Hi folks. I've been getting alot of questions about my recording techniques lately so I thought I'd put a summary up here about how I made my latest uke collection Little Box of Sadness.

I'm a real believer in live music so I wanted to capture the energy that a live performance gives and at the same time make sure that vocals were clear, licks on the uke could be heard and actually moved the song along. So I started with the idea that the basic rhythm of the song and the vocal had to be recorded in one pass. That way I could reproduce it live with minimal technology.


I started with a Risa Acoustic Tenor Uke. This has become my "go-to" uke for just about everything. I tune it G C E A with the low G that a tenor is good for. It is fitted with planetary geared tuners and a piezo pickup that makes it great for live applications.

I pumped that uke into a Yamaha pre-amp designed for acoustic guitar. It's called the AG-STOMP. It's not made anymore but in it's day it was one of the best microphone modeling simulators out there. It simulates 8 different microphones and allows you to mix between the direct pickup sound and the effect which lets you decide the character of your instrument. It also has programable gain, eq, feedback reduction, compressor/limiter, chorus, digital delay and reverb. Plus it can program up to 33 different instrument patches.

From there I go into a Boss RC-20XL loopstation. The loopstation lets me sample up to 16 mins of CD quality audio and play it back as I play overtop of the previously recorded part. It also has a rhythm guide that acts as a primative drum machine. So after making sure my uke sounded good, I arranged the music and found a way to create a basic "groove" track that would play under everything. This usually involved a simple rhythm, basic time in the same the key as the song. Imagine strumming a G chord in the right tempo and you get the idea. Then I played with overdubs and the guide track setting until I felt the groove was just right for the song.


At this point I fired up the recording console which for me means CUBASE LE (the free version) and my Tascam US-122 USB digital/audio convertor. This box allows me to capture two channels of audio (at the same time) and send them to my recording software. This is all I need for at home. There are versions that allow for up to 8 channels at once but I don't imagine I'll ever need that in my home studio. I plugged the RISA Uke line (uke-Ag-Stomp-Loopstation) into the US-122 as well as my Apex 435 Gold Diaphram mic. (btw the total cost of this recording rig is just over $200 - CHEAP!!!!)

When I finally felt confident with the arrangements and the sound, I pushed record. The basic track and vocal was recorded and in most cases the uke solo recorded at the same time as the rest of the music.

At this point I began to do overdubs. I used my Godin A6 Ultra as a faux bass for some of the tunes, on others I had a real live bass player with an upright bass play. I added an old broken tamborine and in some cases a cardboard box along with claps and support vocals. The result is a home grown uke project that sounds full and interesting.

I hope you enjoyed this little breakdown of my home recording techniques and feel free to ask me any questions about the process or the equipment involved.

Damn! Boy goes to Montreal and gets tattooed!!! Check out the new ink!