Bob Olhsson wrote:

"hank alrich" wrote...

You might also want to consider hiring an arranger
and session musicians instead of using your live band.

The operative word above is "might", IMO. Sometimes it's the obvious and
only hopeful route; other times it's a recipe for disaster, robbing all
the soul from the material's presentation, achieving near perfection
while destroying the soul of the beast.

At this point in time Autotune, Beat Detective, sequencing and inexperienced
editing are lots more likely to rob the soul than session musicians are.
What you are really talking about is overproduction which is what session
musicians have frequently ended up taking the blame for.

Agreed and understood, but one still must be heads-up, IMO, to make sure
with whom one works understands the source of the music's appeal and
power. I have friends with day jobs now who once spent a small fortune
on bigtime producers who insisted the most soulful singer in the band
didn't cut it; while his pitch was not perfect his delivery was exactly
what had made a large part of many of the band's songs. Nobody remembers
their record now, and for good reason.

I have tremendous respect for session musicians. I also have great
appreciation for intact musical units who have evolved their own thing,
sometimes a thing not easily replicated by studio pros.

--
ha