Terry Howard discusses Ray Charles' new album

Ray Charles and Terry Howard Photos courtesy of TheMusic.com

Terry Howard, producer/engineer for Ray Charles and many others, recently talked with Cakewalk about Ray's new album Ray Charles Sings for America. "SONAR was instrumental in the recording of this new album, in particular on the new track God Bless America Again." Read on to find out more about Terry's work on this album, which featured appearances by Slash and Billy Preston, and learn how he used SONAR to remaster Jimmy Scott classics. Terry will also be making appearances in the Cakewalk booth at the 2002 Audio Engineering Society (AES) Convention on October 5-7, to discuss how he is using SONAR.

Ray Charles Sings for America Ray Charles Sings For America gathers Ray's most stirring performances for this unique collection. Songs about personal triumph; the power of love, dreams, and imagination; the love of home and country; and other subjects we hold dear. It contains soulful performances of 20 American pop classics, including his original 1972 recording of America The Beautiful plus the first U.S. release of Ray's take on John Lennon's Imagine, and the newly recorded God Bless America Again. All profits from this song will be donated to the Robinhood Foundation, a charity which is helping the homeless and needy victims of the 9/11 tragedy. You can do your part and get some great music at the same time by purchasing the album.

The story behind the song

"We were all really affected by the tragic events of September 11th. Everyone involved with this project wanted to do something to help out but we were not sure what. The seed for the idea started when I saw Congress get together to sing God Bless America to rally our nation. This was the group that seperated church and state in the first place, and they chose to sing this song rather than the National Anthem. I was really moved. I thought that maybe it might be a song that we could do to raise some money to help the victims.

"I did some reasearch on the internet and found that just about everyone had recorded God Bless America already, over 1000 people in fact. While I was looking, I found a single instance of God Bless America Again that was recorded by Loretta Lynne and Conway Twitty in the 1960s. It took awhile but I tracked down the song, none of the Country stations in the LA area had a copy to play. When I heard the track I knew there was something very special about it, and when I played it for Ray he said "we've got to do that song.

"I started making some calls and just about everyone I contacted said they wanted to get involved. The opportunity to work with Ray is usually enough to get someone involved in a project, and the fact that this was for a good cause made it even better."

Ray Charles and the American Rebels From left to right: Ray Charles, Rosemary Butler, Billy Preston, Slash, Magic Kramer, Craig Eastman, Jimmy Powers, and Scott Lombardi

Recording God Bless America Again

An earlier interview with Terry Howard outlines the technical details of their recording process. This interview accurately describes how they used SONAR to record the track. Below we have a couple of anecdotes of additional ways in which they used SONAR during the recording of this song.

Reworking the drums

"After we had most of the backing tracks recorded, but before Ray cut his vocal, he decided that the drums needed a different arrangement. We used SONAR's Remove Silence feature to slice the drums into individual hits. Ray and I then rearranged the drums until they had it the way he was looking for. I then had Scott Lombardi, the drummer on the track, learn and recut the parts. We also used SONAR to slide the bass line to lock up with the new drum tracks in a few places."

SONAR saves the day

"We always back up our tapes. At one point during the process I was backing up a number of tracks from one tape to another and we had an equipment malfunction that resulted in 4 seconds of original tracks that had not been backed up being damaged beyond repair. Luckily I already had 80 percent of the song within SONAR, and I found sections of audio that matched the lost perfomances, then blend them into the gap caused by the damaged tape."

Remixing for radio

"After finally hearing the single played over the radio I've decided on a few tweaks I'd like to make to the mix. I'm in the process of remixing the track now. When I'm finished I'll export a hi-res MP3 of the new mix that we can service to program directors across the country."

Remastering Jimmy Scott

"Some time ago Ray helped his long-time friend Jimmy Scott, the R&B singer, record a record entitled Falling In Love Is Wonderful. Things got a little nasty with Scott's record label, and through some legal wrangling they effectively prohibited the sale of the album. It's been over 20 years and things have finally been worked out.

"I've been asked to restore and remaster the album and after some testing I've decided to do it in SONAR using the Waves Restoration plug-ins. With SONAR and Waves together I'm getting results that rival a $20k+ SADiE/CEDAR system for a fraction of the cost. For those of you who are interested in the process I've found the best order to process recordings you want to clean is 1. DeClick, 2. DeCrackle, and then 3. DeNoise."

Read more tips from Terry on restoring historic recordings.

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