Recording ‘For The Love’ with Caddy Cooper

April 20, 2018
Blog

Recording ‘For The Love’ with Caddy Cooper. ‘For the love’ is Caddy Cooper’s 2018 album. The backing tracks were completed in (roughly) half a day.

As a session player you have to be ready for these sort of days. Days in which you find yourself working for several clients in one day. Moreover you have to be prepared. So, after a day of rehearsals with another band, I packed up my drums, slung them into the car and headed to Hemel Hempstead to record drums for Caddy’s new album.

Recording For the Love as a Band

Most of the tracks on ‘For the Love’ where recorded together as a band. The vocals were to be added on a later date. Like most sessions, time is of the essence and we had 6 hrs to complete tracking the entire album. A lot of fun was had during the session, in no small part because of these musicians –

  • Caddy Cooper – Guitars/Vocals
  • Tom Jaworski – Guitar
  • George George – Bass
  • Ben Woollacott – Drums
  • Dave Hayward – Pedal Steel/Engineer
  • Paul Carella – Vocals

There’s an added benefit to having next-to-no time in the studio because it focuses your playing. Also, being prepared with cheat sheets gets you through sessions with confidence.

Equipment Used Recording with Caddy Cooper

The equipment used recording with Caddy Cooper was my trusty ol’ Ludwig drum kit (22″ Kick, 13″ Tom and 16″ Floor Tom) and an array of my Zildjian cymbals. Not forgetting a couple of snares to boot.

Obviously it’s essential to have options during any recording session. For example, your favourite snare drum might not cut it with a particular song. So, having the option to (quickly) replace a sound source, saves you time.

2-3 Takes Per Track

In an ideal world we’d have got most, if not all the tracks on For the Love recorded in one take. If anything, to save time. The band was rehearsed, ready and confident. Alas, this wasn’t to be but the best we could muster was 2-3 takes per track. This enabled Caddy Cooper the option of splicing her favourite sections from each track to form a complete song.

It is all about capturing a performance when recording. Sometimes you’ll hear things in another take that supersede an earlier version. So splicing from 2-3 takes per track is necessary.

Have You Heard The Album?

Recording ‘For the Love’ for Caddy Cooper was a real joy. Have you heard the album? If you have, leave me some comments below on what you thought about it.

Ben Woollacott Administrator