Session Guitar: Do You Have the Guts to Keep It Real?

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Allow me to apologize for my absence. "Busy" doesn't even come close to explaining how I tracked more than 70 songs in the past two months ... and kept my sanity.

Let's talk.

"Keeping it real." It's a dated phrase, for sure. However, it's a fitting topic to discuss today.

With all the reality going on these days, with every aspect of everyone's life being documented, the last thing I hear in the music world is reality!

I'll start with "copy and paste."

May I ask whatever happened to playing a song from the beginning to the end? If not with a full band, then at least when you're tracking your own part. The benefits outweigh the hassles. The feel that differentiates slightly from one part of one verse to the second verse is worth the effort to practice the freaking part and nail it!

In my honest opinion, perfection sucks. And I think you know it too! Just because perfection sucks, it doesn't mean mistakes are great or that inadequate playing is better. But it does mean these imperfections and little abnormalities add a feel and humanistic behavior that is necessary and lacking in today's guitar parts and music.

Do you want to think of yourself as having become so lazy or untalented that you can't play the basic rhythm part two times or more? To double or quadruple on different instruments to thicken a part? Are you so lazy that you have to play it once and copy and paste it for perfection's sake? Most people are tracking in the comfort of their own home! It's not studio cost at stake. It's the very essence of your musicianship at stake! This is often why I have a job, kids. Because you can't cut it in the studio and guys and girls like me get called to save your ass. Real enough for ya?

The benefits of micing up an amp and shifting the mic and listening for the sweet spot have been well documented. There is no reverb, model or algorithm that can recreate the very personal sound of the booth I use, or the hallway, or the bathroom in my house! And these are the very traits that add originality and a personal sound print of the guitar tracks I record. I am a proud Line 6 artist! I believe their products are a huge part of why today's guitars sound so huge and in your face. But I don't only go direct all the time with my HD500. I use it as an invaluable production tool. It is found on every track. I love the combination of direct models and mic'd cabs. But just like percussion, I don't believe a track is sonically complete until I hear the environment in which it was recorded.

What I miss is the good stuff. The sound of a guitarist struggling with a difficult part, but hanging in there and getting it. Pulling it off. And the guts it takes to leave it as it is. Change can happen. When you show people what real playing and real emotional content sounds like again, they'll get it.