Hi Everyone,

Recently I had the opportunity to do some session work at a local studio. I don't play these kinds of gigs very often since most of these gigs are harder to get and usually go to the full-time pro musicians in the area. But when the opportunity comes along I usually jump at the chance to do them because they're challenging, often fun, and I always learn something in the process.

For this recent gig I was hired to play various electric guitar parts for a singer/songwriter for his demo of 5 tunes. This particular session was more intense than I expected. After I setup it was essentially 3 hours of non-stop tracking covering various kinds of parts, lots of sound changes, etc. They knew exactly what they wanted from me and didn't waste any time putting me through the paces.

I thought that it would be a good idea to write a little about this experience and pass along some tips for anyone else who might be considering this type of work. Here are my tips based on my own experience:

- Know your gear inside and out, and be ready to quickly dial up various tones that might be required. Have your sounds ready ahead of time so that when they say "give me a fat screaming lead tone" or "give me a chunky rhythm sound", or "give me a U2 Edge tone" , you know exactly what your settings will be and which guitar you will use. Also, you should be ready to give them a few different versions of each sound because they may not like your first choice.

- Bring a few guitars with different personalities. On some of the tracks certain guitars worked better than others. It really helped having a few different guitars to try on various tracks to find a tone that the songwriter was excited about. For most of the songs I was layering several different parts using different guitars for these parts. You might have one guitar with a very fat tone and one with a thinner sound. Each one would be used for different parts depending on what you're playing and the other instruments on the track.

- Concentrate, and listen, listen, listen! One of the hardest parts that I had to play was a very precise even-eigth-note rhythm guitar part that followed the bass line. It was suprisingly difficult to play in the pocket. The part was very simple, but staying right in the pocket on every beat took a lot of concentration and several passes. In contrast to that, I was asked to do some intro lead parts (much more difficult to play) but these took far less time to record. It was almost as it the "simple parts" were more difficult to track than the harder parts because of the aspect of timing and playing in the pocket being the most important.

- Speak up if your headphone mix is not right. If it helps you to play better by hearing certain instruments turned up in the mix, speak up and don't be afraid to ask the engineer to make a special monitor mix for you. They're accustomed to this request.

- Have a can-do attitude. I know this sounds corny but it's true. You will have a lot of things thrown at you for a gig like this. If you're easy to work with then they are more likely to hire you again.

- Don't overplay. This is one of the big lessons for this kind of gig. Often you are providing the foundation for the rest of the tune. You can't be wailing away on every track or the song will sound like sonic chaos and they won't be happy with your work. You will also make it harder for them to add things like background vocals, keyboard parts, or other tracks that need to live in the song next to your guitar tracks. Keep your parts simple and clean, in the pocket, with the best tone that you can deliver. But, when they do ask you to "go crazy on the outro to this song" for example, then pull out the stops and wail!

-- Jim