Observations from the Studio, Day #3

With bass and drums finalized, Thursday became my turn in the spotlight.  Geoff was the one to vocalize an observation that I'd already been mulling around, albeit in less precise terms: as a worship leader and one of the frontmen of Synaesthesia, my guitar-playing style is typically more driving than finessed.  Therefore, my biggest challenge in recording Twenty Committee songs was less wrapping my brain (and fingers) around awkward chords and obscure time changes than in learning when to push the song and when to "sit back and groove" (as Jerry would say).  It's learning finesse and practicing give-and-take, or finding a niche and expanding it to its fullest capacity - without spilling over into the rest of the mix.

Another hard-learned observation from today is that just because the music is technically correct doesn't necessarily mean that it will always sound correct.  Sometimes notes will rub the wrong way - partially due to the instrumentation and voicing, partially due to the equipment - and the challenge is to find alternate harmonics in order to make the music sound less abrasive.  In other words, what's right for the song is not always the proper notes - something that took us the better part of a half hour to figure out.

In other news, Jerry has re-christened us as follows:

Me = "Clark"

Steve = "Vinny"

Joe = "Vince"

Richmond = "Gregory"

Geoff = "Clarence" (circa 10:00am to 4:45pm, and briefly at 7:15pm), "Gary" (current)

We, in turn, have renamed him Pepe.  All of this for no particular reason.

Also, this happened today:

What I failed to capture was Jerry admitting, "That's why I stay I the other side of the glass, man."

Two days left!

More quotable XXCMTE (from here on referred to by their new names!):

"Gary is boring.  He gets most of the sounds he needs out of his Korg-M50." (Vinny, probably in comparative reference to his 600 guitar pedals)

"I can read sheet music!" (Gary, indignantly)

"We'll call him Yokel!" (Jerry, about Gary)

"I'm sure he feels different - just look at him!" (Pepe, about Vinny, who was in the next room and didn't hear)

"What Pepe wants, Pepe gets!" (Gary)

"You've got different textures!  You've got shouting, you've got screaming, you've got shrieking..." (Vinny, rebutting Gary on the varieties of metal)

"Yeah, they're like bat-fart notes." (Gary, on James LaBrie)

"Well, Gary's a nerd turd.  A re-turded nerd turd." (Vince)

"This is probably going to end up on your blog, but I'm going to say it anyway: slather this on your carrot." (Gary, pouring Ranch dressing into a cup)

"Is everybody happy?  I'm happy." (Gregory)