...Now the "beauty of the season" can be heard.
Tribute Facts
The vocal recording for Silent Night was done in St. Bridget's Church in Solon, Iowa.
...And the secondary instrumental tracks were recorded in First Assembly of God church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Silent Night combines the talents of 15 musicians.
Tribute's Carol Montag "hired" her son Matt to produce this website.
The Making of Silent Night
TRIBUTE'S common goal was to create a CD of traditional Christmas music that focused on blending warm and unique harmonies. We wanted to create a peaceful CD, one that would be calming during this often very hectic time of year. For those of you who like to hear and read about the recording process, what follows is a behind-the-scenes look at the steps we took and choices we made while recording our TRIBUTE CD, "Silent Night." The very first step in any recording is choosing the right producer. We needed to choose a person that understood the focus and theme of our recording and had the technical expertise that would see it through to the end. We were fortunate to hire Bruce Millard, a long-time friend that we happily can say has become an even better friend through this process. His attention to detail and great ear for our music was integral in the quality of the music.
BRUCE MILLARD lives in Boston, MA. Between freelance production work and serving as former production director and general manager of GM Recordings in Boston, he has overseen a large number and wide variety of recordings. As a guitarist and mandolinist, Bruce can be seen and heard performing with folk and blues legends, Howard "Louie Bluie" Armstrong, Jim Kweskin, and others.
Equally important was choosing an engineer and a place to record. First we needed to decide where we should record the vocals. Should we choose a state-of-the-art studio and separately record each individual vocal part, or should we choose a place to record that preserved the natural reverb in the voices while allowing us to sing the songs "live?" We chose the latter, giving up the technical perfection of a studio (which has its advantages) and opted instead to use the natural reverb of St. Bridget's Church located in Solon, Iowa.
Our decision was made easy by the hiring of our second key employee, engineer Peter Nothnagle. Peter's specialty is recording instrumental classical recordings live and he suggested St. Bridget's.
St. Bridget's is a historic, picturesque church set amidst the cornfields of rural Iowa. No longer an active church, but one that has a small, strong group of supporters who recently purchased it in order to maintain the history of the area. Peter liked St. Bridget's because there was not a chance of an outside sound creeping into the recording from its quiet surroundings. TRIBUTE liked it because the voices echoed naturally throughout its simplistic architecture, and almost divinely captured the feelings and emotions of these familiar songs. We recorded our vocal parts, along with the core instrument tracks of guitar and piano, to 16 -Track DAT.
PETER NOTHNAGLE is based in Iowa City, IA. His specialty is recording classical music, which he has done for the past 21 years both internationally and domestically. Some of his accomplishments include recording the Carmel Bach Festival in Carmel, CA, for a number of years; receiving an award from National Public Radio; and 2 of the CD 's he engineered in 1999 were submitted for Grammy nominations.Once the vocals and core tracks were recorded, Nina and Carol began work on the musical arrangements for each song. Parts were written for violin, cello, flute, oboe, guitar, mandolin and more. Musicians were chosen, rehearsed and eventually came to record with our second engineer, Ric Lumbard. Ric recorded the musicians at the church he attends, The First Assembly of God in Cedar Rapids, IA. Each musician patiently waited their time to record and by the end there were twelve more musicians added to the CD.
RIC LUMBARD lives in Cedar Rapids, IA . He owned his own studio for many years and now works almost exclusively from his "office" in the church, maintaining some of the most high-tech recording equipment in the area.Now that the recording was done, the next step was to edit the multiple takes. Bruce took the tapes back to Boston, where he and a team at Thin Ice Productions in North Andover, MA, worked to narrow down the best takes. Once the editing process was complete, Ric and Kathy flew to Concord, MA, where Wellspring Studio was booked for two days of mixing...every hour of the two days was spent mixing the CD. Much care was taken to balance the blending harmonies with the colorings of the additional instrumental parts.
After the CD had been mixed, the next step was to master it, which we did with with Henk Kooistra at 9West Manufacturing in Marlborough, MA. The mastering process puts the finishing touches on the CD. This is when the volume of each song is made consistent with the others, when the number of seconds between songs is decided, and when lots of little things can be done to enhance the sound. Henk was a great source of energy for three weary engineers and made this final process fun.
HENK KOOISTRA is a Member of the Audio Engineering Society and NARAS and has 18 years experience in the recording industry. Starting out in 1980 as a recording engineer and editor for Philips Classics in The Netherlands, Henk witnessed the birth and development of the Compact Disc. As one of the first engineers in the world trained on a Digital Audio Workstation, Henk has stayed at the cutting edge of digital technology. He has edited and mastered hundreds of LP's and CD's. Building on his extensive experience Henk founded 9West Mastering in 1994.Now that the master CD was done, it was time to finalize the art design and liner notes.
The art direction and design was created by Jim Young in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and by Carol. They worked together to develop a design that would be beautiful to look at, in hopes that the artwork itself would reflect the peacefulness of the arrangements.
JIM YOUNG is a freelance graphic artist living in Cedar Rapids, IA. Formerly a graphic designer at Rockwell Collins, Jim struck out on his own and has worked on countless CD's, as well as numerous publications.We loved the cover photograph that was chosen from the work of Steve Gassman in Platteville, WI. The soothing, almost ethereal photo of snow-covered evergreens helped create a picture of the quality of music we reached for on the CD.
STEPHEN GASSMAN lives in Platteville, WI. His specialty is landscape and travel photography. Steve can be contacted online at: sgassman@mhtc.net.When all the art decisions were made, the master CD and the artwork was sent off to be manufactured. With great anticipation we waited for the finished product to hit our doorstep. What a great feeling when the first package of CD's was received. As we listened, we were amazed at how all the work and all the wonderful talent that helped was captured in 45 minutes and 13 seconds of music. It seemed easy at that point, as if it happened overnight. Our goal seems to have been met when friends tell us they like to play it while they are eating dinner with their best friends, wrapping presents in the quiet of the day, or while stalled in a traffic jam on their way somewhere. As simple as it seems, we got our wish...the CD was calming during an often very hectic time of year. The process was fun but always comes down to whether you like what you hear, not the process it takes getting there. We hope that you like what you sampled online and we thank you for your interest in TRIBUTE and our Christmas CD, "Silent Night".