A First Time for Everything

[Tom Williams]

Wanting to share a happy new experience with y'all.

 

Around the time Covid sent everyone home, I downloaded and bought the Reaper DAW.  I made a couple of one-man-band videos with it, then let it lie fallow for a couple of years.

 

Two weeks ago, a millennial friend who runs a recording studio in his house asked me if I wanted to lay  down an organ track for one of his customers.  He described it as "adding a little richness on the chorus."  I haven't recorded for someone else in over 40 years.  He said I could do it at home and send him files.  With some trepidation, I said yes.

 

Last weekend I received the download link for three WAV files -- vocal track, drum track, rest-of-band track, all generated by Pro Tools or whatever my buddy runs on his Macintosh. 

 

Tuesday evening I opened Reaper, it upgraded to the current version, and I cut-and-pasted the three files in as three tracks.  Pressed play, set balances, got a feel for the song, and went to bed.

 

Wednesday evening, I started around 6:30.  Mapped channels 9 and 10 -- my PC4-7 -- in my XR-18 to ASIO channels in Reaper.  Set it to tap pre-fader, really pre-everything (except for Analog gain) to keep the recording as pure as possible.  Adjusted levels for something like 30 minutes to get maximum gain without clipping.  

 

I started playing the existing tracks again, playing along with it on the (Kurzweil!) organ.  A country song in E-Flat?  Also, I noticed that some of the chord changes were on the beat, others anticipated the next beat an eighth note early, with little predictability.  Now it's 8 PM.  Time to map the song.  Gotta figure out voicings that don't step on the guitar(s).  Try to get the chord change inversions and rhythms notated with a word processor, as it would take me an extra day to transcribe my ideas in Finale.

 

Time's a-wasting, so I arm the organ track, set drawbars to 808 00 0000 and play along.  Clam at one spot.  Rinse, repeat.  Sounds decent.  Then I start to second guess the registration -- they said they wanted organ, what did that mean?  So I record another track with a more Hammond-y 888 30 0000 registration.  Heck, if the producer wants to, he can even switch between 'em within the song.  I grab the two tracks' WAV files, notify the fellow, he gives me an upload link, and I send him my two tracks. 

 

Thursday comes and goes.  I don't hear nuthin'.  Hmmm....

 

Friday I text him, "Did I achieve adequacy?"  He texts back, "The client LOVED it.  Send me your Paypal info."

 

At age 63, this is the first time I've ever done "session work" for someone else. 

 

Besides which, Reaper just paid for itself.

[ProfD]

Brotha @Tom Williams, thanks for sharing that very cool experience. A satisfied customer and getting paid for your session work is a great win for all parties.😎

[KuruPrionz]

Awesome, hopefully there will be more!

 

That's something I've been preparing to do, I play guitar and bass and most of the time I'm the guitar player but I'm guessing that will change with recording since everybody needs a solid bass track. 

[Sean M. H.]

So you just used the Kurz's stock organ sound...no plug-ins, ventilator, etc right?  Which patch/sound did you use?

 

I've said it before...I am by no means an organ purist, nor would I ever claim that the Kurz organs are the most accurate to the real deal (its shortcomings are well chronicled on this forum)...but something about it just works for me in a mix.  I only use my PC4 live though, have never recorded a track with it.

[Paul Woodward]

Awesome, I would happily do this all day long; lay down keyboard arrangements in my own time at home. 
Really happy for you and a great story there.

[stoken6]

V cool @Tom Williams

 

I'm reminded of a similar (but non-paying) call I received from a drummer friend. "Mike, can you do keyboards in Joe Walsh Life's Been Good?" Turns out the keyboard player on the track didn't have the synthesis chops to pull off the little synth loop in the middle. Thanks to KC I had learned the trick of modulating the filter against a static oscillator, and was able to pull something off for the track. 

 

Cheers, Mike.

[Adam Burgess]

Awesome!

It's lovely when someone gives you freedom to lay down a part. Especially in the comfort of your own place with no expensive studio time looming!

To the original writer, the feeling they get when some fresh ears and fingers have slotted in to their song is priceless. Be proud of it. Lifting someone else's work is a real talent!

[Tom Williams]

8 hours ago, Sean M. H. said:

So you just used the Kurz's stock organ sound...no plug-ins, ventilator, etc right?  Which patch/sound did you use?

• KB3, tweaked extensively over the years on my PC3.  Chorus/vibrato and percussion off.  I forget whether I also turned off key click, but that was moot within the mix.
• Single (7-unit processor load) Leslie, based on the wonderful work done years ago by BillW of this forum, also tweaked a bit.
  • That's one of the things I love about synthesizers -- the ability to customize the instrument.

When I listened to it in the mix, it seemed okay.  When listened to the organ by itself, the higher-frequency wobble seemed a little excessive during fast spin, and I was prepared to change Leslies if the customer wanted it.  As this forum tends to be, um, unimpressed with the Kurz Leslie, I was a tad worried, and subsequently relieved to hear that all were satisfied.

[SteveCoscia]

Tom, your experience is inspiring. Congratulations.

 

My 29 year old son urged me to get Reaper three years ago.  I recorded a few minimal music composition projects and then got distracted with other life activities. Reaper was easy enough to use and I need to get back to it.

[SamuelBLupowitz]

Congrats, Tom! I find session work to be very satisfying, and while I love hanging out in recording studios, there’s something that feels sort of like you’re getting away with something when you can do the work without ever leaving your house.

 

Aside that you can take (if it saves you stress) or leave (if you have a system that works for you): you can probably relax a bit about “maximum gain without clipping” if it took you a lot of finagling to get levels. Digital recording has come a long way, and it’s not like tape where you have to get it as loud as possible (without clipping) to beat the noise floor. As long as your levels aren’t insanely quiet and you don’t clip, you should be good. 😊

[D. Gauss]

On 3/18/2023 at 1:51 AM, Tom Williams said:

 A country song in E-Flat?  Also, I noticed that some of the chord changes were on the beat, others anticipated the next beat an eighth note early, with little predictability.   

 

Question. Was song actually in Eb or did your Reaper project sample rate not match the sent files sample rate? (Fwiw, you need to check in 3 places in Reaper to be totally sure everything is kosher)

Reaper will play them all no matter what rate and let you record to them in sync, but a 48k/44.1k mismatch often results in an almost but not quite 1/2 step pitch playback difference.

[Tom Williams]

11 hours ago, D. Gauss said:

 

Question. Was song actually in Eb or did your Reaper project sample rate not match the sent files sample rate? (Fwiw, you need to check in 3 places in Reaper to be totally sure everything is kosher)

Reaper will play them all no matter what rate and let you record to them in sync, but a 48k/44.1k mismatch often results in an almost but not quite 1/2 step pitch playback difference.

I had the same thought, but I'm pretty sure it also played back in Eb on the VLC media player.  Oh and I just checked: the ratio between 48 and 44.1 is more like 155 cents, so it would be out of tune no matter what the key.

 

It'll be pretty funny if the engineer and the customer liked it when I played it in the wrong key! 

 

It may simply be that they tuned down a half step to ease the singing range, a time-honored tradition of guitar bands.

[KuruPrionz]

42 minutes ago, Tom Williams said:

I had the same thought, but I'm pretty sure it also played back in Eb on the VLC media player.  Oh and I just checked: the ratio between 48 and 44.1 is more like 155 cents, so it would be out of tune no matter what the key.

 

It'll be pretty funny if the engineer and the customer liked it when I played it in the wrong key! 

 

It may simply be that they tuned down a half step to ease the singing range, a time-honored tradition of guitar bands.

It was (and is) also done because saxophones are either Eb or Bb. So either the sax players need to know everything or the guitar player tunes down a half step. 

Proven science. 😇

And, back before you could get every possible guage of slinky strings, it was a way of making strings easier to bend. 

Jimi Hendrix played in bands with horns and then stayed in Eb when he went to a trio format, just one of many. 

[El Lobo]

As a sax player, playing Bb tenor and Eb baritone in bands, when the guitar player tunes down to Eb, I hate it. I've played in rock bands all my life and I learned to transpose early on and play easily in all those usual guitar keys of E, A, G, C, D. I look over and read the guitar players' left hands (or bass player) and I know exactly where I am. When they tune down to Eb it really screws me up. But yeah, if the singer needs it half a step down to hit the notes, I can accommodate. 

[KuruPrionz]

6 hours ago, El Lobo said:

As a sax player, playing Bb tenor and Eb baritone in bands, when the guitar player tunes down to Eb, I hate it. I've played in rock bands all my life and I learned to transpose early on and play easily in all those usual guitar keys of E, A, G, C, D. I look over and read the guitar players' left hands (or bass player) and I know exactly where I am. When they tune down to Eb it really screws me up. But yeah, if the singer needs it half a step down to hit the notes, I can accommodate. 

Everybody is different, no doubt about that. 

I've never done it and I didn't say that everybody did. If a singer needs a song in a different key, I can play in any key on guitar. The same was true of the sax players I've played with, they just adjusted and kept on.

It sounds like you've seen it happen. I don't know if it's still a "thing" but it used to happen. That's really all I can say about it.