Music and bass players.

So the album is out there now garnering praise and dismissal as is expected. Generally the feedback has been very positive and while I am far from expecting any big financial coup, there is every indication we won't take a bath this time out either. We'll see of course, and given the fact we are well on our way in rehearsing a new CD, we'll keep doing this no matter how well or poorly this album actually does.

Reading those lines back it seems somewhat dismal and actually this is far from the case; the feedback has been great and we already have a positive review.

Tommy Hash's review at ytsejam.com

So. I have explained the album in the last few blogs and most of the details surrounding the recording; all that is left are some insights into the players themselves and of course, the ever changing group dynamic.

We'll start with bassists. When we first started, Gary Lauzon was on board. We had done a series of grueling gigs going from Pennsylvania to Quebec city and topped off two seasons of gigging with a show at The Nuance Festival in Toronto. It wasn't all that well attended, but we had a great time and felt very happy with our performance. Wilton Said and his band invited us to play and stuck around to hear us (we were on last after the dinner break) and were both perfect hosts and audience members.
Speaking of which, while it isn't politically correct, I'd like to call out the other bands on the venue who left at supper and never returned. Normally I expect that kind of thing but what made this event somewhat exceptional was their unsolicited verbal promises to check us out ("we're really looking forward to hearing you guys") and all their onstage requests to "support the local prog scene" yet as soon as they were finished they bolted out of there. Yah Counterpoint and Lorne Hind I'm talking about YOU!!! Wusses all! If you want support, you have to show some in return. We drove all the way from Ottawa to make sure we were early enough to cheer you lads on. That won't happen again!

So now where were we? Oh yah, bassists. So we were tight and ready to record. Some of the intended songs we already had down cold, some others were in developement. We went to Shattered Wing and laid down the tracks for MadNight, Klak, Wordplay and Convent. It didn't take long to see that Gary had lost interest in the project. Wordplay and Klak were keepers, but the rest just weren't in the pocket.

This time out we played without click tracks and were relying on the internal rhythmic dynamic of the players. Given that Klak and Wordplay both had lots of sax solos (the solo section of Wordplay was completely improvised in the studio by the band while Klak had a defined structure) we put Ange in her own iso-booth. When we realized that we were getting better results with the bass turned down I knew we were in trouble.

I took the keeper tracks home, did the bass myself and we started discussing the situation. Gary was going through some rough times at home and that combined with the realization I was replacing his parts anyway prompted him to quit.

That was a big set-back but fortunately for us, after several weeks of searching, Claude Prince joined. Claude is ex-Nathan Mahl (a band I am in now) and was aware of our stuff and eager to join. He is a solid bassist and while he hadn't been in a band for several years, his not-too-rusty-chops and innate musicality added a great boost to both the band's morale and overall vibe.

We then had to bring Claude up to speed. We had done a recording session at my place for a week in March (March break in fact as my wife and kids had gone to Florida with their Grandparents) where we had keeper versions of Evil Clocks, Hags 123, Settling of Bones and Scales. Claude's first job was to replace the bass-lines I played (except for Wordplay and Settling ie where we kept the ones I had done). he did that incredibly well. We were very excited about having him in the band.

We then rehearsed all of Discoverie, both in anticipation of recording it live-off-the-floor and also for gigging. It's a good thing we did as we were asked at the last moment to replace a band at Progtoberfest. We did and it went swimmingly (more on that later). We never actually recorded Discoverie as one piece. Not only were the hags sections already done (with the exception of vocal fix-ups) the last piece wasn't fully written. We had a performance version of it worked up, but I really wanted to include a group percussion/vocal chant in the orgy section. I was still fucking about with it so we decided to record each section seperately and it went incredibly well.

As it happens we never went with the percussion idea, certainly not because it was pretentious or over the top (since when did THAT matter in prog?) but simply because as percussionists, Ange, Claude and I left quite a bit to be desired. In the end Aaron's look of panic convinced me we should shelve the percussion concept. I still hear it in my head but it just wasn't feasible.

So we finished tracking everything, we did Progtoberfest and I went into the interminable foray of mastering the album. It is generally not recommended to do your own mastering and usually advisable to get a set of fresh ears, but after the hideously compressed version I got back from a unnamed mastering house, I figured I might as well do it; it certainly couldn't be worse.

The fact is I am used to wearing a lot of different hats in any given tune. Just today I was playing a song for my 12 year old drummer step-son and asking him what time signature it was in. He answered correctly "5/4". I then showed him how I counted the chorus (12345,22345,32345,42345, 52345, 62345, 72345, 82345). He asked me why and I answered, so I can tell easily how many bars that section has. He looked puzzled and asked me, wouldn't I know that already having written it and all? Well yes, but when I am playing it, I'm not the composer anymore I am the guitarist (or keyboardist or bassist etc). The idea is that each fucntion has a distinct territory it works in and it is necessary to function in those limited parameters in order to do that specific job.

So I mastered it but it took about three months of testing mixes on every system I could find, hundreds of dollars of gas (my car was the benchmark after awhile) and lots of band frustrations. Through-out that process, just as I gave out final pre-release copies to everyone, Claude came into a rehearsal totally bummed out. It didn't take long to hear the problem (although it did take considerable coaxing) and it was clear we were soon going to be looking for ANOTHER bassist. Sheesh.

I really wanted this album to be a group effort and wanted the players who took the album live to be the ones on it. It made so much more sense. Diagramma v1 (the five song version ie) was all me and while I think it sounded great, (and not too much like a one man band), I also knew that the rest of the band didn't have as much of a vested interest in those 5 songs. I tried to avoid that happening again. As I pointed out to Claude, I could have easily had that puppy finished 6 months ago if I were playing bass on it; it was getting the logistics of the whole band recording that was time consuming (that and the actual recording process itself).

During all of this we did a track for 10T records Undercover album (Jethro Tull's Cross-Eyed Mary)and I played bass along with Aaron on drums. We overdubbed Ange's sax and vocals the next day and my guitar, vox and keyboards later that same night. We could easily have taken a similar approach for the Clocks CD that would have saved us a lot of time.

We didn't. But the cool thing is, we took 13 months to record it, there are 13 songs, and the cover idea was an evil clock that had a face that went to 13 instead of 12. (The album is exactly 1 hour long by the way). All in all the personalities and conflicts actually made the CD what it is, so I guess everything is worth it.

Tomorrow, or maybe later next week I'll introduce you all to our NEW bass players (who actually is on teh album anyway) and the recent line-up of the band. We are tighter now than ever before and the groove pocket Aaron and I have been searching for has finally been achieved!