EQ Magazine - October 2008 - (Page 30)

GUITAR TRAX PAUL HAGGARD NEAL SCHON RETRACKS JOURNEY by Michael Molenda Unless you truly live in a cave without a satellite dish, you already know that Neal Schon discovered Journey’s new singer, Arnel Pineda, by watching YouTube—ultimately making both musicians national heroes in the vocalist’s homeland, The Republic of the Philippines. The other part of the Cinderella story is that Journey’s profile is currently hovering high above the ranks of the nostalgia circuit. It’s almost like the former “biggest band in the world” is pulling a Rocky, and taking another run at the title—some 20 years after the hitmaking glory years with Steve Perry at the mic. The band’s return to form isn’t just musical. Journey is also embracing new music-distribution strategies, releasing its recent CD/DVD set Revelation [Nomota] exclusively at WalMart. The collection includes 11 hits recut with Pineda (a stipulation of the Wal-Mart deal that Schon initially wasn’t down with), 11 brand new tracks written mostly by Schon and keyboardist Jonathan Cain, and 14 video selections on a live-concert DVD. Revelation was produced by Kevin Shirley, who helmed Journey’s Trail By Fire in 1996, and has also worked with Led Zeppelin, Rush, Aerosmith, and Iron Maiden. One of the interesting things about the Journey recording process is that the band members track basics almost totally live—like some ’60s throwbacks or feral indie mavericks. So if you tag Journey as a classic, corporate-rock hack that painstaking overdubs its tunes pieceby-piece to ensure maximum radio friendliness, well, you’d be as wrong as wrong can be. I think it’s pretty ballsy that a veteran band of Journey’s stature actually rocks it out live in the studio like an old blues band. We’ve never known how to do it any other way as a band. After we agree on the arrangement of a new song, we go straight in and cut it. If you can’t remember the structure in your head, you just write down some notes. That’s it. In Journey, you play the song—start to finish. For the Revelation sessions, I’d sometimes play the rhythm guitar live, and, other times, I’d play the leads live, and then overdub the rhythm part. I can’t remember what was what. But if I was going to overdub a solo, I’d get right in there after the basic track was cut, and lay stuff down before I started thinking about it too much. I like the feeling of Neal Schon. playing on the fly. Things tend to come out more naturally that way. Do you feel that playing live with the band drives you to perform better than overdubbing parts individually? Well, I actually prefer overdubbing in the control room because I have tinnitus. When everything is loud and the room is ringing, I tend not to perform that well because I can’t hear tuning or pitch. What works best for me is to get a nice, big sound, and then stand in front of the mixing board with the tracks playing back at a very low volume. Do you typically go with complete takes for your solos, or do you cut-and-paste bits from different versions? Most of the time, I like going with one full take. Kevin [Shirley] definitely likes to mess around with Pro Tools. I’m not opposed to it, and if Kevin came up with an edited solo that was equally as interesting or better than the full-take version, I flew with it. I would do four or five takes, and he would usually use all of the first one, or all of the second one, or a bit of one and two. Do you just plug into an amp and let it fly, or do you already have a sound in your head that you’re trying to capture? 30 EQ OCTOBER 2008 www.eqmag.com http://www.eqmag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EQ Magazine - October 2008

EQ Magazine - October 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Punch In Smashing Pumpkins Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Cakewalk Sonar 7 Steinberg Cubase 4 Studio Meets Stage Gear for the Studio and Stage Sounds Room with a Vu

EQ Magazine - October 2008

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