Recording

Tonight I'm going to start the process of recording my next CD; I'm going up to a friend's studio to start laying down guitar and voice tracks. This will probably take a while, because of course I want to get it just right! My good friend Alex Boudreau will be at the controls. I expect we'll be working at it on and off over the summer and into the early Fall. Once the guitar and voice tracks are done, we'll add extras to the ones that need it: lead guitar, bass, and so on.

The big question is, 'What to record?' I've got about forty presentable songs that I haven't recorded, and I want to have about thirteen or fourteen on the CD. I've pared the list down to twenty, which we're going to record, and we'll then decide which are the best thirteen or fourteen tracks to actually make it onto the CD.

My past two CDs have been literally 'home-made'; i.e. not only were they recorded in someone's home but I also burned the copies on my own computer - easily done, but you don't get the same quality as a professionally-produced disk. So this time I'm going to pay a bit of extra money to get the CD professionally mastered and manufactured. That will probably mean you'll be able to buy it on iTunes as well!

In case you're interested, the list of twenty songs we're going to record is about 60% original and 40% traditional songs. That lack of balance surprised me (my gigs are usually 50/50), but then my first CD was almost all traditional, so I guess I've already recorded a higher percentage of my traditional repertoire. It does give me a heads-up, though, that I need to learn a few more traditional songs as well as just writing my own stuff.

I'll let you know how things go!