It’s been 17 weeks since my last post on this recording project. During these past weeks, we’ve been focusing on rehearsing the music, playing a few live shows, and vacationing, and last Sunday we officially started production of the record.
But before that, over the past few months, we played a few gigs in order to rehearse the songs we would be recording. However, not all the songs we are planning to record easily translate to a live stage. Many of the tracks for the record already have parts that have already been recorded, what we might call musique concrete parts. Some of the tracks are composed almost entirely of these pre-recorded bits. But using tape effects or laptops on stage is too complicated for us, so any tracks that relied on these pre-recorded sounds were either not played, or the pre-recorded sounds were substituted with other stuff that could be played live.
The opening song, Walk, for example, is a song we wanted to play live, but to do that, we had to come up with a different way of doing the pre-recorded intro. The intro, you might remember, started with a long series of sounds from door opening and closing, lighting a cigarette, footsteps in gravel, etc, in a crescendo that led to the beginning of the song. On stage the pre-recorded sounds were substituted with some spoken word describing the sounds, backed by some snare, pedal steel and guitar washes that built up to the start of the song. The spoken word described the pre-recorded sounds in a non-specific kind of way. You hear the sound of home, then the sound of leaving home, then the sound of the longest walk, then looking back, even the fading is gone, the longest night, etc etc… Stuff like this reinforces my opinion that, although a record can be a document of a live performance, generally speaking recording and playing live are two completely different animals. Which is why there are so many bands that excel at one and not the other, and why, to me, the ones that are able to excel at both, clearly treat them as the two different animals that they are.
We have a plan for the recording, but the extended process of recording one or two instruments at a time makes it so that the plan can be adjusted as we move forward. The plan includes voice, guitar, bass, drums, pedal steel, cuatro, various keys, trumpet, percussion, and pre-recorded sounds loosely organized into various arrangements. However, the live shows were all done with voice, guitar, pedal steel and drums, because that’s who was available for the shows. 
Following are a couple of tracks from the show at the Local 506. This show was recorded from the back of the room with a digital recorder, so keep that in mind. The purpose of recording the show was to have a reference for the studio work ahead.
Here’s Stayed and Gone, the third song, which you might also remember as the song that had the cheesy Garageband horns and that ripped off some Neil Young lyrics. I post this one, because it’s probably the one that has changed the most since it’s original Garageband sketch. The lyrics have changed, the arrangement has changed, the structure has changed… I post it here starting from the very end of Sometimes Mariana, because I like the transition.
The other song I’m going to post from the 506 show is Season of the Grape which has remained pretty much the same in structure, and vocals, but I want you to hear Nathan Golub’s pedal steel and Nathan Logan’s drumming on the arrangement, a far cry from anything Garageband can do, even when recorded from the audience with a handheld recorder.
So we played a few lives shows, way less than would make me comfortable before going into the studio, but there was no way to get around that. It's a different rock and roll world with a one year old baby. So last Sunday, we jumped in the recording waters and officially started production of the record. Luckily we are working with a crack team of musicians that are used to jumping into the fray and getting it right. For me, however, this will be a very different recording experience in many ways and as such, a little daunting but also exciting and educational.
Almost everything I’ve ever recorded has been recorded the same way, practice the songs and play them live for months and months, go into the studio for a couple of days and pretty much lay down the songs live with a few overdubs on top. On this record, however, we have not had the opportunity to play the songs live for months, so the recording process will be a little more organic and integrated into the creative process, instead of trying to document and reproduce an already existing musical experience. So instead of starting with a canvas that already includes guitar, bass, and drums, we are starting with a blank canvas, and building from there, one instrument at a time.
In the past all my recordings have also been based around one studio. Go into studio X for Y number of days and come out with the tracks that make the record. This time we are working with microphone and sound effects master, Jesse Olley, and we will be recording wherever best suits the music being recorded, studios, train tracks, festivals, small rooms at home, etc. For the first session, however, we went into the very professional Track and Field Studios, and recorded a bunch of drum tracks with Nathan Logan. In preparation, Jesse suggested we listened to the drums in the Beatles’ Rubber Soul. In Rubber Soul, the drums seem to be miked from above with just one mike, so the cymbals come in very clear while the kick drum is a little more distant. I liked the idea since the sound we're looking for on this record is fairly light and I’ve been concerned with getting too much kick drum into it. So for the recording Jesse and engineer Nick Petersen, tried a bunch of mikes placing them overhead in various ways. But they also miked the kick, snare and toms, as they might end up being useful in the end.
We then spent twelve hours running through tracks that would have drums in them, some times whole tracks, sometimes partial tracks. Per the recording plan, less than half the tracks on the record have drums, but getting the drums right for those tracks was crucial since those are the tracks that are also songs in the more traditional way. Well, it was a painful experience, I won’t deny it, recording just drums with some scratch vocals and guitars on top is not very rewarding at all. It’s a lot of work and when you play it back it just sounds like drums playing by themselves, which is what it is. I had to focus on my faith in Jesse and in the final product in order to get through it.
But we did. And a few days later Jesse gave me a CD of the drum tracks so I could meet with Stu Cole and start working on bass parts, and it was a beautiful thing, the hard work that Jesse and Nick put into picking and placing mikes to get the drums just right, paid off.
So off I go to start working with Stu. So far the process feels somewhat like making puzzle pieces, and trying to get each individual puzzle piece right, without loosing sight of the bigger picture they are supposed to be making, but without being able to put them altogether to see if indeed that is the picture they are making.
Here are two new sketches on the continuing Ballad.
Walk*
This bit represents my coming to terms with the most basic influence for what I hope this record will be.
Dialogue is invaluable to me during the creative process. I don’t create well in a vacuum so I need the back and forth and exchange of ideas I’ve generally found in bands, friends, music venues, etc. However over the last year that dialogue has been somewhat lacking. Since the arrival of our daughter the band hasn’t been gigging. The Ms and I have played a few shows in the past month and we are slowly making our way back to the clubs, but it’s been slow moving. Since we haven’t been gigging we also haven’t been having official band practices. The Ms and I practice at home when we can, but she is busy with her new business and with the baby, so the little time we get alone together we haven’t been using for practicing music. We also haven’t been in bars and friends houses playing and exchanging ideas until the sun comes up. Of course, none of this is said as a complaint. It is our new life with our daughter, and I love it. But it’s a transition period, and it needs a little tuning. And one of the aspects that needs tuning is that I’m having to find new ways to interact with people and get that dialogue that I use as part of my creative output.
I am working on various ways to obtain such dialogue, and one of them is this blog. Granted it is not the same as all of us sitting around in a practice room with our instruments working on music, but by the same token it may offer other possibilities. That being said, I appreciate the comments that have been offered, but at the same time I wish for more. I wish you would all see this blog as the great opportunity that it could be. We each have our own preferred modes of expression and we don’t necessarily agree on aesthetics, methodology, or much else for that matter, but we’ve all made a commitment to this blog and to me that combination is one of the best foundations to create something that could actually evolve into something greater than the sum of our parts which ultimately would be a very musical thing to do.
Back to the sketch. In this first sketch you might recognize the beginning of a previous sketch (the wrecking ball). It starts the same, but please, if you’ve heard it stick with it through that beginning because it’s going somewhere totally different this time. However, just as I felt before, I still feel that this is how the record starts. Though I feel the mood is now more acurately described.
Sometimes Mariana*
This is an older song. We have live recordings of it but have never done any kind of studio recording of it. Subject-wise it’s the central inspiration for this record I’m working on. And in a way it’s her record. Mariana’s record, that is. I grew up with Mariana from very little until her dad was stabbed on the street, walked into a bar and bled to death when everyone thought he was just drunk. Then her mom and her and her little sister moved to Canada and I never saw them again. She was my first best friend.
Anyways, the usual version of this song that we play as a band is quite fast (runs about 2 minutes) and in D major. For the record and since I’m thinking about it in terms of being the song right after Walk (see above), I feel it should be slower, more folksy, and in C major (though I’m already beginning to see how it would work with the faster version too). Here’s a first sketch of it with just me on the guitar.
In a recent post DD was talking about the difficulties he was having finding a vision before starting to work on his movie. I often wish things were that simple for me – get a vision, bring it forth. For me it’s a substantially more tortuous process. I get a lot of ideas. Mostly stupid ideas, ideas like a song where every other word is the word ‘little’. Sometimes these ideas start to show me that they are connected in some way, and a certain part of myself begins to be exposed by them. Like the idea that I have never really had a home since I left home and therefore what I call home is something else. These connected ideas then begin to show up almost everywhere and I start thinking, ok, maybe this is worth exploring, might as well since they wont’ leave me alone anyways. Let’s see what the hell these ideas are trying to tell me. And I start to think that maybe these ideas are worth sharing and I start to work on how to get them out as something shareable. And I get distracted and start thinking of different ways in which they could be presented, so I pick the easiest one, cause really at this point I want to be done already, I’ve seen the connections in my head. But I’m really just beginning cause nothing has been made yet. And from experience I know that as soon as I start to put the ideas down, they’ll change, suggest something else and the whole thing becomes a whirlwind of trying to stop time and failing, and trying again and failing again. Until at some point I inevitably start wondering, what is the point of all this? Why bother? Why not just go lay by the pool and drink rum til the lights go out? I mean, does anyone really need to hear more music? Do I really need to play guitar ever again, beyond just picking it up and plinking at it while watching TV? Isn’t that enough? Why do I feel the need to put the playing down on record? Why do I feel the need to share it with others? Do I hope that when I die there is something beyond a bunch of well organized offices to say I was here? Maybe. But now I have a child, what better legacy than that? Nothing I could ever record could compare to that. Is it previous commitments that I’ve made to music? Previous sacrifices that are clamoring to please play, please don’t let the sacrifices be in vain? Maybe, but really come on, what sacrifices, really. When I poke my own eyes out Oedipus style so the world stops bothering me with vision, well, then I’ll come back and talk of sacrifices. So far it’s been mostly fun. And is it the fun that seems superfluous? Aren’t there more important things to do than have fun? In this time, as the great American Empire sinks like so many Titanics, isn’t dancing the thing to do? Enjoy that sinking feeling of everything we’ve known as reality giving way under our feet? Yes, that’s a good time for dancing, for playing music, celebrating. The end of the world as we know it. But whatever, that’s been said a million times by everyone. So why bother? Let all those everyones dance and play their way to the bottom, they have more skill, time and money to do it, so why should I? And this is the time in the middle of the creative process where I just want to dump it all and say fuck it. Who needs this? But I’ve done this before, this is one of the many crossroads where I just have to close my eyes and sign the devil’s contract on the dotted line. Again. And again. Fuck it. If it sucks it sucks if it doesn’t it doesn’t ask me if I care? Cause right now I have to care, more than anything. And somehow I must continue to care or I wouldn’t continue to do it, but at the same time I have to not care. And how is that done? How do I care and not care at the same time? I don’t bloody well know. The only way I know to do it is by just sitting in front of the machine, taking its cables and plugging them right into my bloodstream and hoping that this one will feel like something, maybe like the first time, or at least something that I can live with. And sometimes it does, most often it doesn’t. But sometimes it does. And when it does, it never feels like it was that difficult.
So I have to remind myself that the best arrives with ease. Trying too hard is the curse of everything (said the Puerto Rican).
Here's a recent sketch of a song as I plow ahead.
Season of the Grape*
I continue to work on sketches and various attempts at music, while at the same time trying to come to terms with how much I like Burt Bacharach and Gerry Rafferty. Cause, what else am I to do?
Double Sunglasses Sunday*
This is an arranged version. Where's my captain's hat?
Double Sunglasses Sunday (solo)*
This is what I think of as an extremely moody/mannered version, kind of getting that extreme out of my system (shudders).
Double Sunglasses Monday*
And this is a variation on the musical theme.
Ok, here it goes. At the bottom of this blurb are sketches of two songs. I picked these two because they both stem from the same conceptual and harmonic root, though the second one has diverted from it quite a bit at this point. I think both songs also cover some of the range I’ve been playing with, both in recording methodology and feel.
Disclaimer. I must emphasize again that these are sketches, drafts, blueprints of pieces of music. They have been done quickly and mixed even faster. I'm not looking for a final version here. There has also been very little input beyond my own in their creation, so working on these feels very similar to the way I felt back when I used to paint - a lot of sitting in a room alone layering textures.
Diane’s involvement (she’s done almost all the vocals) of course makes this a not so solitary endeavor, as does having my daughter around when I record. Even so, Diane has not been around for most of the recording, since it happens mostly when she’s at work, and Marina keeps her opinions to herself most of the time.
I am not sure what I hope to get out of posting these here, mainly to get me in a steady production mode by having to produce stuff every week (more or less). I have also grown to admire each of you who participate in the NAP, each of you for substantially different reasons. This to me makes the NAP a perfect environment for sharing ideas. So in a way I am also hoping you will get involved in some way. Disclaimer over.
In my mind this is how the record starts:
The Wrecking Ball*
The above song has been tweaked a bit more than most of what you’ll hear, but it was still done very quickly. It also has more tracks than any other song so far, and it has been edited quite a bit, both by cutting and replacing sections and by copying parts and using them throughout. My least favorite part of this is the horns, mainly because of the sound I’ve been getting, and because I really don't know how a trumpet would be played. Soon, if all goes as planned, SNMNMNM, who actually know how to play their horns, should be replacing the horns on this bit, but I won't go down the road of what's gonna happen since a lot of changes will be taking place on all this stuff.
Wrecked Ball*
At some point later on in the record comes this bit, which is inspired by the first one, but has taken a very different turn and ended up somewhere else altogether. In this recording there are only four instruments and they are played straight through from beginning to end with no cutting, copying or pasting, and very minimal editing or mixing of any kind.
To start this blog, I am republishing 7 posts about the new record that were published originally in the Non Alignment Pact group blog.
I am trying something new. It makes me a little nervous, but what the hell, I’ve done way stupider stuff that makes me nervous too. What I’m going to do is to start using this forum to present and hopefully discuss work in progress. After 30 weeks of writing mostly about music, and getting extremely addicted to writing and reading every word posted on this blog. I now need to switch the focus to making music instead of writing about it. Of course I will still do my weekly posts, but mostly they will be about the music I’m working on, with samples of recorded material in progress.
Since having a child, the way music plays a part in my life has changed. For the time being I can't sit in someone’s house playing and making up songs ‘til the sun comes up. For the time being I can’t go spend 3 days locked up in a studio out in the country recording all day and night. For the time being my musical output is mostly confined to recording music on garageband and playing songs at home with my wife, for my baby or to myself.
I am treading through musical waters previously unknown to me. These are the waters where I record songs that have never been played live; the waters where I record songs that are created track by track instead of using a live band to lay down the basics from where to build; these are the waters where I am arranging all the parts of the song. These are the waters of the lone wolf working from home.
But I’m not really much of a lone wolf type of person. So while one part of my natural instinct tells me to work alone (and of course, by alone I mean with Diane) on the material until it’s done, the other part of my instinct tells me that I need to work out this music with some kind of more general public. Also, this blog has been very good at getting me to write. Having that weekly deadline and having the support of the group has been instrumental in me writing a few things I had been meaning to write for a long time. So now I’m going to see if it can similarly work for recording music.
Not that I haven’t been recording. I’ve been working on a record for a few months now. And I have a vision of it that get a bit sharper every day, though it is still fairly open ended. So I’ve started to work out sketches of songs and bits of music and putting them together in various ways. The goal at present is to complete a blueprint that can then be used to create the final recording. But I can't say that I know exactly how that final recording will take shape.
For the blueprint at least, I am using a collage technique which makes it possible to create super fast sketches of ideas on record. I’m not recording songs all the way through. Instead I am recording little bits and pieces and then I am cutting and pasting them at various spots of a song or even in other songs as they might seem to fit. This way the whole record is slowly being built. However I am also trying to work within the basic rules of a traditional song album, structured with cohesive short statments that can stand on their own as individual pieces.
It is possible that some of the material I am recording now will end up as it is in the final recording, but for now I am still seeing everything as a blueprint. And by that I mean in the way that a blueprint is a two dimensional, skeletal projection of a three dimensional construction. The way I hear them in my head, the recordings I am making still seem to be in one dimension less than the final dimension. In my mind the missing dimension is other musicians playing the music all the way through, ideally as a group. But I might be ok if the recording can convey that certain freedom and intra-instrumental communcation that is what makes band music so cool for me.
So for now, I am using only a few very basic instruments to create the whole thing. Some basic live instruments such as my guitar, Diane’s voice, natural sounds, and other various instruments I have around the house (toy instruments, other guitars, percussion instruments, etc). I am also using a few canned instruments that come with garageband, mainly drums, bass, piano, trumpet and organ. Piano, trumpet and organ are being used as placeholders and could be easily substituted by other instruments in the final recording. In some cases I hear in my head a pedal steel, trombone, accordion, flute, etc, but since garageband either doesn’t have these sounds or has crappy versions of them, I’m not using them. Also, since I am recording at home, you will hear the sounds of my baby daughter, since I can’t ask her to be quiet while I do a take. And as cute as it may sound, her input has affected the direction of certain parts of the recording.
What I am hoping is that by me sharing the various sketches of the work as it progresses, that you will offer some criticism in return. Any and all responses would be appreciated, verbal abuse of course is not my preferred way, but if that’s what you feel, I will listen quietly to that too and try not to get defensive. My greater hope, however, is that you will get involved at that very basic level of creative input that band members share, to the point where you want to add instruments or pieces of your own to the record. However, I’ll be very happy if you just offer a critical perspective and maybe some suggestions and/or questions. I can't think of any place where I could find a group with the range of interests and skills available here so I imagine the criticism would be broad in spectrum and concern with many aspects of the music.
Ok, that being said, I’ll give you a couple of very general starting points about the work as a whole, sort of as if you were looking at it in a store.
The working title at present is “The Ballad of Stayed and Gone”.
And if I could have it my way, I would be able to use this beautiful image by artist Toba Khedoori as the cover.
For now this is all. Next time I will start posting some of the actual recorded sketches so you can see what it's beginning to sound like.
