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Proof Of a Promise

2010 Tender Loving Hell Music

Tracklist:

Cigarette Run
Puddle
Beneath The Walls
Etude Bella
Ragged Caravan revisited
The Third Glass
Brother Bear's Revival
Etude Carnival
The Sable Venus
Matt Diamond Theme

Produced by Terry Lee Hale

Mixed by Chris Eckman

Cigarette Run co-produced with Chris Eckman

Dalibor Pavicic plays electric guitar and Luka Bencic plays piano & organ on Beteath The Walls. Michael Deak plays bass on Cigarette Run. Chris Eckman plays percussion on Beneath The Walls and Brother Bear's Revival.

Recorded by TLH at Rue Voltaire Studio - Paris, FR. February-May 2010. Mixed by Chris Eckman at Studio Zuma - Ljubljana, SL. Mastered by Denis Blackham at Skye Mastering - Isle of Skye, UK.

Photographs by Franck Betermin.

Cover design by Havard Gjelseth

 

Proof Of A Promise Notes:

The Beginnings

Began project 10.01.09
Started recording 01.11.10
Finished recording 06.01.10
Received CDs 10.19.10

A long held idea of mine this instrumental record. I always thought that I could do such a thing but actually it never really felt like the right time. And to be honest, probably not before now was I actually able to "play" a good record. Besides that, there were always a lot of word songs waiting in the wings whenever recording time rolled around and an instrumental only record never seemed necessary. But I have always included at least one instrumental song on all of my records and that was usually just the best of others I had to choose from. I love guitar music and I knew I had the songs and ability. Finally though in 2009 many factors converged that actually compelled me to begin this project. The biggest factor was that for the first time in my life I had my own home recording studio and the basic equipment that would allow me to be able to put down some quality sounds. The knowledge to get it done of course would be the big question and challenge. But ignorance is bliss as they say and I was gung-ho for taking a whack at it.

I also had a cadre of fellow musicians and recordists who were willing to answer questions and who did indeed prove to be essential in helping me get to the finish line. And I was an avid reader of TapeOp magazine, which had in fact propelled me forward with the belief that I could do a home recording myself. A DIY ethic that helped me to know that recording was not some black-art science filled with mystical gobbledygook that I would I never be able to sort through on my own. Recording music was a series of processes and physics that were all learn-able and if the proper techniques were applied then this would (or should) allow me to come up with some listenable music.

And time. I had time. Gigs were slow late in ’09 and the winter months were a perfect season to woodshed the material. Time. It had been 3 years since Shotgun Pillowcase had been released. I wasn’t signed with any label. I needed to get my head back into the future and this project was the perfect way forward. Time.

The Plan

Simply put, I wanted to self-record an album of original instrumental music with the recording gear I had and using the guitars and instruments I own and play. If there were to be other instruments or parts needed I wanted to do as much of this as was possible. And all of that would need to be done here at Rue Voltaire studio. Although it was an idea I have had for a couple of years I still had no real preconceived direction about any overall sound or structure. I figured I would just do whatever each individual song dictated and then sort it out at the end. The one thing I did know early on though was that I would need to find a way to get this mixed somewhere besides here because I knew that I did not have the gear or proper knowledge to do the mixing correctly. Just to get the songs recorded to best of my ability would be my goal pure and simple.

Preparation Time

The first step then would be to gather together and organize all the material that I currently had. I needed to hear in one place what the songs were that I could choose from. Then of course I would have to figure out what I would need to do to get them ready for recording. At my writing desk I have always used some sort of small recording device. Sound scratch paper as it were. In recent years it has been a mini-disc player (Sony MZ-R700) but before that there were various cassette recorders. So I have a large collection of a songs and snippets from 30 years! I use a simple notation system for that "rates" the songs on each disc and that makes it fairly easy to go back and find what might be usable for any particular project I’m working on. And of course I am always in the middle of half a dozen or more new songs that are in various states of undress. On those older songs I would have only half remembered fingering positions (sometimes with notations) and so this gathering process was a long one. I had to sort out what had been done before and try to finger out if it still felt good or not. And along with that backlog there are also songs that I currently play at shows that have never been recorded. There was quite a lot of material to sift through and prioritize. I didn’t listen to everything though. I knew what I was after - instrumental music - and I kept my focus with that goal in mind. At the end of it all and from a long list I think I came up with maybe 30 numbers or so which I thought were possibilities and 10 of those were already or mostly completed. The rest of it needed work.

Practice, practice, practice

In November of ’09 I had a long list and so I began. My usual day would be office work in the morning from about 9 to 12 then lunch and short siesta. I would be at my writing desk around 14H00 and try to work steady until 5 or 6 in the evening. It’s hard to grab that much time out of a day to play music though. There is always something else that needs doing is seems and it’s easy to get distracted. What works for me though is that when I sit down to my desk I take a look at the clock and I won’t let myself stop say for a couple of hours. I keep at it until that time and then I’ll take a break or whatever. Then go for a second round and this works well for me. Figuring out which songs to use was no mystery. Some just fell away quickly because there already was a short list of 5 or 6 numbers that I thought were going make the cut for one reason or another. And there were some obvious misfits in that large list of 30. Other songs just didn’t develop much more then from where I had left them. Stillborn I guess. So with relentless practice, listening, writing and rewriting the list devolved and after maybe 2 months of work I had a pretty good collection of 20 songs or so that I felt I might be able to take to the next level.

The Studio

Now when I use the word studio technically that’s what it is. But in reality Rue Voltaire is a converted one-car garage located right next to our house. We’ve put up some sound insulation and such but it’s still right next to a street and cars do make a racket. We don’t live in the country either. So this actual studio of mine is ok for editing, some late night acoustic overdubs or whatever but for the actual tracking I moved everything into the house and with my wife’s kind indulgence and support, for 3 weeks in January and 2 more weeks in February I occupied one corner of the dining room.

Instrument List:

Froggy Bottom 6-string
Larrivee 12-string
Ephiphone “Frontier Model” Nashville tuned (meaning: high strung)
Dobro
Garcia nylon
Peavey bass
Yamaha “Electrone” FE-40 organ
Harmonicas, melodica
Brushes on a drum-box

Equipment list:

Focusrite Voicebox MKll channel strip (compressor, EQ, d-esser)
Aphex 107 pre-amp
FMR “RNC 1773” compressor
M-Audio ‘Pulsar II” condenser mic
KM 83 Condenser mic
AT 4033 microphone
iMac G-4 computer
Protools 8
Stylus Drum program, various plug-ins, etc. external hard-drives, etc.
Tannoy Reveal monitors
Rotel amplifier

I should write a little about this recording platform I am using. This is a new iMac computer and Protools 8. Both of these tools were major upgrades for me and a big factor about why I felt like I was able to begin this project. I had been using PT 7.4 before with an older G3 iBook, which were great for learning with and fine for the projects I had been doing up to date. But as with all things in the digital world, the companies keep upgrading and pretty soon your old hardware is not working anymore with the newer programs. Recorded digital music files contain huge amounts of information and my old G3 was getting slower and slower handling those music files. So a newer and more powerful computer was in order and voila. And of course with the newer computer the old digital programs won’t work so I had to buy the upgraded Protools program and some other plug-ins all to get back up to speed. Then of course there is learning how to use all of this new stuff and I’m not the fastest guy in the world when it comes to the digital world. Macintosh is a world all of it’s own and combined with a whole new configuration for Protools I had my work cut out for me. One of the biggest reasons this whole project took so damn long was because of this long learning curve I had to get around. My friends and studio masters Joseph Parsons, Chris Eckman and Michael Shuler were a huge help in talking me through many of my problems and frustrations. I did it though and certainly one of the best ways to learn anything is to jump into the deep end and that is exactly the way it happened for Proof Of A Promise.

Recording

A one-person operation is not the most comfortable way to record. The tricky thing of course is not only trying to get a great performance every time but taking care of all the technical requirements as well. I learned quickly that sessions take a lot longer given these working conditions. There is the set-up to do and for each song this can be different. Each guitar and song has its own sonic characteristics and needs to be sound checked. For most of these sessions I used 2 condenser microphones pointed at different areas of the guitars. One far-away mic and one close-up. Each guitar has a "sweet" spot (optimum sound for a mic) and that means having to move the two mic’s around until you find just those spots. Then there are phasing issues, compressor and equalizer settings, recording levels, headphone levels and so on. This is all before you play a note. Then you "roll tape" a little bit (actually you press the space-bar) and then you must stop and listen to how everything is sounding and all of that. Usually means some more adjustments. At the beginning all of the above really took me quite a long time. As I progressed though I learned which microphones worked best with each guitar and also about best placement positions and so all of this got easier. But again, doing this all yourself just takes longer.

So, finally it’s time to record. I had to place myself with the computer on my right hand side so I could stop/start the machine (right handed I am), make adjustments with the keyboard, watch levels out of the corner of my eye and all of that. I’d push start, slightly swivel to my left, take a deep breath, count off (generally with a click track - makes overdubs easier) and go. Usually what I did was record about 6 to 8 takes of any one song (trying to not move between takes so that all the different tries would sound the same. Again - ideally this makes any later editing WAY easier). It would take me a time or two to settle down and get comfortable. The next 3 or 4 tries would almost always be the best and would be the ones I would end up using. After 6 or 7 tries I start to lose it and any more then that would be counterproductive. At that point it’s either time to take a break or move on to another song. In Protools, as with most digital recording platforms, you have the ability to do version after version, as the "takes" are virtually stacked on top of each other. But if you play the song at the same tempo, the same key etc. you then have the ability afterwards to mix and match the various "takes" when you’re editing to (hopefully) come up with a good compiled version. The preferred way of course is to play the song so well and record it so perfectly that no editing at all is necessary. Difficult to do but certainly not impossible. There are 2 or 3 songs on "Proof" that are done in just one pass or with only a tiny bit of editing for the guitars. Still, editing is why we have studios and I’m not a purist when it comes to recording music. One take versus 20 takes edited down to a final version should sound the same at the end of the day. Does it matter how you get there? Time yes, but otherwise the answer for me is no.

AT the end of the first recording sessions I had the songs below (and often multiple versions of each):

American Oud Music
Bluebonnets Of Texas
Dragline
Beneath The Walls
Brother Bear’s Revival
07.25.65 21H30
Haiti Standup (which became Cigarette Run)
Proof Of A Promise
Something About Alaska
Swing In Spring
Team Pursuit
The Dawning
Throw A Match
Matt Diamond Theme
The Sable Venus
Etude Bella
Etude Carnival
Cemetery Road
Puddle
Ragged Caravan Revisited
The Third Glass

As mentioned, I had 2 different recording sessions in the house. I moved back into the studio after the first time and when I began to really listen and sort through what I had done I quickly discovered that there were quiet a few recording errors which made the songs unusable. There were technical recording mistakes of one kind or the other, playing mistakes, timing errors and more. It was then that that I made some hard choices There was just too much music and I didn’t have unlimited time for all of it. I ended up deleting songs from the above list that just were not working. It would take a second session of recording for me to get sorted out and to come up with the 16 songs that I thought were good enough and pointing all in the right direction. It was also during these second sessions that I asked a new friend of mine who lives in Paris, bassist Michael Deak, to come in and add his steady hand on bass for Cigarette Run for which he did a fine job. I also contacted Dalibor Pavicic in Zagreb to help fill up the corners of Beneath The Walls. We did those overdubs (Dalibor along with pianist Luka Bencic) via the Internet and it all worked perfectly.


Michael Deak

Editing

Now, for me, the real work began. Digital editing is basically (kinda) the same idea as document editing but working with sound is a different universe entirely. It’s much more complicated then manipulating word positions though because when you attempt to join sound sections together those "splices" (normally called edits) are sonically very rarely invisible. Your job as editor is to do just that though. Make those splices invisible. Taking notes that are recorded at different times and slicing them together it quickly becomes apparent that there are lots of clicks and pops and noticeable differences in tone, texture, volume, attack and more. If a person could play a song exactly the same way every time then this editing probably wouldn’t be so very difficult. I don’t play that way though and it can make for a "challenging" editing session. And to add insult to injury it quickly became apparent to me that I had been sloppy with some of my recording techniques. Instead of every time doing my very best and paying attention to all the details, I ignored too much and the piper had to now be paid. This is a mistake I hope to never do again. I believe I spent more than one month at the editing desk.

Mixing and Mastering

As I noted earlier, I always knew that when I got towards the end of this project I would need to find a mixing engineer to do that job. It is entirely possible of course to do the mix with the Protools version I have but it is not going to sound as good as if it’s mixed ‘outside the box’ by a professional in a studio with pro gear. Or at least it would have a better chance at sounding good. It’s even more sure that with my inexperienced ears, sub-par monitors (and room) and limited plug-ins (digital effects) this project wouldn’t get close to the level that I wanted it to be. I had worked too hard and too long to just simply stop reaching here at the end. As I was probably not going to be present at the mixing sessions no matter where it was, this choice of mixer also meant that I needed to be able to trust that my work would be understood and given a sympathetic treatment. I have friends with studios who could do a good mix but from that very short list it made the most sense for me to work with Chris Eckman here. Throughout all of the past months we had been in close contact about almost every aspect of this recording. And Chris and I have forged a great partnership over the years and his willingness to work on another of my projects was fortuitous. I was very relieved and happy that he said yes. So I sent him the files via the Internet and then settled back to await their return.

If I remember correctly I had to wait a month or more for him to have time enough to get it done though because (I think) he was in the middle of the Lobi Traore’s recording down in Mali. Anyway, I sent him 12 songs and he sent me back 10. Said he couldn’t mix two of them because he felt that those two were "incomplete". And it just so happened that the two he chose were my least favorite of the bunch and I have learned over the years to trust his judgment. I agreed with him and it was no problem for me to let those 2 songs go. The results of his mixes are what you hear on Proof today and I was totally happy and satisfied. Surprised that it sounded as good as it did as a matter of fact. The sound files that I sent him were not in the best condition. Although I had really tried my best, there were uneven levels and edits, some of the songs were "too busy" and I know there were timing issues and other errors. I know he had to work damn hard to get it to sound good. He managed to sort through all of it though and help me to come up smelling like roses. In the case of Cigarette Run, his "dub" friendly mix totally transformed the song from my original vision into the outstanding mix it is today. As I had hoped, Chris elevated all of the songs and Proof Of A Promise was ready to go to the mastering engineer.

There is one last important step to take in the recording process and to ensure the best sound possible I needed a good mastering engineer. Basically this person listens to the overall sound of the project and prepares the stereo mixes before commercial duplication (meaning the CD pressing plant). These engineers have high quality speakers, amplifiers and equalizers and the ears to put it all together. They balance out the overall sonic pictures, give it more color and in general just improve the listening experience. I was very lucky to get Denis Blackham to agree to do my project. A long time pro whose past client list reads like a who’s who of rock and roll music, Denis did a superb job. Now, at last, I truly would be able to close the book on the recording of my music.


Denis Blackham

Artwork

With a couple of exceptions I like to think that I’ve managed to always have good cover art on all my CD’s. I spend a lot of time thinking about those pictures you see. I’ve also been very lucky to be able to work with some great photographers and designers and that certainly makes any decision process easier. For Proof though it took me a long time to come up with a focus. Because it was an instrumental record I felt that I had more leeway, as the music would be able to "bend" the photo and design and meld it all together. Anyway, I worked with a couple different designers but I wasn’t very happy with what I was seeing. Mostly it was my own uncertainty about what I wanted that kept prolonging this last step. My friend Torgeir Lund who runs a small label from Trondheim, Norway had been recommending a designer that he works with on his own projects. I had always remarked on how striking many of Torgeir’s records were. As these things go, it was towards the end of my project that I had gone up to Norway to do some shows and finally had the chance to meet the designer Håvard Gjelseth in Oslo. After my show there one night and over a couple of beers, Håvard and I had the chance to talk about my project and he agreed to see what he could do. I got back to Paris, sent him some wonderful photo’s that my friend and favorite photographer Franck Betermin had sent me and 2 days later Håvard returned to me pretty much exactly what you see today. With some very minute adjustments I was set. I happen to think the photos that Franck shot coupled with the quiet and elegant design of Håvard perfectly compliment the music. I was happy and finally, I had my record.

Summary

Proof Of A Promise has been a lot of hard work. I’m not whining about it either but it is a fact. I’m not sure what I expected it to be but anyway I got it done and that’s way cool. I LIKE the fact that I did this home recording myself (with help from my friends of course). It’s been empowering, liberating and rewarding. I learned a hell of a lot about recording and as much as I like to make records that is a good thing. I will benefit from that in the future and that’s also a good thing. I have also learned a lot about myself as a musician and composer and I’ve grown (matured?) a considerable distance since I began this project 1 year ago. It’s easy to be self-indulgent given all these wonderful tools we have available these days. With my friends help though and Chris’s steady-hand mix I feel like Proof Of A Promise exhibits a marked level of restraint. I love hearing these songs playing through my speakers and knowing that I can and did record it here at Rue Voltaire. And of course, as Grandpa Hale always used to tell me, “Boy, who ever told you it was going to be easy?” It’s not supposed to be easy. That knowing has been a big help for this project. I was able to stay balanced and work through the challenges. Sometimes, when it’s hard, you just have to keep taking the steps and one day you discover that it got a whole lot better. When I listen to this recording that is what I hear. Proof Of A Promise.

 

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