Once a year I write an article about a recording project, picking out one song and exposing the entire recording process from start to finish. The first Point to Point article covered an alt-country band called Four Mile Mule and their amazing niche hit, "Black and White Movie." It was released in 1999 and became the most popular article on ProRec. Last year I followed up with the second Point to Point article, featuring a local Dallas rock band called The Happiness Factor, and that article went on to be the most popular article on ProRec. This year's installment is sure to please.

Debra Soule is an Adult Alternative artist with a killer voice and a knack for writing catchy, memorable songs. Her debut CD, "Vapor", features 12 songs that sprawl over a large range of material both stylistically and sonically. Stylistically she covers a range of ground from Streisand to No Doubt, with a little Garbage and Tori Amos thrown in for spice. Sonically, the CD includes several solid rock tunes ("Perfect Love", "Understood", "Think You Know"), an intimate solo ("Since"), and even a funk-gospel tune ("Amen").

No song on the CD, however, is more sonically over-the-top than "Everlasting". Featuring a trashed-out drum sound, exotically strange instruments, backwards drum loops, and tons of distortion, "Everlasting" was a recording adventure and a mixing challenge. In this installment of Point to Point, we're going to show you exactly how that song was put together, one track at a time. We will also include the exact effects settings and sound clips that show you exactly how we built up the sound from the bottom up.

This article will also tell the story of how the album was recorded and mixed at two different studios, 1000 miles apart, by two engineers who have never met face to face. You see, although I mixed the CD, it was engineered by Rob Solberg of Hypersound in St. Paul, MN. The story of how Rob and I came together to work on the CD is a model of how work can now be performed over the internet by people who have never even shook hands. Rob has helped me co-author this article by telling his part of the story, including all of the pre-production, tracking, and searching for a mixing engineer to do the final work on the project.

In order to follow this article, you have to first hear the song. Trying to understand the article without hearing the final product is impossible. We've made the song available to you to download here.

Take a few minutes to listen to the song several times. If you don't know the song, you'll have no context for the rest of the article to follow.

Now I'm going to turn the controls over to Rob Solberg, and let him tell you a little about recording the album, and this song in particular.

Article Continues >>>