Old School Rock, Indie, Americana & Blues
Music Production, Engineering & Development in Los Angeles

King of Percussion

Today we blasted through all of percussion on the Josh and Neal stuff. Martin is the king of percussion. He did a lot of orchestral percussion work back in his Texas days so he knows all of the crazy techniques. I think my personal favorite is one I’ve dubbed “ride the snake” which is basically making your arm look like a snake and shaking it all around…with a tamborine in your hand.

We also got some good gang claps done on the song “Shithouse.”

Acoustic overdubs at Henson

Of all of the instruments in the world, the one I’m probably the most picky about is the acoustic guitar. Today we booked some time at Henson Recording to take a stab at some of the remaining acoustic guitar tracks. We had a beautiful Martin with old strings and a newer Fender with new strings for variety. We also had another Fender and a Yamaha that ended up not making the cut. I think a few of the songs we’re going to have to borrow JJ Blair’s Taylor from the tracking sessions. It was easily the most beautiful sounding acoustic I’ve heard in a long time.

Neal played a few tracks and Josh layed down his signature strum on a few of the tracks.

Neal’s good friend Jody was in town, too who is a great dobro player. We obviously had to put some dobro on a few of the tracks.

Josh and Neal Basics

Good lord. We got basics done for 14 songs in two days. We camped out this weekend at Fox Force Five Recorders, and our good friend Hun-Min Park was engineering. I don’t have the energy to go into details, but it was epic. I’ll leave you with some pictures.

Read more