Ruby Calling

My Ruby Calling Recording Experience – Part 1

Nov 30, 2012 Crow Girl, Recording, Ruby Calling
Posted by rubycalling

In the past year, Ruby Calling had two very different recording experiences.  The first was a “basement recording” of Crow Girl where an engineer came to our practice space (said basement) and recorded us.  The drummer and the guitarist were in one room.  The bassist (me), the bass amp and the guitar amp were in another room.  This was our first experience playing in separate rooms.  It was strange!  We recorded the instruments with several takes of the song along with a scratch vocal*.  Then, we recorded the vocals on top of the instruments with a big fancy microphone.  It was a pretty low key experience for me and I enjoyed it.  I especially liked singing while NOT playing an instrument.  This was very freeing and made me feel like a true rock star.  I was able to really focus on what I was doing.  When I was playing bass I was totally focused on that and when I was singing I was totally focused on getting the best sound I could from my voice.  After we finished recording, the engineer took the recordings home to mix them.  We went back and forth a few times over email trying to get it just right.  I am really pleased with the results which can be found on our EP.  Take a listen here: http://rubycalling.bandcamp.com/track/crow-girl.

* A scratch vocal is a “throw away” vocal that is recorded on an early take.  It is piped into headphones and then the instruments play along with it.  It helps keep the song timing and keeps vocals from bleeding into the other instruments during recording.