Another week in the life of album recording and a new strategy in place. It’s called the Annie Clark method; the treat Logic as Finale method; the Adele maps stuff out with midi and then we go back in the replace all the midi with real instruments method.
At the beginning of the week I was feeling extremely frustrated because I felt handicapped by not having drum parts recorded. I felt that I couldn’t move forward if the drums weren’t recorded when the drums are supposed to be the first instrument you record according to all audio mixing books and gurus. So instead of just stagnating I came up with a new idea—record and arrange all my songs using scratch tracks, rough approximations of all the parts I want using midi instruments and some real audio, but with the right arrangements, structures, and tempo, so that Matt can just sit in with these pre-arranged tracks and drop in the drum parts when he has some free time in his day. This way he has a better feel for the song (because all the parts are there, even if in a shitty form) and I don’t have to wait for him to record drums to keep arranging. Moreover, this way I don’t have to be around when he is recording drums, which makes him nervous. Which makes anyone nervous. There nothing quite as intimidating as someone sitting outside the sound booth with headphones noticing every error or missed transition, especially when you are playing on their music.
But even with the new method in place I am overwhelmed by the amount of work that still lies in front of me. Fifteen songs (well, more like twelve now) to arrange with scratch tracks, re-record, and then re-arrange, mix, master. Whoa. That’s a lot of music, a lot of recording and rerecording. A lot of getting musicians together, a lot of parts to be notated, printed, distributed. On top of this we are still going strong with Adele and the Matts. Despite my lack of enthusiasm for last week’s show, we got a great little interview in the Fayetteville Freeweekly this week which makes us seem so legit. Check it out.
Still, Matt and I were talking about this yesterday over quesadillas before our second wedding gig of the year at Magnolia Botanical Garden’s in Springdale. Where can Adele and the Matts go? Maybe we should drop the trio idea and move into playing music from the album. Maybe we should just form a new band and use our opportunities for promotion to promote that—something that will actually have an album with it, could possibly have a future. We need to have a band powwow this week, before we are filmed for the local television series Front Row next week that features local northwest Arkansas musicians, to hash it out.
This week I am going to see St. Vincent and Andrew Bird play in Columbia, MO, and hopefully hopefully I will get to talk to Annie Clark in person. I interviewed her almost a year ago for my thesis, Chicks with Picks, and I really want to ask her some follow up questions, both about her role as a female artists as she gains more and more recognition and about her recording process. I saw an interview with her in which she described a process very similar to the strategy I outlined above, and I want to talk to her about it more in detail. But perhaps just a pipe dream. She might be too big at this point.
I am already getting down about not having any female musicians to collaborate with. Halley has been singing with us and I enjoy that a lot, and my hope is to start incorporating her more into the songwriting and arranging process. She doesn’t have a lot of confidence writing music, but I know that she has the capacity (she came up with some of the best vocal parts for Ancient Avenue) and I hope to draw it out of her more. Still, it would be nice to have a girl bass player or guitar play to work with as well. Lee Ellen, move back! There is just something different about the way I communicate with other female musicians that is missing with men. Maybe it’s because I’m not always wondering in the back of my mind if they are interested in me (though…I don’t really know why it makes a difference. But it seems to).
Well, to the scratch board now. Working on a new song called “The Parting” which has a really cool Ravel-inspired violin break in the middle. I notated the part out for the violin player who is going to work with me; turns out that there are seven parts. A violin septet for one player. Hmmmmm…..
