Techno Geek

The artistic enjoyment from music is fourfold: Creating, Playing (for oneself), Performing (for others) and Recording.

My new project with TR (still un-named, ah-hem) has taken on a recording-strong focus (there are only 2 of us) which is interesting and amusing for many reasons.

One of which is that we are doing all the recording and engineering ourselves on my Macbook Pro. Neither of us are particularly computer-literate to start with, let alone being music engineers with knowledge of how to make your acoustic guitar stop sounding like it has a sweater on. (bass down, treble up- now what?)

Recording is a time-consumptive process even when you are working with someone who knows what they're doing. The 2 or 3 times I've gone in the studio with JUPITER have run something like this:

Day 1: "Wow, we are in the studio, just like a real rock band. This is exciting. Woo!"

Day 2: "When do I get to sing?"

Day 3: "zzzzzzzz"

Day 4: "Oh god, this is costing a fortune. We were supposed to be done 2 days ago!"
TBag and Danimal in the background: "I think a little canadian brass jangles right here would be good.... Can we get the guitar a little higher in the mix? ....Now that's TOO much guitar...."

Needless to say, I'm never the one suggesting little bells and whistles to add to a finished song. I just never really think about it to be honest. It doesn't just hit me that what this song needs is 2 seconds of street noise before going into the 2nd chorus.

Maybe it is because all we have is guitar, so it is easier for me to imagine/hear possibilities. Or maybe because I have come to this project with more experience and confidence in my musical abilities. Or maybe because TR and I are still defining our roles in how we work together (whereas my role in my band is fairly established), but I actually have made a few suggestions so far.

It is really very thrilling to be working with music in a new way and I think it will have positive effects on how i work with JUPITER too....