studio work: a song is born

Artist: Donnie Mortimer
Song: Back To Your Arms
Album: To Be Released Summer 2010

Donnie Mortimer – Back To Your Arms (Demo)

Donnie Mortimer – Back To Your Arms (Band Rehearsal)

Donnie Mortimer – Back To Your Arms (Rough Mix)

Donnie Mortimer – Back To Your Arms (Final Mix)

While working on Donnie Mortimer’s new album, I was intentional about documenting the process of how these songs were being written, recorded, and produced. I thought it’d be cool to post detailing the process of how a song makes it from somebody’s head to your iTunes library. It’s an interesting journey.

The Process

• Donnie showed the band the full song on acoustic guitar
• We’d talk about it and then jammed on it.
• After parts were worked out, we fine tuned the band arrangement adding the bridge section.
• We played the arrangement for Gerry.  Gerry gave us his input on parts, tempo suggestions, & etc…
• We reworked the arrangement per Gerry suggestions.
• We live tracked: guitars, scratch vocals, drums, bass, & piano.
• We overdubbed the piano part after realizing the original piano track was too out of tune for the mix.
  Trace (piano) had already left the sessions, so I overdubbed a piano part after we had a visit from the piano tuner.
• We overdubbed a rhodes part.
• We also overdubbed any obvious guitar, bass, drum flubs.
• PRINCIPAL RECORDING DONE (Shaun, Jim, Jason, Trace have all left)
• Donnie & Gerry reconvened at a later time.  They re-recorded Donnie’s vocal track, & Gerry adds some ethereal guitar.
• The track was then taken “Mama” for mixing.