First Professional Recording Session

Today I took part in my first official recording session in an operating studio. It was quite an interesting affair especially because of how things are done in Nashville. Most of the music I listen to is indie rock or pop rock and is typically recorded by a band that has been playing together for at least a little while. They occasionally hire extra musicians to add string accompaniment or addition instrumentation that the band can't play themselves.

Well, Nashville and country music in general, operates in an entirely different way. Country music is driven by singers and sometimes the occasional singer/songwriter. Typically, the singer chooses from songs pitched to them by songwriters eager to make money in publishing but not performing music. Check out any current/contemporary country album and you will not see many songs sung by the artist on the cover. They buy their material from someone and they usually don't have a band so they also have to hire one to record.

So the band is hired and comes in and a lot of them have worked together before but sometimes there is a new session musician around. Like today, my boss had never worked with the drummer he used before, but you'd never know it from the way they worked together. So these musicians come in and set up their equipment and then start listening to the song demos that they will be recording. All of the songs are written up in Nashville specific sheet music form called the Nashville Number System. All of the players sit around and listen to the song a couple of times, make a few notes on their song charts and then assume their positions in the recording studio. After a dry run or two, they do one or two takes and move on to the next song! I learned about all this stuff while I was in school but it is something to see. I guess in a music factory like Nashville, it is the most efficient way to do things, but I don't know if I really agree with it. It takes the creative energy of a band out of it but since these musicians all know each other and work together very frequently, I guess it is similar. But it is amazing to record six songs in eight hours. Most rock and roll projects take a minimum of a week to record twelve to fifteen songs.

It was a very fun experience and I even got the opportunity to sit in the engineer chair for one of the songs. That means that I was actually operating the tape machine and mixing console so it was on me if something didn't get recorded right. Most of the day, I was in the position of second engineer typically swapping out microphones, keeping track of paperwork and helping out the musicians when they needed something. I have to say that I did a pretty good job though because I pretty much anticipated everything that anyone needed and was already in the process of doing it before they asked. So hopefully this will be the beginning of a long relationship with Azalea Studios and that I can learn a lot and take this knowledge out on my own someday. All in all, it was pretty satisfying but quite a long tiring day. Tomorrow, it's back to the studio to record vocals and I'll be running the board a lot more for that!