Country Music’s Digital Surprise
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Sonic Strategies

The day of the bed-track session for this song, I spent only a few minutes discussing the arrangement with the band. This is also typical of Nashville. It's important to have a vision of what you want, but it's usually a mistake to over-direct musicians of this caliber. If you come in with all your parts already written, you'll miss out on what the players can come up with on the spur of the moment--and what an experienced Nashville studio musician can do on the spur of the moment is reliably awesome. I did have a few key parts predetermined, though. One was the riff that opens the original version of the song, played in that case on keyboards:

We briefly experimented with other ideas, but it was clear to me that this riff was a hook, one that would carry a nostalgic charge for fans of the original. And I thought hearing it played by electric and acoustic guitar would bring new life to it. Here's the electric track, played by session ace Danny Parks:

Danny Parks Danny Parks typically brings at least eight guitars to a session.

A word about Danny Parks. He came to Nashville as a fiddle player, and still plays that instrument as well as mandolin, but has found most of his work as a guitarist. Among the artists he's played and recorded with are George Jones, Mel Tillis, Brooks & Dunn, Dickie Betts, Toby Keith, Sammy Kershaw, Darryl Singletary, The Amazing Rhythm Aces, and Ween. See the sidebar "Danny Parks' Guitar Rig" for a breakdown of the equipment he uses on a session like ours.

Danny Parks' Guitar Rig

For a low- to medium-budget session like ours, Danny says he brings the following:

"For acoustics, I tend to carry two or three into a lower-budget date, my stand-bys being a 1941 Gibson Banner (J45), a Collings mahogany dreadnought, a Parsons mandolin, and occasionally a 12-string or gut-string. On electric, I carry in five guitars--a Telecaster, a Stratocaster, a Les Paul, a Hofner Verithin hollow-body, and a Gretsch Brian Setzer model."

"These days I've been using a Line 6 Vetta modeling amp through an Egnator 2-12 Cab and a Rivera 4-12. But on smaller/lower-budget dates, I run that head direct. I also have a Rivera S-120 and a Fender Tonemaster head in the mix. But generally I use the Vetta."

Let's look at what Danny did on guitar for the rest of the song.

We recorded lead and rhythm electric parts, using two tracks for each to allow for stereo guitar sounds. A total of two parts and four tracks for electric guitar is not many. Often on a rock project there will be tens of tracks of guitar overdubs, either to build up a big sound or to provide options that can be compiled into a master performance at mix time. In country music, though, it would usually sound like overkill to build a "wall of guitars" (or a wall of anything else).

Normally the stylistic reference is a sound that might plausibly be generated by a really good live band. Also, it's the usual practice in Nashville to commit to parts as you record, rather than create a lot of alternatives to be sorted through later. On Danny's tracks, as with most others, we just punched in wherever we wanted to change something, recording over the previous take. Since we were using Steinberg Nuendo PC-based recording software, we could always undo and go back to a previous take, but once we were happy with the new one, the old one was discarded.

In the verse, Danny carried on with the echoing part he used for the intro. In the pre-chorus, known as the "channel" in Nashville, he used the same sound to play intervals outlining the chord changes, and ended on high harmonics (created by lightly touching the strings with the fretting hand). Then, in an overdub, he used his volume pedal to provide a violin-like second part, before switching to fills during the pre-chorus:

This being Nashville, the chords Danny was following were written in the Nashville Number System. See "Playing by Number" for an explanation of how the Number System works.

Playing by Number

In the Nashville Number System, chords are represented by their number in the key. For example, in the key of G, the first chord is G, the second chord is A minor, the third is B minor, the fourth is C, etc. A number chart would show G written as 1, A minor as 2m, B minor as 3m, and C as 4. Charts are written this way because it makes it quicker to change key, since you don't have to rewrite everyone's charts. If we had wanted to change to A for example, we would have just told the players and they would now have interpreted 1 as A, 2m as B minor, and so on.

Nashville Number System The Nashville Number System for chord charts makes it easy to change keys. Vertical lines are measure boundaries.

In listening to Danny play the channel chords as intervals, you hear the arrangement-oriented thinking of a pro studio musician. When beginning guitarists see a set of chord changes, they do what seems to be the obvious thing: They strum the chords. But here, Danny was thinking about the other instruments he was playing with, in particular, I would guess, the keyboards, which were also covering the chords. Danny's approach created more space and provided more rhythmic interest.

In the chorus, Danny made a dramatic change in his sound and playing style, laying into power chords to support the operatic leap in intensity characteristic of an '80s pop ballad. In order to make the stereo sound bigger, Danny used a different tone for each of the two tracks dedicated to rhythm guitar. Here's the sound that would be sent to the left channel when we mixed:

And here's the sound for the right channel:

About three-quarters of the way through the song, the intensity builds to its highest peak with the guitar solo. My advice to Danny here was a simple "Go for it." He gave us a series of wailing rock workouts over a period of about 15 minutes, and we chose our favorite take:

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