Maybe that’s slang for something awful but today I was on double duty – with Blair in the small room and with William in the main studio.
First thing – I noticed yesterday that the guitar and bass on CA EQ are a little iffy here and there, timing wise and for them to work with the new piano parts they need to be tighter. I assign Mark Alan Miller to the job of shifting the guitar and bass. Matthew isn’t here so it can’t be replayed and the errors are small. I have no problem with this method.
While Mark does this Blair and I have a look at Blue Like Mars. I have a sketch synth patch sequenced but I’m assuming B can do better. My part is actually ideal and the sound i’d found – an Oberheim type string synth very similar to the one on Tunnel Of Love (Springsteen) is also dead right, but there is still much to be done…
Blair, on first listen finds a melody he likes, on piano. I forbid him from playing piano on this song. Just my instinct. I have hime play it n my string synth sound and it’s great. Maybe a little cheesy, maybe even a little Final Countdowny, but still great. I love these sorts of parts. I don’t come up with them very often but BC is master at finding them. There is some debate concerning which octave it should play in so I record both. My guess is low for the initial entry and maybe low + high for the second time around the solo.
The part works so well with my guitar arpeggio (which only happened once) that I ask Mark if he can make it happen again, through the solo passage… Technology is not always the enemy – he has it done in 30 minutes. We will reconsider the solo later, but now it will be over guitar and synth.
Around noon William arrives with coffee and doughnuts and he gets started on No Truck in the main studio, with Mark. They know what they are doing – just continuing from the night before last…
Blair and I now listen to the rest of my sketch track, and mostly it is fine. I tidy it up here and there. B then adds a counter melody to the 4th verse on the Omnisphere Radio Chamber Strings sound (I’m trying to keep us to a minimum number of different sounds and this patch is really helping – it sounds great on Silver Lake, CA EQ, and now here, mixed in with the Obi pad. We think about repeating the counter melody in the playout but it’s too much. Instead B plays chords using the same type of inversions and finds a turn around melody that is so good I copy it and paste it into the the Verse 4 part…
We’re about done with BLM when W and M need me to listen to No Truck. We make a rough mix of BLM and I switch rooms.
The main guitar is perfect. Hearing it I know No Truck is going to be fine. A couple of hours later I resolve to make it the album opener…
The second guitar isn’t right, though… it sounds brittle in a way that might be great for Gang of Four circa 1982 but not for this song. I have them look for a new sound and I retreat to the small room to look at…
… Kids Today. I admit to Blair that I have no idea what this song needs. With just one guitar, bass and drums it is maybe the closest to sounding complete I can recall. Could I have a three piece song?
The song is complicated, it takes a while to teach it to BC, plus it is in the key of B, maybe the worst key for keyboards… An hour or so of BC learning an me going back and forth between the rooms and BC has the basic idea and structure of 3/4 of the song. The Logic EVP88 Electric Piano (one of the main sounds of Music IAFL) sounds lovely next to my guitar but with the chords just following the guitar is it adding anything other than girth? I ask B to ad lib now he knows the basic structure and, although he never gets really comfortable, I think he plays some lovely stuff. I record all of it. I may, or may not construct a part from this later…
We move to the chorus and I suggest the Radio String patch, but here it seems too much… just not right, but close, we look for something similar and we find it in Omnisphere again and we end up arranging a chorus somewhere between Young Americans and Salisbury Hill. Not a bad place.
Back in main room Will and Mark have No Truck in great shape and I suggest W looks at Women’s Studies but he gives up on the idea after 1/2 hour. I then suggest It’s Late and he has an idea but the guitar needs re-stringing so that’s it for the day in the main room. Will does some re-stringing, Blair and I continue on Kids Today…
… BC suggests a flute sound to go with the strings and we like the potential Fairlight vibe, but it’s a repeating pattern, reminiscent, to me, of a Laurie Anderson part, that I like – we should be home by now, but I have Blair play around with the idea for a few passes which I record. None of these ideas will need Blair to be here to implement so I suggest we head home. I will assess and edit later. I’m confident I have what I need.
Wile Blair and I were working on the last idea, I though Mark had left, but no – he was working in his idea of a fan blowing on a guitar to make the strings vibrate and had recorded a whole pass on CA EQ. It sounds quite promising…
A long day, but a good one.