Jesse Sample’s Freak of the Week Airs EVERY WEDNESDAY at 5pm Eastern only on RadioRadioX.com
This is Jesse Sample. Where do I start? Let’s start with what I was looking at this afternoon. I looked down at my iPhone and saw a new notification for a group thread I am in. A text says, “I am just running down the car mix now. I have to do it to get the bass right lol. I’ll have what I think is finished to you shortly.” And then another text comes in saying, “Can you look at 11 seconds in as well…there is a snare hit that sounds doubled or something”
Some of you can probably guess what’s happening. Two people are texting about a mix and identifying the little things in a recording and refining a master mix that plays well on any given audio platform. i.e. car stereo, headphones, surround sound….Now in a Secret Fashions production, that mix engineer is usually Rosa but this week, it’s Mike Richardson, singer, songwriter, guitarist, and the beating heart of the band, Tame the Rooster. Mike came up to the Mechanicville studio last night and brought his special take on music. And when I say, “take on music” what I mean is a story, perhaps a journey, a hope chest full of souvenirs and artifacts and other things he picked along the way.
We arrived at the studio, sipped our coffee, and went to work. When it’s just me and Rosa writing, we have a few well-worn processes we employ. When we bring a guest in, the writing and recording experience requires a bit of navigation. There’s no “callin’ it in.” Everyone in the room is on a novel journey. We are all looking for the thread together and nobody is controlling the process. We’re finding our place in it. And on the good nights, like last night, the process sucks us in, and we’re not even aware of it. Time gets wonky and we do our best to uncover this thing, that can only be excavated by this unique configuration of people. Each person being ,in themselves, a unique configuration, of stories, beliefs, and history.
Mike brought his real country story, shaped by years of military service and musical adventure, into the writer’s room last night. And Rosa and I, brought our stories, our “takes.” At the end of the night, Rosa fired the project off to Ben Zo, and this morning, he brought his story to bear with the bass track. Ben fired it back to Rosa and Rosa sent it to Mike for nice and mix and master. Wicked huge congrats to our team on this week’s song.
