Man....This thing took me longer than anything else in my life.
Worth it? Definitely yes.
I started thinking about it 3 years ago or so, got me the cheapest trumpet on Thomann and begun to figure out how to make something almost nice out of it, with the help of some great musicians friends. Basically, i thought it was a great and fun way to practice many instruments (which is my favorite hobby!), increasing my musical skills as well as producing skills, constantly thinking that some day I would eventually be able to play and record one of my favourite band's masterpiece that Michael League gifted to the world in 2014.
I eventually decided to add the caption "Dedicated to Shaun Martin", one of the member of Snarky Puppy that has recently passed away. I loved him, funniest guy ever, filled with joy while playing, you could literally feel his emotions by looking at his face. Great great great musician.
NERD SECTION !!!
Everything was done in my house, in the music room :D
-Audio
First I made a MIDI track of the entire song with the necessary suff so that I could use it to record the drum on. I played the bass on the drum track followed by all the guitars (except for the solo), keyboards and synths. I finally did the Winds adding some different flavor with the melodica and the soprano sax. The congas went after all this just because I forgot to record them earlier :D .
I spent some time trying to transcribe the whole drum part including the solo for "learning" purposes... I ended up keeping the solo as close to the original rather than playing my own or even improvising it... I could have give it a try to improvise it, maybe.
The guitar solo was a total pain... months and months of practice, I remember doing the solo transcription on January 2024. The thing is that I see myself more like a bass-man rather than guitar, probably due to my hands size, or my drumming background... I'm not very comfortable with guitar solos yet. I then decided to make my own solo for the first half of it, the second one I left it as my ears heard while transcribing Bob Lanzetti's marvelous solo.
I used Logic Pro x and a Persons Studio 1824c Audio Interface associated with a Beringer Ultragain Digital (for 8 more channels).
10 channels for the drum: Kick, Snare up, Snare btm, Second Snare, HiHat, Tom1,2,3, OHL, OHR.
MICs: SM57 for HiHat and Snare 1 (up and down) and a set of Persons DM-7 for the rest.
""FUNNY STORY"" : While recording the drum I somehow managed to smash the snare BOTTOM head for the first time in 29 years. I still don't know how this is even possible. I didn't have of course any spare bottom head to replace with so I put another top head instead and it sounded... not as beautiful as a Ludwig Supra Phonic should sound. But I had to record on that day at all costs!
I did all the guitars with the SM57 placed "kind of" in front of an old ELKA AC 1280R Amplifier.
The rest went directly plugged into the Presonus. I used some Logc Sounds as the Bebop Organ and the Vintage Wah Clav.
- Video
I self filmed all the clips with my mobile phone, I only used a GoPro, an additional Camera and an additional phone for the drums.
Put everything into Davinci Resolve, spent hours to manually sync every clip in time with the audio track (hope to learn the proper way some day)
Spent another Three of days to do all the cuts and nuts and there we go, I really hope you like it and appreciate the effort :D Cheers
Luca