Guerilla Jones Pt. 1

Work continues to progress on the the upcoming HiCoup album “Guerilla Jones.” It happens to be totally produced and engineered by me. We’re coming up on about a year and a half of work on it now, and we can finally say that all vocals have been tracked, including the two guest spots, and we’re now in the editing stage. 60% through it really.

Depending on the artist I edit differently. Actually depending on the part of the song I’ll edit differently. While it seems like a real cut and dry, mundane part of the process (and it’s definitely the most borning, no question) I find there’s a lot of thought that goes into it.

For instance, on the Super Chron Flight Brothers album Cape Verde I edited the two emcee’s vocals completely different, as their styles are very different. For billy woods’ off-kilter, generally slower flow, I kept the edits really loose. For Priviledge, who did far more overdubs on a far denser flow, it was important to edit a lot tighter.

I general though, my rule of thumb is any time someone does a complete double of a verse, it should be airtight. If not, it’s distracting and makes the leads unclear. Ad libs, however, I take more liberty with, cause they can really change the flavor of the song.

Choruses - Air. Tight.

For HiCoup however, I’m going someone pretty much right in the middle. We’ve been overdubbing pretty liberally, rarely the entire verse, but usually we’re doing two tracks of dubs, which end up panned out pretty wide. These all get edited pretty tight. Then we’ll often do an ad lib track which will stay panned low in the middle, and usually this gets edited very little. (I consider overdubs and ad libs two different things. Dubs are a layering of lines, ad libs are “Uh’s” “Yeah’s” etc.)

At the end of the day though, the main point is always - “Does it sound good?” if the answer is yes, then you’re good. If the answer is no, then keep working.

Thoughts?