John Stowell "Resonance"

John Stowell's new CD "Resonance" was recorded over several years at my home studio. Whenever I would complete a guitar I would invite John over to try it out, and we'd record whatever John played. The idea was to have sound samples of my guitars to play for customers, to demonstrate the differences between models and between various wood combinations. Every track is a first take, and John had usually never seen the guitar before; in fact, John was the first person to play most of these guitars.

After a few years of doing this, we had a full CD of music, and it had become one of my favorite CDs to listen to. John's playing is marvelous throughout, and his modern playing style sounds all the fresher on acoustic guitars, unusual instruments for solo jazz. When Origin Records suggested releasing the CD under their label, it made perfect sense to me. Aside from being a nice demo of my guitars, it's simply a fine CD.

The guitars were recorded in as simple and honest a fashion as possible. The "recording studio" was my living room. I used two audio-technica Pro37r small-diaphragm condenser mics, one pointing at the end of the fretboard and one behind the bridge, about 8" away. They ran into a Fostex VF08 hard-disk recorder. I mixed the recordings down onto my Macintosh computer, panning the mic signals soft right and left with the EQ flat and adding a touch of the Fostex's digital reverb.