Four Person Splunge - A Step Back

The last couple of sessions have been so encouraging, so it makes sense that sooner or later, there would be one that wasn't. Participants included Jason, Nick, Jared, and myself.

Sal let us know in advance that he wouldn't be making it for several good reasons, but we still had two other guitar players involved since Jared was returning, so no big deal. Then we got a call at the last minute that Steph had an emergency and wouldn't be making it. That took some of the wind out of our sails, because she's now singing about half the lead vocals, and when she's not singing lead, she's often singing a significant backing part or playing percussion.

And so we soldiered on with the guitar/guitar/bass/drums line-up we had, with me handling most of the lead vocals and Nick contributing where he could. On the plus side, we got a lot of work done on the foundations of some of the songs. We must've spent a good two hours working on three songs at the beginning, making sure we had good tempo, an ending, and various other things we needed to coordinate exactly the way we wanted them. We then moved on and got through a surprising amount of the usual list, with me singing lead on several of the songs Steph has been doing (ones I used to do) and Jared taking most of Sal's lead guitar parts where he could. We even worked on an entirely new song for us, the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Dani California", which sounded surprisingly good in light of the fact that we'd planned to have Steph sing lead on it, so I had to sing that as well as playing Flea's bass parts. Not easy. I'd say it wasn't as much fun as the last two or three sessions have been, but it was certainly productive.

On the negative side, we're still spending far too much time on basics, working out little rhythmic problems in the guitar parts that should be getting fixed in the course of individual practice rather than in a group setting. We'll continue to work these things out as they emerge, but the recurring nature of the problem concerns me. I realized that coordinating three guitar players and having at least one miss most of the sessions would cause problems at times, but I didn't think it would be this difficult this often.

Balance Issues

It's been a tricky month or so. Bad Stuff, including computer problems and my job reverting to some extent to the Bad Old Days, and Good Stuff, including a new car and getting very excited about how the music project has developed over the last couple of sessions.

The interesting thing has been watching what has pushed my buttons and thrown off my balance during that time frame, and it seems Good Stuff is just as bad as Bad Stuff that way. I've learned a few things, at some cost, and time will tell if I can keep my equilibrium a little better going forward.

Another Six Person Splunge with Bob as Guest

Another six person music project session with a slightly different grouping involving Jason, Sal, Nick, Steph, myself, plus Bob, the lead singer from one of my old bands, TAAZ. No Jared this time, but he's scheduled to be back for the next session in two weeks.

I've resurrected a fair portion of my old PA system, which means that the vocals could finally be heard over everything else and the overall sound quality improved immensely. Between having a decent PA system and Bob sitting in with us, the vocals were up to what I'd consider public performance standard most of the time. We have some work to do vocally, but not as much as I'd thought. Bob was a valuable set of ears as well as a voice (singing lead on "Peaceful Easy Feeling", "Wonderful Tonight", and a third song that escapes me at the moment), making several useful suggestions on vocal arrangements, not to mention functioning as sound man for most of the day. "Lola" and "Take It Easy" had vastly improved three part harmony, even with just the regulars singing. We even had one song ("Black Horse and a Cherry Tree") involving four voices at the same time. I'm a sucker for good harmony, and we had it this session.

We still seem to have some bothersome rhythmic coordination problems. Some songs would sound fantastic for a verse and a chorus, only to lose the feel somewhere in the next verse. Some of this is lack of familiarity with each other, since this was only the second session for about half the group, and some of it is one person or another not knowing the song well enough. These things can be fixed with practice and everybody seemed to realize that. I was very encouraged by a number of bright spots across the board from every participant, especially since a lot of those moments were players growing into a role within the group. It'll be interesting to see how Jared will fit in when he rejoins us for the next session, since we'll be adding one of his choices, "Dani California".

We're going to slow the pace next time, and put a more concerted effort into sorting out the parts of songs that we're having trouble with. I'm looking forward to what we might sound like on some of these songs with the bugs truly worked out of them.