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Making the Albums - It's All About the People
Writing the Songs
I returned to songwriting a few years ago and began recording demos using a small home studio. I began with ideas I'd started in the past and gradually built my skills. When I'd get a collection of songs together, I'd take them to Jack Segal, an old friend and songwriting coach. He has sold over 60,000,000 albums worldwide with hits such as "When Sunny Gets Blue", 'Scarlet Ribbons" and "When Joanna Loved Me". Jack was in his eighties at the time but his uncanny knack for what works and what doesn't in a song continue to inspire me. He passed away in early 2005 but I will always carry forward the memory of his kindness and the craftsmanship he taught me.
Building th Skills
I was also helped by Erik Hawkins, a music producer and online teacher for the Berklee College of Music. Erik is a whiz at the technical side of music making. He helped me set up my studio and critiqued some of my early work. Besides telling me that my "Drum programming sucks", he encouraged me to get singing lessons. That led me to working with Jessica Taylor Purse, who was teaching between touring with Sergio Mendez.
In addition to having a great singing voice of her own, Jessica has a remarkable ability to teach. She can hear me sing a line and then come up with an exercise to train my voice. In just a few lessons, I began to like the sound of my own singing.
In the Summer of 2004, I met Victory Mori, a classically trained guitarist who is also expert in jazz and flamenco. I began taking guitar lessons with Victory and we soon became close friends. Though I had been a music major in college, I studied counterpoint and classical music, not jazz harmonies. During my college years, I was in a rock band and could never reconcile what I was learning in school with what I played on the weekends. Through Victory, I began to understand how the chords I found by ear actually work in modern music theory. My songwriting really took off at that point.
Finding the Band - Hussain Jiffry on Bass
By late 2005, I had recorded 35 demos. I had envisioned finding a drummer, keyboardist and bass player to begin buidling the band. I trusted that when I was ready, the right people would appear. Sure enough, Hussain Jiffry came into my life. I knew right away that he was a musical kindred spirit. We both liked and admired the same artists and in fact, he had played with a number of my musical hero's. We soon got together at his studio and began reviewing my songs. I was pretty confident in my writing ability but since I am not a touring professional musician, I was a little apprehensive about what Hussain would think. Happily for me, he kept saying, "I love your tunes' and "Great lyrics". Since I write in a jazz/blues/rock fusion, I use very colorful chords like sharp eleven chords, thirteenth chords, etc. At one point, we were reviewing one of my songs and Hussain saw a sharp nine, sharp five chord. He said, "Man, you use some really expensive chords!"
I in turn, was blown away by Hussain's chops on the bass. He is one amazing player; incredibly talented and yet dedicated to serving the song rather than his own ego. Together, we charted out the songs and picked the players who we invited to join us. Besides being a great bass player and having a studio that used the same software as my home studio, Hussain has played with a huge array of great musicians. So when he would ask, "Who do you want for drums? Do you like Tom Brechtlein?" I responded, "I love Tom Brechtlein. I have admired his work with Robben Ford since the 1980's". So we set up our basic tracks sessions with Tom for December of 2005.
Tom Brechtlein on Drums
Tom is a solid groove player. He is not flashy. Like Hussain, he uses his awesome talent in service of the song rather than his own ego. By way of example, in the beginning of 'Deeper Shade of Blue", I asked Tom to play a rolling paradiddle that would change tonal color, dynamic range and would seem to speed up and slow down, all the while setting up a 6/8 shuffle that would follow my guitar entry. To my amazement, Tom kept his left foot counting the 6/8 on the hi hat while seeming to freely play in and out of time on the snare and toms. Sure enough, he landed right on the groove at the end of my guitar part.
I say Tom is a groove player because listened to each of my demo's and found the essential groove in each tune. Once he got the feeling of each song he would go behind the glass into the soundproof room and count off the tempo. Hussain and I played bass and rhythm guitar with Tom on each song to get a nice live feel to the basic tracks. We each pushed each other to get great performances. The song, L.A. Shuffle was extended over a minute at the ending vamp because Hussain and Tom were having such a great time playing off each other. Tom's drum fills on "Drop Dead Gorgeous" pushed Hussain to come up with some amazing bass riffs.
One of the things I asked Tom for was "train wreck endings" on the rock songs because that's the way we used to close out when I played live. On "Insignificant Other", Tom extended the ending by holding up his hands in a "stop" gesture, then pointing to his watch and raising his eyebrows as if to say, "Be patient" and then crashing to an end. We all laughed at that one.
To give an idea how quick Tom was at laying down the essential track, we cut 22 songs in just two days! One of the songs, "You Say" was done in one pass. The groove was so sexy, we all jumped up and yelled after it ended. All in all, it was a great pleasure to play with Tom. I look forward to playing again live with him.
Ooops!
In early January, I met with Jessica to get feedback on my scratch vocal tracks. I told her that I wanted a more relaxed quality to my voice. She said, "Well it's no wonder you sound like you are pushing. You write songs in a tenor's range but you are a baritone". Oops! We then experimented with each of my songs and dropped the key by a fourth on most of them. Once I accepted that my voice doesn't sound like all the tenors I admire (most rock singer's are tenors), I felt a lot more comfortable with my ability to express a range of emotions in each song. Now I had to re-write the guitar parts in the new keys. That was difficult because many of the songs either relied on open strings (hammers and pull-off's) or just sat in a nice tonal range where I wrote them. Ouch!
I re-recorded rhythm guitar parts and then Hussain re-recorded bass parts in the new keys. As it turned out, we got better performances when we could focus entirely on each part separately. We also had a tonal bonus in that a friend had given Hussain a 1978 Fender Jazz bass when Hussain was in Sri Lanka in February. That bass gave a particlularly sweet sound that we used to good effect on Drop Dead Gorgeous (funky pops and hammers) and a tonal quality like a stand-up bass in songs like Listen to My Kiss. We also got out Hussain's electric contrabass for the bowed part in Tuesday Blues and the fretless for Waking to Our Dream. All together, these albums are a compendium of bass chops.
I re-recorded scratch vocals and prepared some keyboard charts and we were ready for Russell Ferrante. We were very fortunate to get Russell as he is in high demand, but as I said before, Hussain has played with and become good friends with just about everyone (For that matter, Hussain was good friends with my singing coach Jessica, as they had toured together with Sergio Mendez). The world keeps getting smaller.
Russell Ferrante on Keys
Like Hussain and Tom, Russell uses his considerable talent to serve the song in the most tasteful way. He also was absolutely brilliant in the way he could translate my piano pantomime and verbal rantings like, "Give me a whole tone glissando on your entrance to the solo" or "Let the boogey woogie rip on this section", into incredible performances that felt like they were part of the original writing of the tunes. I laughed so hard with joy at what he brought to the songs, my face ached for days. One of the great things about working with Hussain, Tom and Russell is that we share common musical tastes and a similar balance of perfectionism and fun. I told each player that what I wanted was to have a great time - that if we have fun, the audience will have fun. But at the same time, after a take on any part of a song we would all either be silent or laughing and high-fiving each other. We all knew when we had a great performance and none of us would settle for less.
Finding my guitar tone
I have the good fortune to be friends with Paul Rivera and his son Paul Jr., makers of Rivera amplifiers. Consulting with them helped me to get the sound I was hearing in my head out of their amp and my guitars. My main guitar for rhythm parts is a a 1964 Gibson 345. It is a gorgeous guitar, purchased for me by my wife Eileen back in the 1980's. For lead parts, I mostly use a guitar that was custom made for me by Dave Schecter. For acoustic guitar parts, I use a Taylor 710ce.
Harmony Vocals
I decided to put harmony vocals on many of my songs, so I wrote parts and invited Jessica to sing. She happily agreed and we began meeting at Hussain's to record. For his part, Hussain stacked harmonies on top of my harmonies using my "expensive chords" to create a sound like the singing groups of the 1940's. What a blast! His additions were so in keeping with the musical style of my songs and added so much, I decided to put harmony vocals on every track. Jessica also contributed to the writing of harmony tracks by creating the part for L.A. Shuffle. She also came up with some great bluesy parts at my request for Nice Day and PMS. In addition to arranging, Hussain also sang many of the parts along with Jessica while I engineered. The results are awesome.
Final Vocals
Concurrent with recording harmony parts, I recut a number of lead vocal performances. I recorded these in my home studio and asked Jessica to review each one. Thanks to Jessica's coaching, I am very pleased with the results.
Finishing touches
The mixing process took a lot longer than I thought it would. I learned a lot from Hussain and Erik about the process, read a couple books and got input from a major label mixer who happened into my life at the moment I was ready. (That keeps happening!). In the end, each instrument sits in its own sonic space and can be clearly heard in the mix. One nice thing about an otherwise tedious process is that the performances by each musician are so great that I never tired of listening to the tracks.
Mastering is the process of getting the right balance of frequencies (high and low pitched sounds) and right overall volume balance from song to song. Hussain taught me how to do that using a software program.
With the songs ready, next step was to finalize the artwork for the CD. Using Photoshop, I selected, cropped and tweaked the photos taken by Fred Valentine and combined them with text. I took my ideas to a graphic designer friend, David Smith. He found a great font for the text and completed the design work.
In short, this whole process was made possible by the many contributions of very talented people. I thank them all for making this album possible.
I hope you enjoy the music!
Thank you,
David Wells
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