Abbey Road Pt. 2

The night before the session we were able to get in to Studio 1 to set up for the next day's events. John Kurlander's main task was to get the room set up to his exacting specifications....and when I say exacting, I really mean exacting. One of the reasons I feel very comfortable working with John is his level of attention to detail. Weeks before the session, I was getting detailed floor plans from him with proposed orchestra layouts, microphone setups, etc. The night before the session, he and his team of assistants, headed by the capable Richard Lancaster, got everything ready for the big show.

My task was two-fold; first, to get the ProTools sessions set up with Richard for click tracks and pre-records, and second, to make sure that all the orchestral parts were there. Richard is frighteningly fast on ProTools--the poor man works long hours, but it seems like it will all pay off for him in short time.

As far as parts preparation goes, I had the assistance of a long-time friend of mine from when I was a conducting student, Jeff Eckstein. Jeff has worked in many capacities around orchestras before, from conducting to managing, and so together the two of us sorted through every single part of all 12 songs and made sure everything was there for the session.

That night I climbed into bed at about midnight; it was about 4:00 AM when I finally fell asleep. Three hours later I woke up to start my marathon day.