Recording at 6200

Sometimes you wonder where today's famous artists got their start. Well, it's something I wonder about. Some people get their lucky break - like Carrie Underwood on American Idol... Others get "Discovered" like Boys II Men on a street corner in Philly. Some people have a famous dad like Jacob Dylan and Bob Dylan. Some people just get lucky - David Gray, an Irish troubador.

So, if you ever Facebook stalked me - or read my profile here on Blogger, you will find out that I love music. I love writing music, and while I'm no prodigy, I do find some release in it.

I started writing music at the age of 15... most of the songs were instrumental. I wasn't very good at putting lyrics to piano quite then. Also, during the late 90's there wasn't much of a solo piano singer popularity basis on the radio. Today we have Five for Fighting, Ben Folds, and The Fray.

So this leads to the Recording Sessions at 6200. I have recently learned how to play about 10 chords on the guitar, so this automatically makes me an honorary pop artist. But, thanks to a good friend from my undergrad days, Jesse Rathgeber, I have had a resurgence in my creative thoughts.

Earlier this semester, Jesse stopped by with his guitars and recording system, and we plugged it into my MacBook Pro.

Now, later on this week or early next, I'm going to post some of our works, but Jesse has one of those minds that make you marvel at the creativity that he posesses.

Jesse has the qualities of a modern day troubador. He has the ability to evoke thought into his lyrics, and what makes it even more amazing is that he has the outstanding talent to make the listener really contemplate what he's saying in his lyrics. But from a thousand mile view, he can really make a song sound amazing.

If you look at the picture above, you'll see the first glimpses of my apartment... mind you it was cluttered with all sorts of wires and microphones. You see Jesse to the left, the 8 track Alesis system attached to my MacBook Pro. You'll also notice a set of Tablas in the background. Currently we're working on a hybrid of American melodies with Indian rhythms. So far it sounds really good.

The one hard part of doing track recording is that you have to do one instrument at a time to get a really clean sound. From now on, when I say clean, I mean absent of white noise or other background noises.

Take a look at the picture at the right. Jesse has a series of microphones directly focused at the guitar.

Unless you're a perfectly trained musician, you usally will re-record a track 3 or 4 times until you get it completely right.

The songs that I've been recording recently have been taking more than 3 or 4 retries, but you get the idea.

So, usually, the final stage of recording is vocals. Doing vocals last is probably the best idea because of the constant re-recordings you have to do to ensure that you got everything completely right.

If you watch American Idol, you'll hear Randy, Simon, and Paula say, "You're pitchy, you're flat, you're sharp." And when you're recording, you are the most conscious about it. You can hear every little tweak and wrong note. It is most definitely an excercise in frustration, but through a lot of perseverance, you can really come through and put together a really great song.

Recently, I started recording a couple of songs that I've been working on for a couple of weeks. Passing the MP3's around the UIS community, I found some interest from some of the folk there who wanted to have their shot at recording. Since my studio is very easy to set up, I said why not!


A couple of friends from the UIS Choir, Sarah Quigley and Katie Salter, stopped by and did some harmony recording on my song "Forever I Do."





The song is still in pre-production... meaning I'm too embarrassed at my own voice right now to send it out online, but you can always drop me an email if you want to hear it.

Sarah Wiesner stopped by and recorded a track on another song I'm writing for a friend's wedding, and she's been nailing the part, so when that track's good and ready, I'll post it up too!

I'm sure you're wondering where's my picture, but I didn't have the foresight to ask someone to take a picture of me recording... but rumor has it that I have to make a VLog... yes a Video Blog, so you'll get to see it then.

So, until next time, I really hope you enjoyed reading this crazy long blog - and if you have some sort of musical instrument or vocal talent you'd like to share, drop me a line! I'd love to hear from you!

If you have a copy of iTunes, click here to download Jesse Rathgeber's awesome song, "No, You're Right"



Sometimes, you get some heroes in a last minute basketball long shot. In this clip, I'm afraid... you don't.

So, Click here to check it out!