The making of "On a wooden path"

Studio dans la cour

big protools rig

The boss mr. Silvio Soave

Recording or pretending

the garden		 This second solo recording was planned long before the SeeWhat? - Electro/Acoustic/Ambient was even recorded. As I started composing and playing some of those tunes long before I even imagined this solo project, and as the project grew, it was obvious that a separation between my acoustic and electronic worlds was needed.

I recorded these 20 songs during 2004 in Silvio's studio built in the garden of his house in Romans (France).

I met Silvio Soave in 1995 during the recording of the second SAKARYN cd in Belgium. At this time he was working in the big Media Waimes studios in Waimes as main engineer. We had a great pleasure working with him and it was clear we had to work again together.

The years passed and we kept contact and met occasionally. He then relocated in Romans and opened his studio. The studio is a protools HD 5.1 facility where he mainly does small overdubs, mixes, mastering and post prod. When he has to record he goes in another studio elsewhere.

He is known worlwide as an acoustic music engineer: hundreds of recordings from classical to jazz, worldmusic to ethnomusicology. He currently works with Titi Robin (recordings and live), Keyvan Chemirani, Abida Parween (THE  Qawwali queen from Pakistan), Ravi and Anoushka Shankar (Live).

As on the Electronic recording, improvisation was always present and even if most of the tunes where written long before the recording took place, there was always an attitude to favor the unknown twist that makes it interesting and exciting to develop.

Some notes about the recording:

  • I recorded everything in the mixing room next to Silvio because, specially in a solo record, you have to play for somebody or it becomes empty.
  • The guitars: Asturias D pre war (D18 copy), a Tacoma ER19C
  • The guitars where recorded by two shoeps condenser microphones and a neuman tube microphone a little further back, most of the tone shaping at the mixing stage was done by adjusting the balance between those 3 mics !!!
  • My guitars internal mics went also directly to the desk via my EDP (echoplex looper) for looping when needed.
  • Beside the obvious in "one go" playing, we used overdubs on some of the songs.
  • A special EDP technique called loop windowing was used for nb 6
  • An octave pitched down EDP loop build by playing my guitar with needles stuck thru the strings was played for the first and last song.