You can see my 1980 Fender 75 and the matching 4X10 cabinet that most of you have played through here at your lessons or at my jams.   Notice my trusty Ibanez UE-300 on the floor.   Never did a gig without it in 30 years.

As many of you know I do a lot of recording here at the house and having much fun.   This week I took my  best tracks to TheKitchenStudios.net and had a professional engineer master everything.  Most things I can do here.  Some things are better to rent as you need them.   Like a boat.   Or snow skis.   The mixer there is $500,000.  I have known the owner (John Painter aka J.P.) for about 15 years but this is the first time I have recorded with him.  J.P. understands the role of recording engineer very well.   Not only how to get the very best sound FAST but also how to keep everybody pumped up with his positive attitude.   Sometimes working on the same song for hours on end can get a little boring.   Especially in a room full of big amplifiers that give off a lot of heat that is probably 90 degrees.   J.P. really enjoys his job and doing very well.  His studio has recorded 1001 Springs,  Erykah Badu,  Doyle Bramhill II, Roy Ayers,  Charlie Sexton,  and now me.

In the studio sound can be manipulated in just about any way imaginable.    I was able to speed up a tune that seemed to be a little too slow.   By speeding it up on 5 beats per minute it really flowed much better.  Unlike the old days of speeding up a tape,  this recording is still 440.    Then I noticed that at the end of the Beatles' In My Life at the beginning of the coda the high D inversion is a bit out of tune.   That is to be expected on a long song.   No one would ever hear it live,  but after about three times listening to it on cd it really stood out.   Not a problem in the studio.   The computer will keep it in tune.   You could also quantize rhythm to make it perfect.  We did not need any of that as I tapped my foot when the tracks were cut.   Quantizing is weird and I never use it.  I choose feel over machine like precision.   Then you can add the high dollar compression,  equalization,  aural exciter to make everything sound better,  hiss remover,  and end up with a nearly flawless performance.   So much fun.  We were able to master 9 songs in 3 hours.   But if all the songs were similar we could have done twice as many.   I will keep that in mind in the future.