Saturday, July 12, 2014

Recording Some Kind Of Blues, track 6 Dancing With Diane

Dancing With Diane is a funny little story about a guy who meets up
with an old girl friend, then has to explain to his wife.

I had made a previous recording of Dancing With Diane on 4 track tape, so I already  had a drum pattern for it on my Alesis SR16 drum machine.
I recorded the kick and snare from that pattern onto my computer
as an audio track, and used it as a basis for building the rest of the tracks.

I added a MIDI drum track for the tom fills and high hat. 
Another MIDI track was created for crash and ride cymbals. 

I played the bass track on my '68 Fender Telecaster bass, but then I
decided to create a MIDI bass track for a cleaner sound - no noise - and
better control of the note placement.   There are some parts where the
bass note slides down the neck.  On those notes, and at the end of the song, I turned the MIDI bass down and the bass guitar up. 
As the song plays, it is switching back and forth between MIDI bass
and audio bass guitar.

Dancing With Diane has three rhythm guitar tracks.
There is a clean guitar that is playing mostly chords and notes an octave
higher than the main rhythm guitar, and a distorted guitar that is playing pretty much the same thing as the main rhythm.

The other guitar track is the lead solo.

I sang two complete vocal tracks because I didn't like parts of the first one.
It turned out that I didn't like parts of the second one either, so I just picked the best of each one and turned one off while the other is playing.
So, like the bass, it is switching back and forth between the two.

The last track is a blues organ played with Ableton's software synth using my Alesis QS8.1 as the MIDI controller.

Dancing With Diane has 12 tracks:
     acoustic drums, MIDI drums, cymbals, acoustic bass, MIDI bass,
     3 rhythm guitars, lead guitar, 2 vocals, and organ.


Listen at PWCarr Music
http://pwcarrmusic.com/

Dancing With Diane by Patrick W. Carr
Personnel:
Pat Carr - all instruments, vocals