Guitarist Recording Collective: May 2005 Part 1

The task for May’s Guitarist Recording Collective was to use a collection of provided Jazz style samples of bass, drums etc. to create a track using at least one sample.

Now that I have unpacked all my necessary recording bits n bobs I decided to give this one a go. Recently I’ve trying to incorporate some Jazz into my playing ;).

Listening to the provided samples I wasn’t too impressed with the chord progression so decided to come up with my own and hopefully create a track using the supplied drum loop.

I also decided to record all guitar parts using an acoustic, for that intimate Jazz Cafe vibe.

So, the chord progression.

I’ve been faffing around recently with certain minor Jazz ii - V - i progressions and opted to use this resolution in the piece. Therefore currently the progression goes something like (very roughly):

||:Gm7 C7|Gm7 C7|Gm7 C7|Gm7 C7|Gm7 F#13|Am7b5 D7#9|Gm7 C7|Gm7 D7b5#9:||

This should give me plenty of scope to create a main melody/head and then noodle for a bit.

Last night I started trying various ways of mic’ing/recording the acoustic. The Fylde I’m using is fitted with a Headway pickup so I wanted to use this in the recorded signal.

The reason being since I’m only using a Shure SM58 to record the acoustic ( currently saving up for a nice Condenser mic ) using the DI from the guitar should add a wee bit more top end.

I setup the mic to point @ the join between the neck and the guitar body and recorded a small snippet of some playing to check. I noticed that with too much of the DI signal the sound was very ‘boxey’, so tamed that down a bit which improved things slightly.

I tried the usual listen on monitors then listen on headphones to check the sound and felt that the sound was maybe a touch too bassy, possibly I was too close to the mic. A quick read of Recording and Production Techniques by Paul White revealed I should maybe try a distance greater than 12 inches or so.

Tonight I’ll give this a go and maybe try another mic position.