Stephen Duchardt

Patrick is someone I see out in San Jose.  He gigs around.   He does the open mics.  He’s got it, he just needs the exposure and more shows.  I find his voice and the way he plays nothing short of hypnotic.

He’s no stranger to the studio, and felt comfortable here.  Each take was technically good, so the conversion about which one to use was about how each pass “felt” rather than whether or not it was played properly.  It’s very freeing when you have an artist who can consistently pull off performances.  You start listening for and making choices based on vibe and emotion.  All to often producers and engineers spend half their time punching in, fixing mistakes.

We had talked about doing separate takes, isolating voice and guitar, but we decided against it because of the way he carves his vocal around the guitar lines.  Sometimes the only way to chew gum properly is to walk while you do it.

I’m happy with the way this one came out.  He sat in the middle of the room, I think the sound of the house really comes though nicely here.  When his voice gets louder, some of the high end reflections come through.  No effects on this.  Just the house, EQ, and compression.

Check out more of Patrick here:

http://www.mrpatrickjams.com/

This was her first “real” Studio session.  I met her a week prior at the  Trieste Open Mic.  You know her.  She’s the one that comes in holding a guitar without case.  She sits timidly in the corner.  Her name is called and the room falls silent the instant she plays the first chord.  She is why people like me go to open mics.  This song “The Crush”, is one of two she played that night.

It’s just good.  The voice.  The lyric.  About some boy who has to come and save the life of the singer, because she gets a feeling that she knows…but she doesn’t…  Maybe it’s ironic.  I didn’t ask.  Singers have been singing about this literally since the beginning of songs, but for whatever reason, for this person, it has to be this song.

She hadn’t recorded with headphones before.  What you hear when recording is the most important thing, and it’s jarring at first, having your voice and / or guitar directly in your ears.  Adjustments for this are made, a little reverb etc. Generally, an artist’s first instinct under headphones is to sing differently.  They hold back a little.  Like everything else, the studio takes practice.  Recording is a skill,  performing is a skill, playing scales is a skill.  It takes practice.  I gave a brief spiel about how to work in the studio, what to expect, what you will hear, don’t be afraid to ask for mix adjustments etc.  Layla got it right away.  When she put on the headphones and stepped up to the mic for the first time she said something like: “cool”.

We did some passes.  Decided between Capo positions.  Did some vocal warm-ups.  She got SO good SO fast.  Every take was stronger.  We were up against the clock so we decided on one of the two last takes. Tons of guitar bleed in the vocal mic, so I sent it to Jeff Yurek to mix.  She’s coming back.  We’ll add to this one and do another.

More of Layla here: The Covet

I’m trying to remember what this was like for me. I was her age in 1995 at Pulse Wave Underground studio in Trumbull CT.  The engineer’s name was John Mozzi.  We were young, nervous, excited and invincible.  It was probably one of the most important days of my life.   That’s for another blog.