"Deep in a Dream" mp3

deep in a dream.mp3


Ok kids.

This is the next tune up for the Chet Baker Project. It's called "Deep In A Dream"

This is, incidentally, the title of Chet's exhaustive if not exhausting biography by James Gavin, the same guy who wrote the 2009 Lena Horne biography entitled: Stormy Weather, the Life of Lena Horne

It's NOT on the album "It could happen to you" for those of you sick and tired of that one. If you are one of these folks, tsk tsk tsk.
We're no longer going steady. I'm giving your ring back right now.

In the spirit of experimentation, which this entire project most certainly smells like to me, i decided to change things up a bit and try recording keys first instead of drums.

I thought, what the heck, this is not an up-tempo number; i should be able to stay on top of the changes well enough to deliver a serviceable track using only a clic.

Hmmm. Yeah.
Turns out not.

I tried but the clic (remember that this infernal yet indispensable tool, if you don't happen to have access to drum loops, is an electronic metronome that sounds like, well....CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK and maybe,
Click click click CLACK, Click click click CLACK to emphasize the beat sequence.
Annoying and musically violent.

So i went back to my original technique, that of laying down a VSTi drum track using a Clic as metronomic (is that a word?) reference.

Well this worked fine UNTIL i laid down a keys track.
Cuz this is when i discovered that i hadn't drawn out the drum track long enough. And the result was that i ran out of drum track during my fucking chord changes track. Shit. it's always something man.
Hey wait a minute. Now THIS would be an acronym i could get behind. an acronym for 'it's always something man'

what would that be...IASM...hmmmm.
Naw, that still sucks.

ANd besides, that would go against the bylaws of my yet-to-be-formed political action committee:

People for an Acronym-Free Earth or PAFE. Yeah!

Rock on PAFE!!!

Yeah so anyway, i really need to figure out how to make a drum loop so i can just plug it in to my tracks. But maybe by not having one, it is somehow more organic.
Organic Virtual Instruments?
Oh dear.

SO what i came away with during the process of recording "Deep in a Dream" is that it behooves me to keep the tracks as long as possible. To make as long a pass at a track as possible.

In other words, record a part over the entire form of the tune instead of just running 16 bars of something, copying it and pasting it along the entire track. The less carved up the tracks are, the less hassle when arranging the tune.

This becomes wildly apparent in situations where the parts i've recorded have been punched in and sliced up and moved around over segments of tracks that do not always correspond to full measures and phrases.

Man that there is hair-pulling, feet stomping elementary school style, i tell you what...

The tracks themselves, the musical aspects i mean, are getting better. Little by little i'm able to stay in tune with my voice for longer periods. Sometimes i can play entire tracks without screwing up every other measure.

A few times i've actually thought it sounded pretty good. these days i am satisfied with my efforts.

in fact, there is one thing that is happening fairly regularly that to tell you the truth, has me baffled.

when i sing sometimes, a note will hit me just right and i'll puddle up. i know it sounds wacky but there it is. i almost have to stop. i feel like i have to sometimes. but i never do. i swallow hard and try to make the next note. i don't understand but then, what makes me think i would?

I'm paying attention to the phenomenon though and i'll let you know if i start going through handkerchiefs by the dozens.


That said, another part of this whole crazy thing, the practice aspect of this project is grinding its way closer to fruition. At some point I'll be able to dial up any of these Chet tunes and use them to practice solos on horn, piano, voice, spoons, didgeridoo, washboard....

Ahhhhh... washboard.

Nothing like thumping on a hundred-year-old laundry aid to get the blood moving. warms the cockles of a dyed-in-the-wool jazz hound, pioneer style.

Yepper

"Do it the Hard Way"

Do it the Hard Way.mp3



Life is surprising sometimes.

Like when i found out that i really didn't know Chet's music as well as i thought.

Yeah that'd be today.

I've listened to every one of Chet's recordings. That's gotta be like 4 million or something.


I've listened to them in the living room,
the bathroom,
out-of-doors,
the bedroom,
the kitchen,
the dining room,
in the car,
on the bus,
while walking,
while running,
on the way to the dentist,
to my folks' house,
to work,
to graduate school,
to church,
to the grocery store,
to the gym,
to concerts,
to the store,
to the park and
to the woods.

I thought i would know his music by now.

Today i got a surprise.

It happened while i was working on "Do it the Hard Way," a tune from Rodgers and Hart's Broadway play Pal Joey."

Now let me say up front that I find Broadway music in Broadway shows, uh...distasteful.
I avoid it like a cowboy avoids a Saturday night bath.

Like a visit to the dentist.

Like a colonoscopy.

Like going to bed when i'm all sofa-snug-as-a-bug-in-a-rug watching a 1950s film in glorious Black and White

But i love this tune. despite its origin and so i chose it for my work today. I thought it was going to be a relatively docile activity. Ha!

All right then. Sometimes things don't go the way we think they will. Amen.

I started by thinking i'd change things up, try something new and different; a departure from my usual procedure.

Not that what i've been doing represents anything more than a rather incipient method of learning the skills and techniques pertinent to this project. I love the music, i love what it does and i want to learn what i can from the musicians, the composers, the lyricists.

I want to be a musician able to translate what i feel, what i hear through whatever instrument i am holding. yeah that's what i want and this is the attitude i bring to each session. and indeed to the project's session today.

So, today, working with this very familiar tune, i was not in any way prepared for what happened.

I began today pretty late in the day, having spent a good part of the middle of this hot summer day recording with a musician friend in his home studio.

And this is how it began.

I knew i knew this tune, especially the vocal. especially the melody. i could hear chet's voice even before i started.

turns out i was wrong.

i decided to lay a piano track first. i looked at the chart. it looked pretty simple. mostly ii V I in the key of Eb major. Easy capeasy.

So i practiced a few times through, set the tempo at 170mm and off i went.

jeez, it really didn't go that well.

First of all, the tempo proved to be WAY-too ambitious. Even after a half dozen times through, i was still making lots of mistakes.

I managed to get three or four choruses down on tape though.

So i moved on to laying a drum track. that went pretty well and taking what i had learned previously about keeping the track passes as long as possible. so that was the good news.

The not-so-good news?

After listening to the two tracks i laid, i noticed something: it didn't sound right. the chords. something wasn't gelling.

It dawned on my when i began singing the vocal. Something was pretty wrong with the way the melody was laying inside the changes. the harmony bed was off.

So i looked a little bit deeper. I played--slowly now-- through the changes, playing attention to how the melody fit with the harmony i'd laid down.

Shit. there it was. it didn't take very long. it was pretty immediate. the melody was clashing so violently with a certain segment of the form that i completely lost the line. i didn't know the melody anymore

I didn't know the melody anymore. This tune I had heard and sang in my head countless times, even going so far as to transcribe Chet's vocal solo on it, had flown right out of my head.

holy shit.
My stunned disbelief slowly receded and melded with a plan of action. a distasteful plan, but a plan.

i had to redo the whole harmony bed.

that was an easy conclusion to reach. a much harder task to carry out. i mean before i could fix it i had to figure out what to fix it with...the correct chords. this was much harder than you'd think, given my history with this tune. oh well.

surprises sometimes are fun. this one was not. i was disappointed with myself. i was pissed off too.

but persevere i did. at first i thought i could just listen to the harmony and fit the melody that i had know so well (before today that is) right in where it needed to go.
shit

not so easy. surprisingly not so easy. surprisingly frustratingly difficult.

the first thing i did was burn what i had laid down previously. gone. flushed down the fucking drain.

so next, i had to see about recording a new keys track, this time with the right changes; those that fit properly with the melody.
first thing: slow the tempo down. give myself a fighting chance eh?

that helped immediately. i set about figuring out the correct changes and laying them down. ok. right.

well, an hour later i was still flailing about looking for the correct chords for the turnaround in the B section. Not easy.

Dealing with the negativity foisted upon me by this void of melodic memory i worked my way slowly through the process of trying to get the tune down.

I couldn't yet hear the changes. so i decided what i should do is listen to the tune. i mean how sad is this? i actually have to listen to the song again to hear the changes and melody? my god, what a travesty. surprise.

so that's what i did. i dialed it up on itunes and listened. i wish i could say that this is what brought it all home for me. alas. another surprise.

The 1958 recording of "Do it the Hard Way" as it appeared on Chet's album It Could Happen to You turned out not to be what the doctor ordered to hear the chords that Kenny Drew was laying down. i just couldn't make them out as clearly as i had hoped. so the search continued.

i wish i could say that it went lots faster after that but it really didn't.

To make a long story short, i still have to record the melody line. I did figure out the changes though. I'm not at all convinced that they are the same chords that Russ Freeman plays on the recording. This is upsetting to me.

But i will go at it again. TOmorrow i hope but i'm not sure. tomorrow we leave on a fabulous road trip up through the Texas panhandle, across that little sliver of land called--oddly enough--the panhandle (this time in Oklahoma) and up toward the Colorado mountains.

So..........more later.

Remind me if i forget. I need to blog about comping. Russ Freeman has it down man. Where my comping seems hard, clumpy, sloppy and angular and less than accurate not to mention eloquent, Freeman's is all of this and more. I find it a little daunting but i am going to do it. I am going to do it. I am going to do it. Goddamn it.