LAURENCE JUBER Rider on a Wooden Horse
That’s it! That’s the name! Let’s talk about
the new recording; you told me a while
back it was a real return for you to composing for the guitar.
What I did was just put October 2009 into my
workflow and started writing. Typically, I start on
something and I keep going until it’s done, and
sometimes it’s done very quickly and other times
it might take a long time. And one song on the
album I started in standard tuning, worked on it
for months, wasn’t happy with it, then one day
I put it in DADGAD and it all made sense. That
kind of thing happens. But I just figured that I
was basically gonna have nine months—it takes
nine months to make a baby and it takes nine
months to make an album. I’ve done albums
much quicker. My PCH album was recorded in
a day, as was my Different Times album, but
typically those kinds of records get made fast
because they’re ensemble things and I can only
afford the union scale on the rhythm section for
one day [laughs]. Not to mention having to go
into Capital and a decent sized room to record,
whereas when I do my solo stuff I do it at home.
Not exclusively, but typically.
So you’ve set up the home studio.
It’s a production facility, and on these two computers I have Logic, Pro Tools, Sibelius, Finale,
things like Acrobat and all the stuff that you
need in the digital world. Right now we’re just
finishing up transcriptions for the new album
and I’m assembling a PDF book that’s gonna go
on a DVD, rather than doing a book. Books are
lovely but they’re heavy and they’re expensive
to produce, whereas anybody can stick a DVD
in their computer and print off of a PDF file and
then they have the music in their hands. But in
assembling that, going from Sibelius and generating PDF files and loading that into Acrobat
and assembling the book from it, I tend to be
pretty hands on with this stuff.
Let’s talk about how you do your recording.
I typically like to record in Logic, only
because it’s just a bit easier. The thing I like
about Logic is I can have all kinds of other
stuff going on at the same time and Logic
doesn’t mind it. Pro Tools is a little more precious, so I have a separate computer running
Pro Tools. I much prefer Pro Tools for editing,
and I really enjoy editing audio. But Logic is
just a little friendlier within my kind of workflow; I can just kind of zoom in and out of it.
I have an Apogee Symphony card with a couple of Rosettas, and when I’m recording solo
I use a pair of Schoeps CMC5s, cardioid small
diaphragm condensers. I’ve had this pair of
mics for about ten years and they always get
the job done. I’m running them into a pair
