Let's talk about technology. We are guitarists, typically the last ones to climb aboard the technology bus. We dig things analog, uncomplicated, and straightforward. However, the world around us is still moving at the speed of light. The music technology around us is amazing. And we need to stay on top of it. Some of you may have heard about remote sessions.

After many years, I became a first call guitarist for a big name producer. It's great to have that in your pocket, and yet, still there are times when the session is impossible to make, or is a record where, there's not going to be a full band session anyway. This is a great opportunity for a remote session.

Another instance might be where you're in-between projects and could use some extra cash flow. Selling guitar tracks via remote session is another cool source of extra income, and you never have to get out of your jammies, or leave your place.

So what is a remote session? Some think of it as the service where multiple people can be online simultaneously to record a session. This is a remote session, but not the kind I'm thinking of. For me a remote session is where you are hired to play guitar on some music, yet you use your studio to accomplish the recording aspect. Music is sent to you; you record guitar parts and then send the guitar parts back to be mixed into the song.

This can happen in a few different ways. Let's start from simple to fancy. The scenario is a producer has a song, and needs you to put guitar tracks on the song. You live in different states.

The more simple fashion is that he sends you an MP3 file of the song via email. Usually MP3's are small enough for email, and don't take long to download. The quality of the MP3 doesn't really matter as it's only being used as a reference track. What IS important is that in every scenario, there needs to be a defined start point for the reference song. By this I mean that when the producer makes the reference track to send to you, it should start from the beginning of the session. Bar 1. No matter if the song starts on bar 5 in his software, have the producer start the reference track from bar 1. The reason for this is to make sure that when all of these tracks are getting flown back and forth that they all line up. You don't want to make extra work for each other in the process. So let's say the producer is using Pro Tools, and you're using Logic Pro. He does a bounce to disk of the song starting from bar 1. Sometimes it can be helpful if the producer puts an extra dialog track in there explaining where they want the guitar parts, type of effects, musical direction, etc. In this case, they would bounce to disk twice (Once with just the song, once with the dialog track). He converts these two files to MP3, and emails them to you.

In Logic Pro, you can import the MP3 right into a new session. Import both files so you have the producer's direction, and the actual music file to play to. When you place the sound files into Logic Pro, be sure to place them at bar 1. If you have the tempo, you can set Logic to that tempo. If not, no big deal as the audio will all line up from bar 1. What is important is to have the same bit depth, and sample rate as the producer's recording. If he/she records at 44.1kHz, and 24 bit for example, do likewise.

Now lay down all of your fun guitar parts. It can be helpful to the producer to have the guitar tracks with one clean version, and one with f/x. I'll often use a splitter, or just a DI to go direct as well as through my guitar f/x rig. I'll record these to different tracks simultaneously. The reason for this is to give the producer more options. You may have a killer delay sound, but if it doesn't mesh well with his mix, then he's stuck. If he has a clean guitar track, he can effect that track, or blend in your effected track to taste. I usually go middle of the road both EQ and effect-wise, unless the producer and I know what we want, and then I'll dial in that sound so he doesn't have to mess with it on his end.

So now you've got all of your guitar tracks recorded. Next step is to bounce each one of those tracks individually from start to finish. In Logic Pro, you can select to convert these as necessary. So if the producer needs .aif, or .wav files, you can create them here. Be sure to save these into a folder reserved for this project. It'll make them easier to find. Even if the guitar track only has playing on the last chorus of the song, bounce it from the start of the song to the end of the song. This will ensure that the audio will line up correctly when the producer gets them. You don't want to convert these guitar tracks into MP3's to send back because of the audio quality (or lack thereof) issue. I will just burn a CD or DVD of the files as data, and FedEx them to the producer. Done deal, the producer drops the files into his session, and everything lines up, the world is a good place.

The fancy method to do this is to use an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) site. Often, these are part of your personal web site package. Use them! This way, you can create a secure, password protected area for the producer to place, and store the music for you to play to, you can download the music, do the guitar thing, then place the finished guitar tracks in the same location for the producer to download, and drop into his song. FTP sites can store much more info than you can send in an email, which makes this a logical choice, as well as a cheaper alternative to FedEx-ing CD's all the time. Use the technology around us. I did three records this way this year and it worked out well for all involved. I still love a room full of musicians playing together, but if that's not possible, there are many tools now that allow us to keep making music anyway.

http://www.philgates.com
makintrax@philgates.com
www.myspace.com/philgatesmusic