Shock to the system.

I had a rehearsal recently with members of another band, with whom I will be doing a few performances later this year. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, because I have been playing for so long with my drummer and musical partner in crime, Rich, that it’s always weird to play with another drummer. This other band’s drummer is (I believe) a younger guy than Rich, and tends to suffer from an affliction common to many younger drummers — the tendency to overplay.

Young musicians tend to fixate on trying to mimic the flashiest players. Flash is a big attention-getter. But what many of them fail to realize is that increasing the complexity of a part also increases the overall business of an arrangement. Arrangements are distinguished not just by the notes therein, but also by the judicious use of silence, or absence of notes. If you’ve seen the movie Amadeus, you probably remember the scene where the jealous courtier accuses a young Mozart of using “too many notes” in a new work. While I would hesitate to say that this accusation has any basis in the specific case of Mozart, it is in fact possible for popular music arrangements to have too many notes.

Because of the way the ear perceives rhythm and tone, this “TMN” problem tends to manifest in percussion and bass parts first. When drummers or bass players contract TMN Syndrome, the music quickly becomes wearying to the ear, less easy to enjoy, and also more difficult in which to discern a pulse. When I say “pulse,” I mean the underlying musical guide, whether a beat or some other sort of cue by which one can groove. Whether you groove by playing along, dancing, toe-tapping, rocking, or just sensing subconsciously, doing so is much more difficult when music is too busy.

There are plenty of examples of music for which TMN doesn’t represent a problem. (Rush and other prog-rock bands come to mind, as well as heavier speed metal.) But when a singer/songwriter band exhibits symptoms of TMN, that’s a big problem. This sort of work requires attention to the vocal melody, harmony, and lyrics, and the rest of the band is meant to support that effort, not attract attention away from it.

For the most part, bass parts should at least emphasize the kick drum beat. On any kick beat, there should usually be a bass note as well — this is the key to a tight rhythm section that even non-musician listeners notice, even if only subconsciously. Being a bass player makes me very sensitive to drummers who overplay, because their kick drum parts tend to be unnecessarily complex in a way that detracts from the presentation of the songs they’re playing. There are many tricks in the bass player’s bag, however, to help counter this problem or at least minimize its effect on a song, some of which I employed in rehearsal to steer the arrangements into something that listeners would enjoy more. The TMN symptoms I heard during our rehearsal included:

• busy kick drum parts that, when added in with a bass and two other guitars, would tend to boost the overall volume of the band unnecessarily;
• overly complex fills occurring every second measure, or even every measure in a few cases; and
• interpretation of every guitar solo section as an “instrumental exhibition” where the drums would cease to support the solo and instead try and become a competing soloist.

If you hear symptoms of TMN in your rhythm section, visit a groove doctor immediately. Most groove doctors will recommend that you suggest to your drummer that he is not, in fact, Carter Beauford. Follow-up visits might include:

• hiding or otherwise controlling access to prog-rock and jam band music;
• forced practice with a metronome and a rudiments book;
• in extreme cases, enforced music therapy sessions featuring music by Tom Petty, Eric Clapton, Chris Isaak, and Crowded House.

Don’t let your fellow musician’s TMN go untreated! The ears you save may be your own.

Mixed bag.

The last week has brought both good tidings and bad…

• Our van broke down, and we thought it might be the alternator. But we found out our extended warranty would cover that, so it would cost us very little out of pocket. Unfortunately it turned out to be the battery… which is easier to fix, but is not covered.
• A hard disk crash at the studio has thrown a wrench into the studio recording process. It may be revivable, but we won’t know for a few days. If it is, we may have only lost a song that really only has two instruments and a vocal, and is very easy to recut. If the drive can’t be reanimated, it means we have to start from square one and recut the whole album. But we don’t have to pay for it — other than with time (valuable as that may be) — nor the lost time.
• The patriarchal among us lost the fight against moving our FDP work to the Wiki, but it turns out this is probably for the best, since we can now get more community involvement. It’s funny that even we non-developers have our own sort of inbuilt snobbery. Ours just centers around looking down our snoots at people who can’t tell “its” from “it’s.”

And nobody’s reviewed my BloGTK package yet for Extras, but hopefully soon…

Catching up.

Studio madness, part 1.5.

My next date at the studio is on Thursday, to help Leah complete vocals. We have all the rhythm tracks in the can, and this week Tom is finishing the guitars, banjo, and lap steel, while Okorie lays down the cello madness. (By the way, never call him “OJ.” I hope to regain use of my legs by the winter.) I can’t wait to hear the magic!

Geek love again.

I am digging hard on my new ThinkPad T43. It has one of those little fingerprint sensors which is not nearly the novelty I thought it would be. You really can secure your system, up to and including booting, with your fingerprints. I thought about doing this, but what if I’m in a horrible accident and I lose all my fingers? Of course, I wouldn’t be doing much typing in that case, but then all the genius on my hard disk would be lost to the ages. Yeah.

BloGTK on the way.

I am working on taking over BloGTK packages for Fedora Extras from Seth Vidal, Fedora infrastructure maintainer and bon vivant.

DVD reviews.

Eleya and I watched the thoroughly enjoyable, engrossing, and flat-out impressive Criterion edition of the 1948 film The Red Shoes. Rather than simply turn the original Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale into a screenplay, the creative team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger have extrapolated the magical shoes into the lure of artistic obsession. The ballet premiere of “The Red Shoes,” a production of the company which dominates the film’s middle half, is full of magical imagery and effects that were far beyond their time, and still quite effective to a 21st century viewer. The love story gets a little bit of short shrift, even in a 135-minute film, but overall this was a marvelous picture. Highly recommended.

The battle for free time.

I see that Karsten also has succumbed to the temptation of a popular new multiplayer stragtegy game in Linux, Battle for Wesnoth. I can feel the remainder of my meager spare time leeching away already. Must… resist…

Studio madness, part one.

We had our first night of recording at Kevin Gutierrez’ Assembly Line Studios last night in Vienna. We were all thoroughly impressed with his ears, his skill, and most of all his efficiency. Even in professional studios, recording can grind to a halt when you have an engineer who can’t shake a buzz out of the system, or get a microphone placement just right. This was not the case with Kevin. Every need was filled instantly, he was able to perform on-the-fly editing faster than we could have re-run a take, and the sounds were almost too good to be true.

We were able to get two songs’ worth of rhythm tracks in the can, and a third well underway for touch-ups tonight. I’m looking forward to sponging up as much as I can in the way of tips and tricks from Kevin. We’d certainly recommend him if you’re in the area (or in L.A. where he works part-time as well) and in need of a well-equipped, well-manned studio.

Buried alive.

It’s been a very hectic week between work, finishing preparations for a teaching gig in D.C. last week, and trying to complete rough mixes for the band’s preproduction demo that wouldn’t embarrass me in front of our producer. Thankfully, I got to see a lot of the kids this weekend since I was home catching up on some Fedora work. The Marketing Project is kicking up an effort to revamp the web site to appeal to a larger audience (finally!), so I’m trying to get involved in that to the extent I can. For an example of good marketing through a web page, check out the Firefox home page.

Eleya brought home Kung Fu Hustle on DVD, and we watched it last night — what a hoot! This movie was hilarious from start to finish, and a real treat if you like any kind of martial arts movie, from The Matrix to Jackie Chan. It was a feast for the eyes as well as the funny bone. Over the last week we also saw Shaun of the Dead (also hilarious, but in a completely different way) and Gods and Generals (not hilarious, and not bad either). About the latter I have more to write, which I will hopefully do later today or tomorrow as time allows.

Real engineering.

Spent a great weekend doing preproduction recording for the band in preparation for recording our next CD, a 5-song EP we’ll be recording at Assembly Line Studios in Vienna. An abbreviated journal:

Friday, August 5

Kisses and hugs for the whole family as I leave for what Eleya suspects is actually a weekend of nothing but bacchanalian debauchery. She is, of course, incorrect, as this journal will indicate. (We actually did a lot of recording too.) Stop at Wawa for a coffee, since they have the only drinkable stuff I’ve found at any convenience store. Make great time on I-95, the Beltway, and the Dulles toll road, since I left the house at about 8:45 a.m.

Arrive at Rich’s house at almost precisely 10:00 a.m., cementing my reputation as freakishly punctual, especially for a musician. Load in the mountains of gear and then start refamiliarizing myself with Rich’s equipment. Our collection is not awe-inspiring, but it’s also not shabby. The console was a simple Alesis Studio32, the recording software Sony Vegas 5, monitored on a pair of Hafler M5 passive speakers powered by a Samson studio amp. There was the usual mishmosh of drum microphones, large condensers, and simple dynamic mics for scratch tracks.

Leah arrives at 3-ish and we set up her digital piano, and are pleasantly surprised at the quality of its sound. We’ve never heard it through decent studio speakers, but only through bizarrely configured stage monitors or on our very small practice PA. We take a small break for the next door neighbors’ sake, since they have naptime for their small young’un. They are apparently the kind of people who wring their hands constantly about waking the baby; my wife and I watched loud war movies after bedtime to ensure they would learn to sleep through actual warfare in our backyard. There could be a Second Battle of Fredericksburg and they would probably happily sleep through it.

Rich’s wife Kate makes a great chili, into which we dig with gusto while having a great time laughing and chatting. Whenever the conversation has a lull, Rich’s four-month old daughter Audrey gives us something to smile and talk about. We do manage to track a song before calling it a night at about 9. Rich and I said goodnight to Leah at 10, agreed to meet again by 9:30 or so the next morning, and proceed to work our way through a bottle of Port Royal rum while watching a Peter Gabriel concert video. I don’t realize the speed at which Rich is pursuing the bottom of the bottle until he stands up (or makes an attempt to do so) and complains about being “hammahed.” This will figure heavily into the next morning’s activities. Bedtime: 3:00 a.m.

Saturday, August 6

The alarm I set like an idiot the night before wakes me up at 8:10 a.m. My head’s pounding a bit and I feel a little bleary, but a shower makes me feel a little better, as does the French toast and coffee provided by sympathetic (if bemused) Kate. The first I see of Rich, he looks awful. I ask, “Hey man, how are you doing?” He says, “Awful,” goes into the bathroom, and vomits loudly and repeatedly. When he comes out he says, “I feel a little better now.” I think, “Well, I’d hate to think you suffered through that for nothing.” Realizing that discretion is the better part of valor, I phone Leah and push call time to 11.

Despite the fact that he probably still feels terrible, Rich does a great job drumming and we get a song tracked before a late but great lunch of sandwiches during the next-door naptime. Rich’s appetite is back, and he makes a monster deli gutbuster that has us all laughing, but he eats the whole darn thing so we shut up. This is apparently what Rich needed to recharge up to full capacity, since the rest of the day he is his normal good-natured self. All tracking finished for bass, drums, and piano, we move on to acoustic guitar overdubs and lead vocals. Kate makes a fabulous spaghetti and Italian sausage, and we finish on time at 9 again. Tom, our guitarist, will arrive tomorrow at around noon, Leah a bit later after a church choir gig.

Rich and I go out to meet Arch, a great guitarist whom we met and are trying to romance into a side project. We finally get to Bowl America after several wrong turns and have a great time with Arch and some friends from another band and their respective significant others. I never bowl — literally, never — but manage to eke out a 108 and a 110, so I’m happy not to be a total embarrassment. Hey, I bowled better than, like, two girls, even though one of them looked like she weighed less than one of my amps. We get very little time to talk to Arch so we head to the Silver Diner, where we hang out and find a lot of musical common ground before heading back to collapse at Rich’s house again. Bedtime: 4:00 a.m.

Sunday, August 7

Wake at 10, but not before waking at 7, 7:30, 8, and 9, thanks to Rich’s young son and the unfamiliar sounds of their house. Nevertheless, Rich makes omelets, so there’s that, then. Tom is there on time and busts such superlative musical moves that we are all dumb-founded. We decide not to cut on him so much at rehearsal, at least for the next couple of weeks until he does something else that really, really deserves it. We work through lunch and I do a very rough mix for everyone to take home.

Dinner is chili dogs, and after a fond farewell and mutual congratulations, I hit the road to come home at last. It was all worth it!