My last task

They start printing the jewel cases today. And tonight after work, I have to go listen to the mastered audio at Fat Dog. Then that is it – we’re done!

And that is really hard to believe. I have been working on this since January, 2008. I can’t believe it is really finished! I don’t know what I’m going to do with all this free time I am going to have in the evenings. :)

From Lent to Easter

To me, Lent is critical to the full appreciation of Easter. You can't arrive at the destination unless you walk the road that takes you there.

This past Sunday, the congregation got a first listen to a track from the CD, "The Woman At the Well." It is basically Father Joe reading the story from the Gospel of John where Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well at Sychar. We opened with that, and close the CD with Fr. Joe reading from Jesus' walk to Emmaus.

It was important to do it this way. We have to hear Jesus explain, as he did repeatedly, what his sacrifice is going to mean, before people know of the sacrifice itself. When you give somebody a gift, don't you hide the price tag?

Jesus speaks of living water at the well, a water that quenches all thirst. It is important for those who come to the water to know what the water does. If they know the price paid for that water, maybe some would recoil in horror. Maybe some would say, as Peter did, "Never shall you wash my feet, Lord," ashamed at the price Jesus pays to bring us the water.

But the point is not to recoil in horror: it is to appreciate what the water is.

Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life. 

(John 4:14.)

Some music geek stuff

Here’s some detailed information about the instruments and techniques used to record all of the instrumental parts.

Dave:

Acoustics: Dave used his trusty Takamine, which is his only guitar I believe. It has a wonderful rich tone, and you can hear it warm up the sound on the CD anytime he strums… a much richer sound than mine. We had two microphones on it, one at the neck, and the other below the sound hole, so we recorded it in stereo.

Deanne:

Accordion: I think Deanne’s accordion is a Hohner, but any rate it is a smaller and more manageable one. It has a great tone you can’t duplicate with a synthesizer or sample, and I was thrilled when she started bringing it to Mass, and particularly when she added it to the songs on the CD. My favourite accordion part is the melody on “The Woman at the Well.” That could not have worked out better.

Richard:

• Acoustics: I used two ovation guitars, a full-backed one and the shallow backed one I use at church.
• Electrics: I used a black telecaster that I modified with SCN noiseless pickups for the whole album, except for one song. On “Thank You Jesus” I played my blue 1962 Stratocaster.
• Bass: I used a terrible Squier P-Bass called “the bow and arrow” for most of the CD. That’s why most of the bass parts aren’t too fancy – the intonation and action are so bad, I could hardly play it. For the last two songs I put bass on (“Love Lifted Me” and “The Woman at the Well”) I actually went out and bought a new P-Bass I was so frustrated. Much better.
• Mandolin: I used the same trusty Fender mandolin I have at Mass.
• Keyboards: Thanks to a wedding Natalie A invited me to help out at, I was able to afford my own new sampled piano, a decent one – an M-Audio keystudio. I played the piano parts on that. I’m kind of a hack piano player, and I couldn’t play through the 10 ms latency on Fat Dog’s keyboard for piano parts. But all the organ parts were done on the Fat Dog keyboard.

We’re almost done!

I’ve spent all my evenings this last week at Fat Dog Productions working hard with Chad to get the CD tracks mixed. This is a good time for a pluggy plug – Chad Nesrallah is awesome. I’ve worked with a lot of engineers over the years, and I don’t think anyone touches the man. He took a couple of songs that were pretty chaotic in terms of the huge number of tracks and takes we had (Swing Low and Love Lifted Me) and turned them into the best tracks on the CD.

So I have a few listens to do today, as we will have one last opportunity to tweak the mixes. And then it is off to get the CDs manufactured. Dave designed the CD jewel case… he’s a magazine publisher, so the group has it’s own in-house artist.

There’s a chance the Blessed Sacrament congregation will get their first listen at Mass tomorrow. The reading for the first scrutiny also happens to be one of the readings he recorded for the CD. :)

Another recording session

This time I had both Fr. Joe and Dave Brown in the studio. Dave managed to record nine songs, which must be some kind of record... I think it took me even longer.

CD artwork

So for the past week, Dave has been busy designing the art for the CD. This is actually pretty tedious work, and I am glad I don't have to do it!

When you get a CD manufactured, they give you some pretty exacting measurements that you have to comply with, or they end up having to redo your artwork (for which they will charge you a fortune.) The jewel case has a card that is inserted into the back (the spot where you can read all the songs.) And then there is a card which you pop in the front window.

We've had a lot of back and forth on exactly what information should be on all of these pages. It is fairly challenging to cram a lot of info into such a small place, so we've had to be fairly sparing. Hopefully, we can supplement the packaging here at the blog.

Hopefully I can get Dave's OK to post the art here. I love the theme he's gone with, which is a lot of earthy wood tones.

Some idiot with a guitar

Picture courtesy Natalie C.