After laying down the basic tracks last weekend for their new album, Tequila y Bucana, the guys from Los Ilegales de Lempira are back recording overdubs.
Last Saturday and Sunday, lead vocalist and quinto player Misael Pineda recorded scratch tracks where he’d sing a rough version of the lead vocal line while playing the quinto. The rest of the band cued off these parts as they recorded the basic “master” versions of each song. This weekend Misael went back into the booth and recorded an isolated quinto line, and then finally a third pass where he’d lay down his final vocals.
Typically, on songs where Misael sang lead, his cousin Edwin would join him on backing vocals. In those situations, we put one of them in ISO 1, and the other in ISO 2a, where they can see each other and interact with each other while recording. The back-and-forth between cousins Misael and Edwin (“hé, primo!” “Que tal, primo?”) is very funny and gets a good laugh from all of us in the control room.
Misael and Manuel (Escobar) have been trading bass duties on each song. We’re not using a physical bass amp on these sessions. Rather, we’re just recording bass as a DI (direct injection) instrument. If we need to add the “sound” of a bass amp, there are excellent plugins we can use for that. That gives us a little more control over the overall sound, and lets us tailor the bass to the sound and vibe of the specific track without having to guess during the tracking session. So the bass player doesn’t need to be in the live room. Instead, he just sits on a stool in the control room where he can hear the playback through the control room speakers.
Next up it falls to me to edit and mix all their work into a cohesive unit! Over the past two weekends I’ve gotten to know the material pretty well, so I’m not expecting any huge surprises. The guys have been a lot of fun to work with and I’m looking forward to making them sound their best on record.
