Jay Mathes

Author: jaymathes

  • Picking Up the Guitar


    I don’t think my experience today is unique. I think that many guitarists have felt what I did today, when I picked up a guitar I had never played before in my life. I couldn’t put it down. I played guitar today for about four hours, and only put it down because my fingers were too sore to continue.

    A good friend of mine let me borrow his prized acoustic guitar for this week and for my upcoming recording sessions, on Monday and Tuesday. I restrung it, gave it a quick tune-up, and began to play on an instrument worth over 17 times that of any other guitar that I own. Yes, 17 times. Do the math and let that sink in for a minute. Yep. I have a very, very good friend.
    I might as well say it: the only way that a human ever lets another human borrow something like this is if the said owner has a different perspective on what things in life really matter. It’s an odd way to think about it; but holding loosely to the things we have is actually more important than keeping what we have in pristine condition.
    So, as you can see, today I’ve done a lot of playing and a lot of contemplating on the example that my friend has set for me – for us all. Thank you, friend. And I promise to do my best to return your guitar to you in as good of condition as when you gave it to me – if not better.

  • Pre-Session Jitters

    Booking studio time somehow always makes recording a new album more real. This time around, I especially feel it. Why? Simple: I haven’t actually *paid* for studio time since my first record, Leave It All Behind. Commit was recorded for a class at Columbia, Love Said and Glimmer were both recorded on my own gear, in my own studio, on my own time.

    So you might be asking yourself right now, “Why would Jay be paying to go in to a studio to record this time around – especially when all of the records he’s done in his own studio have just been getting better and better?” Again, simple answer: when you’re recording such a delicate type of album – one where the instrumentation is super-simple – every component in the recording process has to be excellent: the instruments themselves, the microphones, the cables, the pre-amps, the A/D converters, the room/environment itself, and the channel effects.

    In my case, I lack really nice pre-amps. The price tag on buying a unit that has four of them built in? $2,700. Yeah. I don’t think so. I could rent them, but it would still cost a pretty penny. The best bang for the buck is just going in to a quality studio, with a quality engineer, and having somebody else work with you to record it.

    In my opinion, going in to the studio is always a better option than recording it on your own, in your own environment – unless, of course, you’ve already invested the $15,000 needed to get all of the nice stuff you’d need: the microphones, the cables, the pre-amps, the A/D converters, the room/environment itself, and the channel effects.

    So there you have it. I’m going in to a studio to record my next record. I have the jitters.