Introduction
Oh well, here is the second part of my "Studio Logs". As mentioned before, I am gonna write those every once in a while, talking about recording sessions I was involved in, telling you about how they went, what kind of situations might come up, how we recorded certain things, what kind of stuff you have to be prepared for or deal with as a session-player.
OK, letīs see...
A few days ago I was going through a big pile of old papers, old kinds of stuff... old instructional material from the MI, exercises for my students, and some of the documentation I kept from the sessions I participated in in recent years. And I happened to find the lead sheets and other stuff from a session I really remember as a great one...
As you might remember from "Studio Log I", I worked with country-singer / songwriter Wolfgang Malende last year (actually we still are collaborating, and this year weīll record more stuff and also play live). Well, he called me up and we talked about what else there was to record for his upcoming album. He told me that he was thinking about recording two cover-versions of songs he liked a lot.
When he mentioned that one of them was a cover-version of the old Curtis Mayfield / Impressions-tune "People Get Ready", I got all excited.
After all, that song and the guitar work of Jeff Beck on his cover version of it (to be found on Beckīs "Flash" Album... Rod Steward sings the song) really inspired me years ago. I loved the stuff Jeff did on his version. So we decided to record this song and base it on the Beck / Steward-version a bit, which means feature more guitar than Mayfield did back in the 60īs.
Preparation & Lead sheets
We initially planned to do this rather spontaneously, but I still took the time to prepare myself a bit. I listened to the tunes a few more times, I looked for a TAB of the intro solo that a friend of mine had done at the GIT (thanks, Rich!), and I prepared two different lead-sheets.
Now, if you donīt know yet what a lead sheet is: this is something you will find quite often during studio-sessions and band rehearsals. Itīs a sheet of paper documenting the chords of a song, and also shows the structure of it (like: Intro: D / Bm / A / G, Verse: D / Bm / G / D etc.)
I did one with strictly the chords and structure of the song, and the other one with indications of the rhythm... how long to play each chord. (Example: the first chord is played for the length of a dotted quarter note, then the next one is played for the length of an eighth-note and a half note etc.)
Those two, plus the aforementioned transcription of the intro-solo are pictured below. I scanned them and uploaded them in a pretty small size. It was important for me to show you how those sheets kinda look instead of having them displayed large enough for you to read the whole thing... itīs just to give you an idea of the documentation used!
A transcription of the solo that an old friend of mine did. Used with permission.
A sheet showing structure and basic chord progressions of the song incl. the rhythmic division of the song...
Another sheet showing structure and basic chord progressions of the full song
The recordings
The first thing we did was to record the rhythm guitars. I wanted to go for a lush, warm background sound, so we did 3 tracks of rhythm guitar: a 6 string-acoustic, a 12 String-acoustic and a Strat, played through a chorus pedal and a clean amp, with each chord "whammied" a bit with the whammy bar. The Strat I used is equipped with two Seymour Duncan Antiquity Singlecoils and a Bill Lawrence L500 humbucker, so it really was perfect for both the clean rhythm and the leads.
OK, letīs talk about those leads. I really felt an opportunity to pay tribute to the amazing Jeff Beck, so I listened to his version a lot and tried to emulate his playing a bit, copy his phrasing some for my version of the leads.
The solos in his version are based on the re-occuring vocal melody, so I based my solos on that too, starting from a close rendition of his solos on his version and adding some of my own little ideas.
You might ask yourself "Why copy Jeff Beck ?". Well, I just felt that he really did an amazing job on his solos, those are really melodic and vocal-like. I wanted to capture that and pay tribute to Jeff by taking his leads as a guide-line. Also, it was quite a new thing for me to play like that... the phrasing I used on these solos is way different from my usual style of playing. Same goes for the sound I used.
And that was lot of fun. Plus, you CANīT really copy Jeff Beck. He might not be a speed-shredder or something, but his voice on the guitar is so unique that you wonīt be able to copy it 100%. And I didnīt try to really copy that. Instead, I thought of it as a "tip to the hat", a tribute to Jeff Beck.
I used a crunch sound and went for the intro-solo. As I said, itīs based on what Beck did on his version. I concentrated on the vibrato both a bit, achieved by both my fingers and the whammy bar (a vintage-style one). I often used something I hear a lot in Jeffīs playing... his "dip-dive up-technique", where he presses down the bar, hits a note, lets the bar come up (kinda diving into the note), then bending farther with his hands while pushing down the bar again. That is that "drunk guitar" effect you hear in the first solo. It almost sounds like played with a slide...
I also went for a real twangy sound by playing with my fingers instead of using a pick, and by snapping some of the notes against the frets.
click this LINK to hear an MP3 of the intro-solo ( taken from the early production phase)
For the main solo I switched to the neck pickup and again based the solo on Jeffīs original solo while including some of my own ideas too. The melody at the very end is the main theme melody of the song (in case you donīt know the song...)
click this LINK to hear an MP3 of the īmain-solo (taken from the early production phase)
At the end of the song, Jeff in his version played lots of fills and melodies, and then concluded the song with muted repeating patterns while Rod sang some short lines on top of it. I went for a variation of the intro solo, played with a pick for a change. Then, I threw the pick away, switched to a different pickup-combination and played with my fingers and the bar again, pretty much the same melody I used in the intro.
Finally I play a variation on the muted lines Jeff played, but doubled it an octave higher at the very end...
click this LINK to hear an MP3 of the outro-solo (taken from the early production phase)
Buh-bye (for now)
To conclude this studio-log I would like to point out that I really enjoyed that session. The song is a beautiful one, it was a pleasure to work on it and create a lot of textures with different acoustic guitars.
And it was fun to pay homage to one of my heroes, Mr. Jeff Beck. I donīt consider it a rip-off but a tribute, and it was interesting to stray away from my usual style and to try to use a phrasing similar to the one of Jeff...
Can ya hear me, Jeff? This one is for you! And thank you!