Recording “Hope is Why the Heart Beats” by Andrew Shearer

Posted on July 20, 2011 by Jake Barshick
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Back in May I went and visited one of my best friends Andrew Shearer. He and I both share common interests in musical styles, and have done many projects together. This visit became the latest project.

I came bringing recording equipment, and we recorded 2 songs that weekend. One of the songs being Hope is Why the Heart Beats. It’s a simple acoustic song with a driving feel to it. Andrew played the rhythm acoustic while our friend Jake Yonkers grabbed an Ebow and played lead on his acoustic with it. I decided to record them playing together live and without a click track to get a real organic and emotional feel. I set up 1 microphone each for Andrew and Jake’s guitars and then I placed a room mic about 10 feet back. The room mic added a lot of depth to the recording. You can hear people moving around in the room in the song, I always enjoy little things like that for some reason…as long as they are within reason ;)  I recorded vocals separately, using Andrew’s closet as a makeshift vocal booth!

The drumming part was recorded in a bathroom. Jake hit a drum and Andrew was shaking a metal can with change in it (now i think it was just an egg shaker) and we were all stomping to the beat. We recorded 2 takes of the stomping and such with different variations. I panned the 2 drum tracks left and right. I was pretty amazed with how good they sounded. definitely added to the song alot.

As far as mixing goes, I kept Andrew’s guitar panned center and panned Jake’s guitar hard left. I then put a reverb on Jake’s guitar and panned that hard right, gives kind of an errie effect which is what I was going for.  Everything else was just minor eq adjustments and compressors.

 

Overall I was very happy with how the song came out. It makes me want even more to find a way to make a full career out of ths.. but one can only hope!

Jake

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  • Mark Winner

    I’m really proud of you and Andrew. The song is great and I can’t wait to hear more from both of you!!