DB3 was asked to take part in an all day Alan Parson recording workshop in Toronto, needless to say the trio jumped at the opportunity. We had been working on our album consisting of ten instrumental songs produced by Alex Lifeson and Richard Chycki, and actually finished recording everything the night before our day at Noble Street studios with Alan Parsons. Alan really wanted to do a tune with vocals, so I already had a tune written and recorded but had not used it yet for the trio, because I felt it was a vocal tune, I sent it to friend, photographer, and sometimes singer Paul Reid. About a day or two later Paul sent me an mp3 of what he had done with it, and I responded with, “I think we’re done...!”. Everything on the final version of Belmonte was recorded in one day and remixed a couple months later by master engineer Richard Chycki at his home studio, Mixland.
Here are some of the details of how we recorded the guitars:
The main guitar track was recorded live of the floor using
an Epiphone double neck on the 12 string neck, tuned to open E. The guitar had just been outfitted with new Mack Alnico 4 and 5 humbuckers (it sounded very close to the Gibson EDS 1275 that was on loan to me from Alex Lifeson). Alan then suggested we triple track the 12 string, with each additional track detuned by 1 cent, one up, one down, each overdub went through a Pigtronix Fat Drive, needless to say it sounded pretty thick!
For amplifiers we had 2 isolated Mack amps, a 15 watt Mack Skyraider with a 12” Eminence Red Coat speaker, and a 18 watt Mack Heatseeker with a 12” Celestion Greenback, miked with condenser microphones. Alan prefers condensers microphones on electric guitars, it’s unusual, but I’ve had good luck doing that with my AKG CS 1000 at my home studio.
When it came time to record the guitar solo, I brought out my main guitar, a 1968 Gibson ES 175 that I’ve played since 1982, plugged it into a Pigtronix Fat Drive, Pigtronix Envelope Phaser, using both the envelope follower and phaser, and the Pigtronix Echolution, for additional analog delay and modulation. And again, both Mack amps were used.
So there you have it, it was a bit stressful to record a complete tune with vocals all in one day, and in front of a studio jammed full of a couple dozen recording engineers, but it turned out to be a great day, and the song couldn’t have turned out any better!
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