Hope / At My Most Beautiful
Up | 1998
Listen Original Listen Final Mix

Remote Preparations

This past week, I haven’t had as much time for recording. We’re getting ready to go to my folks place in Michigan while the school is on spring break. To take advantage of the away location, I’m getting ready for a practical remove session for two songs.

I’m really hoping that the piano isn’t too far out of tune. It’s the piano my dad got for my mom as a gift in the mid-70s. It’s what I learned how to play on.

Up is a good time to be away from instruments. I don’t have the piano here but will still have all the synths. “Hope” will be a perfect candidate for this. I set up the base and arrangement tracks for this and “At My Most Beautiful” at the same time. I want to have any parts I need ready before we head out.

New Guitar Micing

For “Hope”, I only added a single acoustic guitar track. Most everything else here will be done with synths. I might add a distorted piano part, we shal see. I also might have room to bring a small instrument with us. I should pick the electric violin for this, but I’m switching up to the lap steel. That should hopefully provoke some inspiration.

For the first time, I put the shotgun MXL condensor on the guitar for this one. Mostly because I only want a specific part of the pick attack in the mix. This should let me zero in on the higher frequencies.

Beautiful Bass

I was able to record the bowed bass and cello parts for “My Most Beautiful” on my upright NS. I also added the electric bass part with my fender. I was looking around to add some instruments to Garageband for the harmonica, timpani, banjo and tubular bell parts. THe default instruments are severly lacking here.

I took an hour to find and download a compatable banjo .au patch, only to run into Mac security issues since you can only use their approved software in GB. Blah. I may bite the bullet and buy a package, but that will take some research.