Recording - March 2010 - 21

original writer when we had settled on some specifics. But the song was intended to stay a slow, moody, somewhat dark acoustic guitar and voice recording at heart, and we had a good roadmap to that end. The straight and narrow When we finally cleared some time, we set out first to tighten up the song just a bit. The structure was Guitar Intro, Na-Na’s (see above), Verse 1, Short Guitar Interlude, Chorus 1, Bridge 1, Instrumental Interlude (Verse-length, guitar only), Verse 2, Bridge 2, Chorus 2, Chorus 3, and out. Initially, tightening up meant removing the stray Short Guitar Interlude between Verse 1 and Chorus 1 (as it didn’t happen anywhere else, it seemed superfluous, and broke the momentum too early in the song), and cleaning up some overly angst-ridden vocal ad-libs at the very end (they were musically fine, but just too much of an abrupt departure from the song’s mood of quiet desperation, especially to be introduced so late in the tune). We kept the sing-song vocal na-na’s at the beginning, as it was a simple, catchy little melody that (very) loosely suggested/foreshadowed the chorus. We then overdubbed a little light piano (quiet background chording and an occasional counter melody), and a rough idea for an acoustic bass or solo cello part. We decided to check in with the writer to see if we were all on the same wavelength, but by this time he was no longer available! I can’t remember the specifics—went on tour, left NYC for greener pastures, whatever— but he left the song with us, giving us the green light to “go with what sounds good to you” (to paraphrase). Now, giving any musician (or producer, arranger, mixer, whatever) carteblanche to work up an arrangement is tantamount to giving your newborn up for adoption in a foreign land. Working with a song’s creator as a paying client, the production team usually makes (at least) an effort to defer to the client’s sense of musical direction, but leaving that same team alone to work something up—especially on spec!—is another matter. Inevitably, someone not vested in the song’s original conception is also not as tied to that direction, and is very likely to start pulling the elements of the tune apart and reconstituting them according to their own impressions and musical tendencies. Which, of course, is exactly what happened. Follow the Yellow Brick Road No sooner were we left to our own devices, than we began to pull away from what we had so far. By unanimous decree, we decided that the mood of the tune was just a little too low-energy, and needed something more than just a few piano plinks or sad cello lines to liven things up a bit. As I recall (this was a few years back, remember), we tried adding a full rhythm section (drums and electric bass) for a bit more “drive”, but at that tempo, it just sounded even more ponderous. At this point, we decided that upping the tempo by a few BPM might do wonders for the song’s sense of momentum. The only problem was, while it would have been easy enough to replay the guitar part (which we were likely to do anyway), we had no current access to the vocalist to redo his original performance. Now, in this modern age, we wouldn’t think twice—we’d grab ahold of our DAW’s Flex/Warp/Elastic mode and timeshift the existing parts until they felt right, but this was just a few years before that option became as fast and high-quality as it is now. At the time, Time-Shifting was still a slow, tedious off-line (non-realtime) process that often yielded less-than-hifi results, but we went ahead anyway and sped things up, as per our new “vision”. The road not taken Now again, as experienced songwriters and producers know, even a simple change can often let you hear a tune in a very different light, and we sped our tracks up enough that the current rhythmic underpinning of the acoustic guitar sounded just a bit “wrong” (for lack of a more specific notion). At this point, we began to go off the rails a bit—my production partner suggested that the melody might work better at this new faster tempo as a “bluesier” song, so we ditched the original acoustic guitar and replaced it with various attempts at a blues-inflected guitar part—acoustic, electric, slide, etc. Nothing was really clicking 100%, so we tried adding a drum part with a slight shuffle feel, which we thought would act as a potentially interesting variation of the original guitar’s accented rhythm. This went on for a while—I don’t remember all the details, but apparently this direction was ultimately rejected so unequivocally that the audio was even permanently deleted from the hard drive! The path to enlightenment By now, we’d flogged the tune on and off for a while, between other projects, and were honestly a bit sick of it. We put it aside briefly, and didn’t return to it until we were finishing up the compilation it was originally intended to be a part of. This collection was still RECORDING MARCH 2010

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Recording - March 2010

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