Layers

A few friends and I have been recording seperate projects lately, and I'm a huge guitar nut, so I planned out and played 3 distinct electric guitar parts that interweave and each get their turn as lead and rhythm, and it really makes the mix sound full. It makes for a great country/rock sound.

My other friends all just hired a 3 piece rhythm section (guitar, bass, drums) and they laid down a solid foundation, and added fiddle and piano over it. To me it sounds very "Nashville" and typical of mediocre country. It kinda reminds me of a nice kareoke track, it just sounds like hired musicians instead of a band.

When you record or play out, what are your layers like? Do you nitpick each part or just let the musicians play? I've never wanted to be a nitpicky band leader, but it seems like that's the best way to guarantee that the parts are synergistic and don't clash or step on each other.

First off, I think you have to let guys play. You can play around a hook but let 'em be their own voice. Also, I find that when recording the guitar parts, two players playing "live" sound better in the first two or three takes. After the third take is seems to be a little too well rehearsed and doesn't have the natural "excitement/flow/energy". Just my two cents.

I think, in the band business, you are wasting your time trying to tell someone else what to play. Except for the basics... Genre, Idiom, Time Sig., Key Sig, Tempo and Feel.

If you want to control the parts you need to compose (no nitpick) the parts.
Then you would be a composer.

You can't push a river, gotta go with the flow.

If they write a song and only hear what they hear, unless you buy their song, you have to accept that it is what they want.

By the same token, when you do your song your way, they can take it or leave it.

Every band I have tried to record with has ended-up with less than stellar results.
Too many cooks.

I do my stuff my way.
I have no illusions of scoring a Major record deal, or even a minor one.
I work on it until it sounds like something I like listening to.

Great. Another every-note-is-perfect-and-mix-is-stellar-so-nashville-sucks themed post. Terms like over-produced should be saved for my wife's cooking.

So, that out of the way, I think you're thinking like a guitar player. Unless you are one, the song and singer are more important than the backing tracks. It just is. You can agree or disagree but it doesn't change the fact that we often put ourselves at the top of the musical food chain and forget the average radio/CD/live music listener doesn't care if it's a MIM or MIA or what amp/pedal chain/cable or what brand/gauge of strings we use or if we use a pick/fingers/hybrid. They just want to be able to hum the hook the next day.

In other words you and your freinds are both right.

I wasn't bashing Nashville, I just think that throwing one of each instrument into a pot and stirring it up doesn't always produce great results. And I'm in favor of the every-note-is-perfect approach, and a good mix can make a band sound awesome, I'm a fan of that.

I just think that written out parts that are built to correspond have a higher rate of success than uncoordinated jamming to chords by a plethora of instruments.

Somehow I didn't get uncoordinated jam out of

"My other friends all just hired a 3 piece rhythm section (guitar, bass, drums) and they laid down a solid foundation, and added fiddle and piano over it. To me it sounds very "Nashville""

but for me reading is a read chore.

Depends on whether a project is a project, or a band. If you're gonna have an actual band, you gotta let everybody be creative and contribute, you can't tell 'em what to play. You can give 'em guidlines, but you can't dictate not for note parts. If you wanna do that, you need to hire pro sidemen, and pay them the going rate to reproduce what you wrote note for note. That is NOT a band. That is a composer and a bunch of sidemen.

Sometimes in a band situation, where everybody is allowed to be who they are, somebody sticks out and doesn't fit. In those cases, you can either cut 'em loose in favor of somebody who fits better, or deal with the "sore thumb" thing. That's all there is to it.

There are pros and cons to both approaches. Both approaches are capable of making really great, really terrible, or just terribly mediocre music. It all depends on who's involved and what their jobs are.

I'll join a band, I won't be the guy who gets paid to reproduce somebody else's composition note for note. No creativity allowed = me not interested, no matter what it pays. Sorry, but it's just no damn fun, and I don't see the point of working if it's not fun. That's why I became a musician instead of a ditch digger.

My last recording turned out to be our best, due to misunderstandings/ awkwardness and generally saying sod it !
Booked studio, band is on last legs anyway, but we had a couple of songs that we wanted to record that me and singer had written.
Night before , bassist rang me , "can`t do tomorrow we`ll have to re-arrange session":mad: No Its booked we are doing it, and I will play bass.
problem one solved.
problem two, get to studio, where is drummer ?
still at home 45mins away. :confused: thought we were cancelling due to no bassist. Nope we are doing recording get your ass here now.
So session starts late, drummer not prepared plays badly and pretty much ruins session.
Engineer, says can i show you something , :shock:
He wiped the drum track and the song came to life.
So the song started life as a four peice band jazzy country type feel.
In the end it was Singer on lead vocal/ acoustic and harmonica solo.
I played bass, and a second acoustic capo`d for a different feel.
I then laid down a light electric picking part low in mix. Then a Tele solo with a wound up Princeton.
the combination of the parts having to be changed to suit feel and lack of drums made us think more about the feel of the song, and composition. I ended up even composing a solo as opposed to just winging it like i normally do.
See if I can post song somehow.:cool:

Not sure if this will work. no it didn`t:oops:

Before I moved out West, I was in an R&B cover band. The parts were incredibly defined and I've taken that experience to this new band.

We do about 80% original work in a 3-4 hour night. So everybody has to work on arrangements.

Generally, the rhythm part comes first from the songwriter, then I'll add whatever seems appropriate to work around that.

The drummer and bass player get the song then. They're very good at understanding the feel of the piece, then coming up with parts that work together.

(At this point I usually see that my bit needs to change, or somebody "suggests" it needs to change).

So we end up with very constructed, tight arrangements. We played in front of a local band known for high energy 1-4-5 covers using bluegrass instruments. Their bass player noted that we sounded like a real band, "with parts and everything".

But it still relates to the topic 'broadly' ...

Number 1 rule of any successful 'hired' recording musician session: know whom to hire. Seriously, that's part of your job as the leader/band leader/producer. Not all session players are created equally. I don't mean that pejoratively. I'm talking about styles, strengths, specialties, etc. Part of the genius of guys like Chet Atkins, Phil Spector, Miles Davis, Al Kooper, Barry Gordy, Tom Dowd, Jerry Wexler, Booker T. Jones, etc. is that they knew the right cats at the right time.

Number 2: if the song calls for 'layered' parts played by one or two guys that are capable of pulling it off then go for it. That's a perfectly valid way of making music - as demonstrated by guys like Todd Rundgren, Prince and some late period Beatles.

I wouldn't bring one of my original songs in to the studio, without everyone in the band knowing exactly what they need to play. I met a keyboard player at a blues jam 1 time and he expressed interest in joining my band. My response to him was,

"I'm not trying to sound like you can't do it, I just one you to know how things work before you get involved. We write parts. Before a song even thinks about seeing the light of day, each band member knows exactly what they're playing. We're not an improve band or a jam band; we write, we arrange and we reproduce those exact arrangements to the best of our ability every time."

He had never played in a band like that, but I'll tell you one thing, recording is the easiest thing in the world when you know what everyone is doing and know where and how your parts are supposed to fit.

Depends on whether a project is a project, or a band. If you're gonna have an actual band, you gotta let everybody be creative and contribute, you can't tell 'em what to play. You can give 'em guidlines, but you can't dictate not for note parts. If you wanna do that, you need to hire pro sidemen, and pay them the going rate to reproduce what you wrote note for note. That is NOT a band. That is a composer and a bunch of sidemen.

Sometimes in a band situation, where everybody is allowed to be who they are, somebody sticks out and doesn't fit. In those cases, you can either cut 'em loose in favor of somebody who fits better, or deal with the "sore thumb" thing. That's all there is to it.

There are pros and cons to both approaches. Both approaches are capable of making really great, really terrible, or just terribly mediocre music. It all depends on who's involved and what their jobs are.


I'll join a band, I won't be the guy who gets paid to reproduce somebody else's composition note for note. No creativity allowed = me not interested, no matter what it pays. Sorry, but it's just no damn fun, and I don't see the point of working if it's not fun. That's why I became a musician instead of a ditch digger.

But I agree with Jakedog. I enjoy the spontanaity (sp?) of "winging" it to a certain extent. What I DID expect was for guys to know what key the song was in, and have enough professionalism to NOT RUN OVER the top of someone else. I always felt if things were "too perfect", it just sounded and felt like a fart in an empty building; no one to appreciate it:lol:.

I always liked that same feeling of spontaneous creativity in the studio, too. I felt like it kept me on my toes and forced me to pay attention instead of just being a robot to an "arrangement".

Some of the best recordings I ever did of my duo act some years ago was when Red (my other half of the duo) and I decided to record our "night" and then go through the recordings the next day or so and cherrypick some and put them on a CD. I've not found that "relaxed" and "free" feeling with any other players since he passed away, except for John Short from Perth, Au. We made viable recordings the first time we ever played together.

I guess a lot of improv is a bit easier with a duo though. My band is 7 pieces, so if we don't know what everyone else is doing, a lot of bad things can happen. I'm also not one of those 100% dictate all the time what your parts are, I have some specific ideas and leave some room open for my band member's creativity, but once we've decided on a part, that's what gets played. This is the first band I've done this degree of arranging with and I'll tell you what, it's the easiest band I've played live with and the easiest band I've recorded with, not to mention, we can relax and just have fun on stage, because we know what the cues are, where they come and we know we can count on everyone else being on top of it, so we have a lot of trust in each other which allows us to focus on the performance side of things, giving a great show to the audience because the music has already been driven in to our brains in the rehearsal room.

This system isn't all things to all people, but with myself and the group I'm in now, it's by far the most fun I've had with a band.

[QUOTE=minstrel55;3942693]I guess a lot of improv is a bit easier with a duo though. My band is 7 pieces, so if we don't know what everyone else is doing, a lot of bad things can happen. I'm also not one of those 100% dictate all the time what your parts are, I have some specific ideas and leave some room open for my band member's creativity, but once we've decided on a part, that's what gets played. This is the first band I've done this degree of arranging with and I'll tell you what, it's the easiest band I've played live with and the easiest band I've recorded with, not to mention, we can relax and just have fun on stage, because we know what the cues are, where they come and we know we can count on everyone else being on top of it, so we have a lot of trust in each other which allows us to focus on the performance side of things, giving a great show to the audience because the music has already been driven in to our brains in the rehearsal room.

This system isn't all things to all people, but with myself and the group I'm in now, it's by far the most fun I've had with a band.[/QUOTE





I know some "picture" a "duo" as a couple guys sitting on barstools with 2 acoustic guitars singing Michael Row The Boat Ashore or Puff The Magic Dragon. The duo I was half of for years was FAR more than that. Red and I both played bender guitars that had synth capabilties, we used Solton MS40 for drums and bass (which I usually operated) The Solton played bass/rythym/drums and could do rolls/ accents on demand. The bass part was played via foot pedals similar to an organ, and operated by my left foot. Minor/augmented chords were engaged by a tonality pedal used by my right foot.

If a song called for horns, strings, banjo, whatever...we could do that. So no, it wasn't just the easiest thing in the world to do. We both had played in full bands before we hooked up and were both weary of the fools that wouldn't show, drank too much, smoked the crazy crap, had wives/girl friends that thought they were part of the band.

It was hard work to do what we did, but we did it very well. We did everything from classic country to new craptry, rock, doo-wop, blues, bluegrass and since we both did MIDI synth stuff, we could do big band stuff. There was absolutely NOThing pre-recorded or no sound tracks used in what we did. We did it all live and on the fly and we did it often. And we were paid more than most full bands.

Rant over....sorry, I get a little "testy" when someone hints that ALL duo acts are the same and are "easier".:wink:

No offense taken at all. Wasn't trying to imply that duo acts are easy... I don't play in a duo for a reason. lol I'm a much better full band musician, I'm just saying to improv and be flexable musically, it's easier with 2 or 3 people than it is with 7. If you have 2 solid players, who tend to think along similar lines musically, you can have some really neat stuff happening on the fly, but when you put on a show, with the band playing to a click and 7 people with different ideas and from different musical backgrounds, our version of spontenaity is jamming on the outtro solo 1 more time around.

Again, not saying it's better, just different. Both ways, or a combination of the 2 can be very effective and fun, for myself and my band in our situation, I like the consistency of it and that works best for us. It's not all things to all people.

I think parts that are worked out to the extent that its written down, you leave no space for "lucky accidents". Those bits where somebody played something off the cuff and a reaction was instantly given by other members of band, to take song into a new area or give the song a hook that captures the Ear.:cool:

This can be true, but there is only so much sonic space available and unless every player is completely lights out, this limited space can be trodden on pretty quickly. The only thing worse than a player who totally forgets their part and stops playing completely, is a player that plays more than they should. For me, music has a lot to do with allocating that sonic space by instrument and frequency. For my group, at our talent level, a writing of parts works extremely well and when we were working these songs up in rehearsal, we had many happy and unhappy accidents along the way.

To me the biggest difference from a good band and a great band is not the ability of the players alone, it's more the consistency with which the band can reproduce those magical moments on call. We're not the kind of band, with the kinds of songs that lend themselves to a lot of changes on the fly. We can really reproduce the magic when each person knows what's coming and how they're going to react to it.

Our songs are 3 minute 30 second rock songs, with good beats for dancing and abundant musical hooks. They just don't leave a lot of room for improv. That's the great thing about music though, a band like mine can be very successful with our level of arrangement and more freeform bands can also be very successful and often enjoyed by many of the same fans. Music to me is the most powerful and diverse art form there is.

I think parts that are worked out to the extent that its written down, you leave no space for "lucky accidents". Those bits where somebody played something off the cuff and a reaction was instantly given by other members of band, to take song into a new area or give the song a hook that captures the Ear.:cool:

Only if the players aren't really that great or not suited to the music at hand.
This falls under my previous post, # 11.
A good player knows when to 'go off road'.

I think an element of luck, (not to downgrade peoples ability ) is often attributable to a memorable piece.
We were recording once, when drummer made a mistake. Rather than redo his part, the band decided to play to the "mistake" and learnt it that way at gigs. Sounded weird at first but everyone commented on it, and as we did it the same every time, it could not be called a mistake
Point is , best musicians in the world don`t make the best music, best bands do. :cool: