Splunge - 12/11/11

Sal, Nick and myself, with no Jason this time due to a lower back injury while playing hockey.

I was feeling a bit congested, but seemed to sound okay vocally, and Nick was sounding good, in spite of his saying he'd blown out his voice badly just a few days before. Songs where he was singing lead and I was harmonizing represented most of the high points of the session, with our first attempt at David Bowie's "Space Oddity" probably the best.

On the other hand, our timing as a group on "Space Oddity" was abominable. This is a song where a lot of the instrumentation floats along, including the bass, so there's no way for me to lay down something solid for the others without messing up the song. The rhythm guitar part, and everybody else listening to it, seems to be the key to keeping it together. I was relying too much on my prior experience with this song in another band and didn't remember it as well as I should have. The guitar players' timing just wasn't good in general. This is to be expected to some degree for a new song for us with an unconventional feel to it, but ticks me off because again, we run into the serious rhythm problems that are an ongoing issue with this band.

We ran through "Surrender" for the first time as well, with me stepping in on lead vocals a lot because Nick hadn't had much practice time with it. It was okay for a run through.

Nick and I were discussing how he feels he has hit a plateau and hasn't been improving as much as he'd like, as well as the prospect of taking this band in front of an audience, and we brought Sal into the discussion when he arrived. We discussed some of the rhythmic issue again then (as well as via Facebook later) and I think everybody plans to spend some time with a metronome in the future.

I was surprised to find out that everybody seems to be on board with the idea of playing in front of an audience at some point, but feels we're not good enough collectively to handle it. I agree, but if we're good enough to hear how good we aren't, why aren't we good enough to fix that? Vocal limitations are something of an issue, but not a major one. The more significant problem is simply keeping it together rhythmically, which shouldn't be a problem after we've been together this long. Volume is part of the cause, as everybody else needs to turn down and do a better job of listening to each other. I've already been turning down, leading to requests from the others for me to turn my own volume up, but everybody else stays loud, even after I explain why.

Next session would be scheduled Christmas Day, so obviously that's not going to happen. We're talking about playing the day after, though, because everybody seems to be scheduled off from work that day, which would be a Good Thing. We always sound better when we play more often.