting tired, brains were being fried and energy levels were dropping, so we took a stroll in search of a sugar fix, which we found.
When we got back, we ran my bass programming through Jacob’s Proverb synth. Bass. In. Your. Face.
We finally started doing a rough mix and tweaked a couple of things, as best our ears would let us at this point. I’m loving what we have done, well, mostly Jacob :), barring the inevitable mix changes, which we’ll get to when I have the rest of the songs recorded.
Like usual, it was a really fun day of recording, experimenting and hanging out. I’m hopefully heading back to Benjamin later this month as I really can’t wait to have all these new songs recorded. Can’t wait for you guys to hear. Watch this space for more info.
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