My week recording with Chris in Philly is in the books! We met this past Monday thru Friday from 10-6 and got quite a lot done.
Originally, I had sent 14 acoustic demos down to Chris that I had recording this past fall in Vermont. From there we trimmed the list down to 10 ones to focus on for the time we had booked. In preparation for that, we were able to get bass and drums remotely tracked for 8 of them.
Our first two days in the studio we were joined by Colin Lenox, who spent those days providing electric guitar on the 8 songs we had prepped.
From Wednesday thru Friday, Chris and I added acoustic parts and backing vocals those 8 - as well as beginning to workshop the other 2 tunes. I played electric for those two tunes - one of which is definitely the keeper guitar, the other is really just a demo to be redone eventually.
As it stands, MOST everything is tracked for the initial 8 tunes, plus one of the other two. We still need keys on everything, and to add real drums and bass for the other two as well - right now they just have MIDI parts on them. Outside of that, it's just brainstorming any other potential stuff we may want to add for those - and I also will likely want to redo all of the lead vocals once everything else is recorded. The vocals from the fall VT sessions are probably usable, but they just won't have the same energy as singing with the full band version would produce. Whether I travel back down to Philly to do them with Chris or do them in Vermont elsewhere remains to be seen - but I don't see that happening anytime soon.
We also need to figure out what to do with those other four tunes we left for later. They may be bonus tracks or singles at a later time, or could be included with the main album. Those we will need to gameplan remotely and go from there.
It was a very productive week for sure and I'm super happy with how everything is turning out so far. We still have a long ways to go though, and there are plenty of costs to consider going forward as well.
So far, not including travel costs, I have already spent $7435 on this project ($1235 for demoing, $1500 for pre-production, $2200 for session players, $2500 for the week of recording time). Thanks to many generous contributors to my fundraising campaign, I was able to raise roughly $4200 before the trip, which greatly helped to defer these costs. That said, that money is all gone already, with much still to do - more session work, maybe some additional recording for me, mixing, and mastering, on the music side alone - not to mention artwork and CD/vinyl printing etc to come later. I greatly appreciate all the support everyone has given so far, and hope others will continue to chip in going forward. If you have already contributed, thank you so much, and please consider helping to spread the word. If you have not, please consider contributing if you can or helping to share if you cannot.