larcollins|music - Heads Will Roll Part 3 - A Day In The Life In The Studio

"Look, if you had, one shot. Or one opportunity. To seize everything you ever wanted. In one moment. Would you capture it, or just let it slip?"

Now add to that not having a drummer.  I decided to go with Jon's guy.  And here's the embarrassing part - right now I can't recall his name (I'm sooo sorry!).  Honestly, remembering names is a big problem for me.

Anyway, day saved.  I had a drummer for the session.  Great sigh of relief.  I hoped.  We would soon see as we all sat down for the first time to run through the song.

Okay, first run through a little shaky and a lot off.  But only Jon and I had played together before.  We have a new guy and it may take a few run throughs for things to start clicking.
Okay, a few run throughs and it's still sounding shaky.  Maybe turn up the click in all of our headphones.  Let's take five and get some goodies from the Fish Lounge.

After the break we take another stab at it.  Trying to play the basic backing track live to tape (or computer if you will).  At this point I'm starting to worry.  I don't think this really nice guy who graciously volunteered his time for my session can play to a click.  Two hours in to the session and the three of us playing the song together just does not sound good.

At that point I asked Jamie the engineer if we could record our parts separately.  I really didn't want to squander any more precious studio time in the hopes that the drummer would at some point hit the mark.  Sometimes you have to make that decision to call a spade a spade.  I knew individually Jon and I would be able to hit our parts.  We've recorded together before.  As for the drummer, maybe if he had more than just a click to work with it would help.

I 

I go first.  And I nail my bassline IN ONE TAKE!  That's how we do it, b*tches!  I felt like throwing down the mic, raising my hands and walking out.  At the end of the movie "The Breakfast Club," Anthony Michael Hall's character gives himself a congratulatory punch in the shoulder for a job well done.  That was me.  I will never be the greatest bass player in the world.  But I will always be solid and dependable and I'm immensely proud of that.

Up next ... well I wanted Jon to go next, but, logically it was better if the drummer took his turn.  Okay, given the new direction we were going with recording and having my track and the click to guide him with no other distractions, this could work.  *Sigh* ... take after take after take after take ... he'd start off good, lose his way, find his way back, meander hither and fro...  I looked to Jon.  He has had more recording experience than I do, but he deferred back to me.  It was my song and my session.  Ultimately, it was my decision what to do.  Victor, oh Victor, why had you forsaken me!

In that moment I realized there were two things I could do:  I could pout and be pissed off that Victor bailed on the session; be mad at this drummer for not meeting my standards and declare defeat that my session was completely ruined.  Or I could take a step back and and ask myself what the greater lesson was for me in the grand scheme of things?  I've always wanted to be a music producer.  In that moment, when Jon deferred back to me, I knew these difficulties were meant for me so I could step up and BE that music producer!

From then on, I took over my own session.  I decided to do one more take with the drummer.  Still not good enough, but I felt we had enough takes to stitch something decent together.  I had him add some percussion instruments - tambourine, shaker, frame drum - gave him some direction on what I wanted him to play for those takes.  When I wanted him to play.  Called it when I felt I had enough decent material to work with.  Just like a real producer.

If this were my career, if this is what I did every day, then challenges such as these would be par for the course.  It was such a great lesson to learn.  It's also one I've had to re-learn throughout this process.  Getting the recording completed in the studio that day was only half the battle.  But you know what?  Facing those challenges and taking command was a lot of fun!