The Surfcats project

How about a warm round of applause for.. 

A while back Mark Tinson, a fellow muso from the NSW mid coast, contacted me to see if I would be interested in participating in his third CD project "Mark Tinson's Surfcats". I'm not exactly a water baby but I thought why not, I'll have a paddle.

The CD album has been signed off and is now in the racks. The album features a wave of fourteen budding guitar players including myself and including some world renowned pickers like ex-Aussie and now New Yorker Oz Noy, UK guitar legend Chris Spedding and Martin Cilia from our own surf guitar masters, the Atlantics.
Mark wrote all the tunes and arranged, played on and produced the backing tracks, a huge feat in itself. He then contacted all us beach bums to see if we would come aboard. I don't think anyone could have turned Mark down and I'm sure us surf freaks enjoyed every moment helping him to produce this album.
This was a guitar collaboration where none of us knew who the other players were or knew the tunes they were to record. There was never a question of 'billing' or on the order of tracks.

So how did it all happen?
There was a bit of traveling for Mark and no doubt a lot of internet travel and I can really only speak for myself in how I went about recording my parts. Doesn't everyone have a home studio these days? I'm staring at mine as I write this. Mark emailed me a rough mix of the track he wanted me to do in a couple of different takes. One take with the pure un-mixed backing track and one track with the guitar melody guide played by Mark. He also include a PDF chord chart with some pointers (no not white pointers) where he would have liked certain things and where I should leave blank. As we all know, the spaces are just as important to a song as the melody, besides, I'm really good at spaces.
So I simply loaded the tracks Mark had sent into my DAW of choice. The door I have been using for the past few years and which is fricken awesome.. the little known about, Sequel3 from the Cubase people, Steinberg. I whittled away for a few hours until I got something that I was happy with and it sat nicely into Mark's backing track. I tooled around with a few late notes and made sure my levels sounded even. I had DI'd my Strat directly into my inyaface so I had the cleanest, buzzless, scratchyless Strat ever recorded. I then copied this to another track and added an amp sim to achieve 'the sound' I thought would be suitable for my part. Then I copied this and proceeded to add a smidge of distortion, some finely tuned EQ and a good dose of surf echo with a good lashing of springy reverb and various delays. Done.
So I exported all my various takes and effected tracks as separate tracks. My intention here was to give Mark the opportunity to provide his production magic. After all, I'm only the guitar player, never been near a surf board. There was a DI track, an amp sim track, a track with effects plus I sent him only the stereo effects track (without my guitar) so he could add the effects himself in the mix. I wouldn't have a clue which tracks Mark actually used but there was word of re-amping and mention of a Vox AC30.
Mark sent me a progress mix with a few additions to the track that I hadn't heard before and I was pretty chuffed. He tells me that my track is his favourite track on the album (but he might be just saying that). There is no competition here and I'm sure every track will be great and I can't wait to give it a spin as soon as the surf's up.

The Surfcats CD at this stage only has a limited release in a few stores like Basement Discs and  Essendon Books and Records (wherever in the world they are) or you can get one of the early collectable releases directly from Mark's web shop. Just clicky here!

It was a fun project and I was proud to be asked to contribute.