From Friday to yesterday I recorded the rhythm section, guitar, and some harmonica tracks for my upcoming rock record “The Lucky One.” At this point we have twelve such tracks in the bag, meaning that in the 27+ hours of recording starting Friday we’ve averaged 2 hours and 15 minutes per keeper take.

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We recorded these tracks the old fashioned way: four musicians playing the material together in real time in the same space, without headphones. It was challenging–with that kind of setup there’s enough bleed between tracks to make it difficult to, say, redo the harmonica solo without colliding with bleed from the previous solo take on the drum overheads–but oh so gratifying to hear and feel the drive you get from people playing together. As Mark Ronson, who produced “Uptown Funk” for Bruno Mars, said: a bunch of dudes playing the s— out of some material in a room will never go out of date.

Cutting Stone Castle--Richard working the wahwah

I’ve used the Digitech RP500 exclusively to record the tracks so far, and it’s working out very, very well. One of the songs on the CD is my composition “Double Lucky”, which started life as a blues but became a 24-bar double blues structure that includes C, F minor, G, Eb, and Ab chords. I took one of my RP500 amped blues patches and programmed in a pitch shifter that takes the pitch up a minor 3rd. With that I was able to play every one of those chords (except the G, which I played as an octave); I engaged the pitch shifter to take the C up to an Eb, and again to take the F up to an Ab. I used a low F harp for the rhythm tracks and a C Natural Minor for the solo, which let me stop worrying about hitting the Eb note right on the money on a standard F harp (and also took the solo into a register an octave higher than the Low F, eliminating any conflicts on that score). The RP tracked the chords perfectly; you’d never know that the Eb and Ab chords weren’t played on an instrument tuned to them.

Digitech RP500: If yer not usin' one of these, you ain't gettin' the sounds I'm gettin'
Digitech RP500: If yer not usin’ one of these, you ain’t gettin’ the sounds I’m gettin’

For a jam on the “Orphan Black” TV show theme, I used a Lee Oskar harp with a special tuning that I made by combining a C minor blow reed plate with a standard C harp draw plate. That produced a tuning that in second position basically produces a G7/9 chord on the draw and C minor on the blow, just right for “Orphan Black,” which consists entirely of two chords, G and Eb major. It’s one of the harps that I carry around in my case and use maybe once every ten years; but hey, better to have it when you need it than to leave it home and make do with something less perfect for the tune. I coupled that with an RP500 patch that includes a big distortion effect and an octave up pitch shift. Did someone say “psychedelic”?

We start the vocal and harmonica overdubs, in that order, for this project tonight. If we keep up the pace and quality we’ve achieved so far, this is gonna be one killer record. Stay tuned, and if you’re in the mood, check out this project on indiegogo.