We had players. We had songs. We had to set a date for recording. After a couple of schedule changes, Paul agreed that we could record in January. After all, he is a performing musician; timing depended upon him. If The Pyronauts had a gig, “Into the Flow” had to take a back seat.
Wait! We had not played together. Had I overlooked that we needed to rehearse before recording? This was not like a bunch of professional studio musicians playing. We just could not show up.
We had to test this combination out. How would we sound? Could we play together? Of the four of us, only Paul and I knew anything about the 8 songs. Glenn had fooled around with a couple of them. Don had not heard any of the songs.
An article in The Wall Street Journal -- a regular bastion of music news and ideas -- told how, before going into the studio, Peter Wolf provided the musicians with charts and a CD of the songs to be recorded. If that worked for Peter Wolf, maybe it could work for The Lava Pups. But we have to keep mind that Peter Wolf is a real musician, while until only recently The Lava Pups was a fictitious band.
Fictitious band or whatever, I decided to emulate Peter Wolf. And I turned to Garageband. Becky had made sure that program was on my MacBook to feed my rock ‘n roll fantasies. Garageband has been described as “the Playskool version of recording.” That, of course, fell right into my capabilities. Nothing too complicated. I could record the songs so that we would have their basic structures.
The process was pretty simple. Record the guitar -- and some of the bass -- parts over digital drum beats. Cut and paste. Work on the timing. Cut out most of the blatant mistakes. Listen. Fix. Work on the timing. Mix the songs.
As I labored through the process, I wondered where computer geek overtakes musician. Technician overtakes musician. How much of today’s music is engineered to the point that the vitality of a song is squeezed out? With enough time, maybe even I could create the perfect track. But that track would not be my music because the odds of my playing perfect are about the same as being struck by lightning or winning the lottery.
The result of Playskool recording was all 8 songs in MP3 and on a CD. I e-mailed the MP3s to Paul. We already had worked up some rough charts of the songs. The project was getting closer to the acid test.
A rehearsal would tell us whether “Into the Flow” was merely a pipe dream or potentially a reality.
Wait! We had not played together. Had I overlooked that we needed to rehearse before recording? This was not like a bunch of professional studio musicians playing. We just could not show up.
We had to test this combination out. How would we sound? Could we play together? Of the four of us, only Paul and I knew anything about the 8 songs. Glenn had fooled around with a couple of them. Don had not heard any of the songs.
An article in The Wall Street Journal -- a regular bastion of music news and ideas -- told how, before going into the studio, Peter Wolf provided the musicians with charts and a CD of the songs to be recorded. If that worked for Peter Wolf, maybe it could work for The Lava Pups. But we have to keep mind that Peter Wolf is a real musician, while until only recently The Lava Pups was a fictitious band.
Fictitious band or whatever, I decided to emulate Peter Wolf. And I turned to Garageband. Becky had made sure that program was on my MacBook to feed my rock ‘n roll fantasies. Garageband has been described as “the Playskool version of recording.” That, of course, fell right into my capabilities. Nothing too complicated. I could record the songs so that we would have their basic structures.
The process was pretty simple. Record the guitar -- and some of the bass -- parts over digital drum beats. Cut and paste. Work on the timing. Cut out most of the blatant mistakes. Listen. Fix. Work on the timing. Mix the songs.
As I labored through the process, I wondered where computer geek overtakes musician. Technician overtakes musician. How much of today’s music is engineered to the point that the vitality of a song is squeezed out? With enough time, maybe even I could create the perfect track. But that track would not be my music because the odds of my playing perfect are about the same as being struck by lightning or winning the lottery.
The result of Playskool recording was all 8 songs in MP3 and on a CD. I e-mailed the MP3s to Paul. We already had worked up some rough charts of the songs. The project was getting closer to the acid test.
A rehearsal would tell us whether “Into the Flow” was merely a pipe dream or potentially a reality.