Recording - August 2020 - 40

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and I had clarinet players that played both the Bb clarinet and
bass clarinet, With the strings, some people played violin one
and violin two-there was a lot of crossover.

What is Ghost Funk Orchestra?

It started as a solo recording project of mine. I'd bring in a
singer or a horn player to spice up my instrumentals, but now
we have a core live band of around ten people.

What's your primary instrument?

I play drums, bass, guitar, percussion, keyboards, and I write
all the arrangements on the recordings. Live, I play guitar.

Do you have a home studio?

I have a home studio in my basement, but Ghost Funk has a
record coming out later this year, and I did all the string and
horn arrangements in the A room at Studio G at Greenpoint.

Tell me about the two quarantine videos.

At the beginning of the lockdown, I'd go down to my little
studio and record a song a day just to stay active. At first, it

40 RECORDING August 2020

was all me, and then I decided to reach out to some of my
friends to lay down a saxophone solo or something like that. As
that progressed, I began reaching out to my network of people
in New York and California, and it turned into full string and
brass sections, and kept getting bigger.

So, did you send them a scratch track to play with?

The first video was a song by one of my label mates that
I made an arrangement for-they sent me the stems. For the
second video, I recorded the rhythm tracks. I passed around
a track of drums, bass and guitar to the musicians, so they
had tempo markers and a reference for pitch. I also sent out
sheet music for each arrangement. When working with 40-60
musicians, you need to be very definitive, commit to your
arrangement, and stick to it.

What kind of audio did you get back from other people?

I didn't mic the drums for the Bill Withers video-the sound
is from my iPhone. The sound that's coming out of phones at
this point is not bad. As long as you're not next to a highway
or an air conditioner, you can get a decent sound, especially
when you're a small piece in a bigger context. Your individual
recording is never going to be under a microscope.
I told people, if you have a proper setup, by all means, use
it, but it's not mandatory. Just make sure that you're recording
in a quiet room and that you're close enough to your phone,
where you can get a decent picture and sound. For the video,
my plan was always to make squares. So, it actually didn't
really matter as much to me whether it was landscape or portrait-just get as much of yourself and your instrument as you
can in the frame.

How did you keep it all organized?

In retrospect, I should have set up a single Dropbox folder.
I didn't think to do that, so people were sending me files
over Google Drive, and We Transfer, and Dropbox-it was
a mess, honestly.
As soon as I downloaded the video and audio, I made sure
that I labeled and renamed all the files as instrument_who
played it. So, violin one_Ally Jenkins. That helped me to keep
track of everything.

Recording - August 2020

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