Zone Recording: Major Album Deal

Welcome back to another installment of Zone Recording. Lots has been going on in the land of Martone. We have a new concert DVD coming out shortly. It was shot at the Montreal Drum Festival at the end of 2007. It will be an official bootleg DVD, since it is a 2 track board mix with 3 camera shoot that I had no control over. It is "Live and in your Face!"

I think I might actually call it that.

The new Martone record has been done since Christmas. We have been looking at finding the correct label to put it out. There have been some small changes but we are moving ahead!

I have recently completed doing guitars for Universal Records Island Defjam artists Jet Black Stare. I was hired to do melodies, leads and doorbell lines (melodic hook sections) and some rhythm work.This was quite a cool gig. I was hired by a dude named Gordini...

And also Jeff Johnson...

I'll let you know how it went down using a certain song for an example. They would send me production notes for a song. For example, Jeff and Gordini would say, "Come up with the entrance doorbell line for the song, re-intro and outro solo." They would then say, "Make it kinda... Slash... or STP-like, etc." I would then do some research on YouTube checking out different vibes of intros, re-intros, etc.

Then I would head down to my studio Brainworks and do some pre-production. Here might be some examples I would send out:

Example 1 - mp3
Example 2 - mp3
Example 3 - mp3
Example 4 - mp3

I would then email these files to Ohio at the Greenhouse studios in Vancouver, BC where we were doing the session.

After their session day at the studio they would listen to what I have done, and give me an email back with something like...

Poster Princess #2 intro was cool.

We like the poster #4 intro, when you come in we'll work on hammering it out.

I would then go into the studio the next day, having my files ready as reference, and we would start tracking and working on the part. Usually one of the ideas would be quite close to home, and we would work on subtle changes for the part. Once that happened we would fine tune the sound we were using.

Let's check out some gear shots. Heads... Heads... Heads...

All of the heads were in the control room, and run through a Radial JD7 switcher - cool freaking unit.

We would sample different heads for the sounds, then talk about if we needed FX or not. There were a few different cabs hooked up that we would experiment getting different tones with as well.

Old, old Marshall - kicked some ass!

Wicked Fender cab!

Crunchy Boogie Cab!

Here is a shot of the desk with Gordini flying the spaceship - Ohio looking on.

I learned many things from this session. Number one and most importantly, I like being prepared, and enjoyed the process of doing pre-production in my studio first. That was my idea, and it made it easier once in the real studio, plus we saved time not screwing around with the creation of parts as much.

Number two was Keep It Simple! Let me say that again, even louder...

KEEP IT SIMPLE!!!!!!!

This is a pop/rock record and simple was the key. I learned so much about this from the parts that I sent. I have a new respect for the creation of a finely crafted pop song/record and these producers are going to have some big hits on their hands!

May the tone be with you!