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.