Splunge - 1/8/12

Jason, Nick, Sal and myself all back on board. Major set-up change again. The problem is that we've been using a stage type set-up, and some of our timing problems are being attributed to some members not being able to hear well enough. Since we're not getting near a stage anytime soon, we moved things around quite a bit so everybody felt they could hear everybody else. It's strange-looking, but it's not designed for appearance.

On the plus side, the change did what it was supposed to do, and there was some benefit in the sound. However, some timing problems remain on the guitar players' part. The weird thing is that when these timing problems occur, Jason and I can hear it, but the guitar players can't, no matter how obvious they appear to be. The bottom line is that both guitarists tend to rush, coming in early and speeding up so they get out of sync with the bass and drums. They're following their own rhythm, trying to lead rather than follow, but they don't hear it. Very frustrating, from my point of view, and I'm out of ideas as to how to try to fix it. I thought the problem was simply that they couldn't hear themselves, so they relied on their own internal rhythm, but fixing the hearing issue only removed some of the problems.

Jason continued his improvement, so the bass and drums at least sounded pretty good. I was in fair-to-good voice for the beginning of the session, deteriorating a bit as I started getting congested at the end.

"Space Oddity" and "Surrender" were both pretty bad. "Space Oddity" isn't at all coordinated, and I think may be simply too much for a group with timing issues in the first place. Nick is singing lead on "Surrender" and really isn't into it, so he doesn't sing it very well. I can't just take the lead on it, because there isn't anyone else to sing the harmonies that are essential to the song. So neither of these is really working out.

Nick hit a couple of harmonies well, and the group riff on "Poor Poor Pitiful Me" worked out a couple of times, so there were some positives, too.

We've been talking via Facebook and the group consensus is to spend more time working out individual songs. I'm bored as it is, so beating individual songs doesn't sound like fun to me at all, but some of the guys seem to need the work, so we'll give it a try.