The Morning Rain

We’ve been sitting around for a while enjoying the summer, not getting too much done, but recently I was inspired by this song which was written by Des. What we have posted now is a demo version, and I wanted to set up my slide guitar one night so I grabbed that demo mp3, imported the stereo track into my multi-track recording program as the first two tracks of a new project, and fired away. Here’s a little demo #2:

I just wanted to learn the song and rehearse on my slide guitar so I haven’t added much in this mix, and the slide was out of tune towards the end (more like I just wasn’t hitting the right notes. The overdrive tone, also, was not intentional…I plan on using a nice clean thick tone with a volume pedal, on the final version). I’ll post some pictures of my recording setup for the slide, later, but what I’m using is a 1950’s Fender lap steel, played with fingerstyle picking and a 3 x 1 inch bar of steel between the fingers. In this version I’ve just turned on two ribbon mics, one about ten feet away in the other room, the other closer to the amp but not even positioned properly (4 feet above the amp). I really just turned on the amp to play, and decided to turn on the mics, where they were, then eq’d the track quite a bit with a low rolloff from about 150hz down, to cut out rumble from an air conditioner and extra bass frequencies, and high rolloff to defeat some of the hiss from the mics being turned up so loud and so far away from a fairly small, quiet guitar amp. I panned the two mics out left and right, and then in the mix, I turned the far mic up and the closer mic down until they were fairly balanced, left and right. Once I get the chords figured out better, I plan to follow them more especially in certain places, but for now, just some experimentation.

You might not be able to tell, but I also recorded a third part harmony in the chorus and a bit of extra harmony towards the end, just to hear how it would sound. Not sure where we’ll go with this song, especially with drums (if any), but wherever it leads, this little tune is probably my favorite track on the album right now. I plan on going through all of the songs over the next month and I’ll probably record some demo tracks along with the others also, especially Des’s songs.