cover of Mystique

This recording project began in November of 2006 and was wrapped up by early January 2007. Normally during this time period I would be touring the country conducting workshops and giving concerts but the previous year I had gotten involved with Harmony Guitars. I was an "On-Air" guitar expert for them on QVC, the shop-at-home channel. During my 2005 stint at QVC I sold $300,000 worth of guitars in 24 minutes spread over 5 appearances.

I was asked to be on hand for the 2006 4th quarter season but something happened between Harmony and QVC along the way and I ended up with no QVC gig and November and December blocked, booked and open. I had written about 20 books in 2005; they were stacked up at Mel Bay Publications and I didn't have anything else to do. Realizing that I hadn't recorded a new CD in two years because of time constraints, I took advantage of the time block and hit the studio.

I have owned my own studio ever since 1978 when I produced my first solo recording - Frost on the Window. The album was recorded on a 4-track Yamaha cassette recorder with SM57 and SM58 Shure mics. The theory behind this early approach to recordings was that I could learn to do it as well as most people out there and the cost of the equipment was equal to or less than the cost of going into someone else's studio, so why not do it myself?

Over the years the profits from sales of that first home recording have paid for my current studio. It's small but it's all mine! My main mixing board is the Roland 2480, a 24-track board with eight XLR ins and sixteen ¼-inch inputs. I have a keyboard, mouse and monitor hooked to the 2480 so I have all the modern conveniences, but I love to physically ride the board's faders to "feel" the mix.

Like many studio pickers, I acquired a drawer full of microphones while looking for that perfect acoustic sound. Eventually I got tired of seeking the Holy Grail of mics so I said to my buddy, Tommy Emmanuel, "I have the most advanced recording board I will ever need. What mics should I get to complete my quest for acoustic recording perfection?" He told me to get the Neumann 149 with an AKG 414 and run the 414 through an Avalon 737 Tube Mic Processor. It took about three years to afford this setup but I have to admit Tommy was right. It gave me the most transparent sound I could imagine. I eventually added one more Avalon 737. I run the mics on the guitar stereo. The Neumann sits about 20" from the sound hole for rhythm and 10" away for lead. The 414 is positioned at the 14th fret aiming diagonally towards the sound hole.

Now, about Mystique:

My wife and I promote a 12-night concert series in conjunction with our big Steve Kaufman's Acoustic Kamp and I thought it would be perfect to take some cuts from the concert series and put them on my new CD. We record all the concerts ADAT and there are always "moments of brilliance" with some of the artists who perform with me. Many special moments are recorded, but I have to look for tracks where the guest artist really sounds great and I make minimal mistakes; we all make errors but some are better than others at covering them up.

After sorting through 24 hours of concerts, I narrowed my favorite tracks down to four. The four cuts recorded at Kamp were: "Lime House Blues" with mandolinist Emory Lester; "Earl's Breakdown" with banjoist Casey Henry; "Forked Deer" with guitarist J.P. Cormier and "Black Mountain Rag" with guitarist Mark Cosgrove. The hardest part about including live cuts on a studio CD is to achieve continuity of tone.

I like to include about 18 songs on my CDs so the overall recording is close to an hour long. Since I had 4 cuts from Kamp, this meant I needed to find 12-14 songs. At this point I should mention that I had lost my Uncle Bill about four weeks before beginning this project. He was a great pianist who studied music 'til the end. When we were growing up he would come to visit and the first thing he would say is, "Go play the mystic chord"- a chord developed by Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915).

Composer and theosophist Alexander Scriabin's mystic chord, actually called the "synthetic chord" by Scriabin himself, consists of the following pitches and intervals: C, F#, Bb, E, A, and D- an augmented fourth, diminished fourth, augmented fourth, and two perfect fourths forming a quartal hexachord. The term "quartal" is commonly used to designate chords that are built by stacking "4ths" which may be augmented or diminished, as well as perfect.

Following Schoenberg's lead circa 1911, rather than the traditional method of stacking 3rds in "tertian" harmony, the hexachord pair exhibits similarities of interval structure (via transposition) or other serial properties such as retrograde, inversion or various combinations of all of these. Scriabin, however, used this chord in a pre-serial manner, producing harmonies, chords and melodies without concerning himself about using it in an ordered fashion. From what my uncle told me, the ongoing argument is that this chord can but does not have to resolve. So each musician who hears the chord pictures how it might resolve but there is no set formula for its resolution.

I fooled around with the chords and tried to come up with something really neat but it sounded too scaly; so I laid down sets of Scriabin chords that I could hear resolve. What you hear in the recording is my improvised rhythm using the Mystic Chord arranged in three sections or parts. I then doodled around to find a melody within the layered background and voile, the "Mystique of Scriabin" was born. Another difficult aspect of the Mystic Chord is the long stretch required of the pianist. To adapt the chords to the guitar, I recorded them on two tracks. The first rhythm track (left speaker) contains the lowest four notes of the chord and the second rhythm track (right speaker) contains the top three notes of the chord.

Now I had five songs down and in the can but needed to think of a plan for the rest of the CD. I made a call to one of my favorite fiddle players, Bobby Hicks, and asked if he would join me. In about a day I had his answer - "Yes." I then got in touch with a bass playing friend of mine - Rusty Holloway, the greatest bass player I've ever played with. By this time I knew the direction I could go on the CD. Bobby Hicks is a double-stop swing and fiddle tune player. Rusty is a cool jazzer, so I had lots of variety in basic ingredients. I then started laying down tracks of songs that I've wanted to record with a trio.

I started laying down the rhythm tracks with a click track. Next I would add my solos leaving holes (openings) for the other soloists. This included all the sections of songs from the Kamp performances that included "swapping fours", i.e., I play four measures then the guest plays four. This gives us a chance to play off each other. The odd thing was that I was in the studio myself and had to guess what the "guest performer" might record after hearing my part.

After recording all the songs the way I wanted them with the rhythm sections and my guitar and mandolin solos in place, I had Rusty come in and do his bass parts. We used only the Neumann mic placed about 6 feet away and overhead - aiming down towards his bass side f-hole. Rusty read everything from charts and played bass on fifteen of the songs. Bobby came in next and played on 7 songs. Gary Davis, three-time National Banjo Champ, came in and played on two cuts.

Everyone came in solo. My studio is a small room and doesn't allow recording more than one person at a time. Because this is the way I've always done it, making it sound like we were all present and recording live was not that new to me. The trick is the mix. I isolate each channel and listen to the track. Does it sound just like the real acoustic instrument? I use the graphic EQ and compressor limiter to make slight adjustments to the tracks one at a time. If you do it for too long you start to get treble fatigue and it's best to get away from it for a day or so. Most important are the levels you set for each instrument.

To get a full sound, you need to have a good stereo pan. I usually put the bass up at 12-noon to one o'clock, then the two rhythm tracks hard stereo or all the way right and left. I use two different rhythm tracks on each speaker. Then pan the leads in and arc from about 9 o'clock to 3 o'clock. This gives you a great starting place for separation. You have to picture how a band or trio or quartet would be positioned on stage. The bass is usually in the back and a little off center. The solo lead is set to the center flanked by the rhythm instruments on the right or left. If there are more solo instruments onstage, they are usually dispersed evenly from the center left and right.

The other issue I had to deal with was to make the live concert recordings blend with the studio tracks. The way I did this is to add lots of studio rhythm tracks. I figured out early on that when I mixed MIDI tracks with acoustic tracks they sounded much more real. If I did straight MIDI tracks they seemed a little coarse, digital and grainy. Live concert recordings are treated the same way. So I added lots of rhythm guitar, mandolin "chops", and acoustic upright bass to the live concert recordings - and they came out beautiful!

Since my first recording Frost on the Window, I've tried to write all the title cuts and maybe one or two more on each album. Titles are so important. When I released To the Lady the title cut was called "Farewell to the Lady" and I thought it best not to make the title seem like a tribute project, so I left off "Farewell" and only "To the Lady" was used.

Other CD titles I've done include Breaking Out, Circles, Back Home and Stylin'; this latest CD was no exception to my album-naming technique. The song I wrote for my Uncle Bill was entitled "The Mystique of Scriabin" and I thought that if I named the CD by the song's full title, people would look at it and go "Huh?" So I named the CD simply Mystique and had the cover artist paint the heavens behind me.

I hope this article has given you a little insight to the making of Mystique.

Enjoy!
Steve Kaufman
www.flatpik.com