FORGETFUL
Lately, you've been so forgetful
a kind of a
stop and go forgetful
that bothers me
That's how this tune starts. Forgetful.
i picked this one to do first because i'm lazy and i trust in things like visual cues and happenstance.
what the hell does that mean? beats me. 'cept it happens to be the truth.
i chose this one to be the first cuz something had to be first, otherwise there would be no second. or third. or 43rd for that matter.
i chose it monday morning. it seemed like a good time to begin something. and besides, i have been working on solo piano recordings for a few weeks and i happen to be in the neighborhood.
anyway, so this tune, my rendition, sucks. hard.
and what does actually make up the lion's share of the suckage?
well, there's so much to choose from. where to begin?
how about if i start with the methodology...
this is my first attempt. so let's be fair.
i'm not a singer. i've sung exactly twice in my life. one was just last month when i entered a jingle contest. another story. one for a later post. glad, right?
So....this tune 'Forgetful', my first chet tune in this project.
i began by finding the chart for the tune.
A chart, for those not familiar with us very hip musicians, is the piece of music we like to call a 'head chart' aka, 'leadsheet' aka 'chart.' this is the piece of paper on which is written the tune's title, the composer and the music.
the music on these charts, chart out the changes (the chords), the melody, the time signature and key. Also on these charts is everything else you would expect to see in a piece of music...everything except things like orchestral cues, dynamic markings. harmony parts and explicit solo manuscript.
so in this case ('FORGETFUL') i began by learning the changes (the chords) for the tune.
this is not as easy it sounds because apparently, learning the changes is not enough; one needs to put them in the right place...and at the right time.
who knew?
just kidding of course. i know all of this. but sadly, the doing is not made that much easier for the knowing.
so after the chords and the placement of the chords along the timeline of the tune (oh yeah, i forgot to say that before any of this, i needed to come up with a tempo, i.e., the speed of the tune. the tempo for FORGETFUL is 100 bpm (beats per minute) just so you know.
anyway, after the tempo and the chords, i began making recording passes. and this is where things get interesting.
To play music is one thing. to record yourself playing music is quite another. it demands a whole lot of shit. a whole lot of 'non-musical' shit. and if you don't know it, you can't record. and if your goal is to record...well you know where i'm going with this.
it's a bit of a juggling act, recording. especially if you are the musician as well as the recordist. not complaining. just fact. hard, cold ugly fact.
don't get me wrong. recording is fun...well, sometimes. to hear yourself playing can be both exhilarating and demoralizing, sometimes both and at the same time. which doesn't help my ambivalence with regard to my musicianship.
what you do is this:
make a new track, then click on about six buttons each choosing things like: monitoring system setting, midi patches, mono/stereo input, output device selection, recording level, monitoring level and routing matrix.
yeah. i know. all fun and intuitive choices...clearly intuitive. yeah, we were all born with this kind of technological background knowledge. uh huh.
suffice it to say it took me months to get so i could make these adjustments and settings in less than 5 seconds. i know. i'm fucking awesome. i know it.
with all these settings...uh...set, i can punch the little red bullseye in the transport bar of the editor window and we're off to the races. yep. off to the races.
except for the times i forget to arm the metronome, or set the other tracks to "not record" or un-solo the dummy tracks (if any).
if i haven't screwed the pooch on any of these parameters, it is indeed time to record, to 'lay down the snoopy and shred' as my good friend Woodstock Peef says.
In the case of 'FORGETFUL', this was less than smooth. i think i ended up recording and deleting about a dozen piano tracks before i decided to go ahead and lay down a drum track instead.
this'll get easier right?
well, perhaps.
Except when I need to lay down a drum track.
Drums are big. And because i don't want to drag my drum set into the living room, on account of that's where we eat and whatnot, i dialed up the fx editor and chose a MIDI patch from a music library (sadly the only music library) i have tucked away in the bowels of REAPER.
These VSti's--the virtual instruments available to use when recording a song is a much longer story than i care to relate right now. maybe later, over a beer or three.
Suffice it to say that they are digital samples of real instruments. Yeah, i know. what the hell?
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