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A Challenging Session
I began writing this the day after the session and decided to maintain that immediate perspective, even though I've been too busy to finish it up for a week.
Yesterday dawned with an interesting studio session lined up for me: I was to record parts for a television show score. I got an email with the session specs and some background from the scoring composer. It seems that he had written all the “cues” for a show with keyboards in a light pop style. Cues are the small pieces of leitmotif music that align with actions, characters, or thoughts in a show to emphasize and draw attention to them. The show producer heard the composer’s cues and asked for him to produce them again with more guts, in a more rock style. That’s where I came in. The composer sent me sixteen (!) cues as wave files and booked three hours for the session. His instructions were: “Try to just exactly reproduce what I did on the keys on your guitar. You can break my parts into lead and rhythm to make it easier. No matter what the instrumentation or mood of the music in the file, I’d prefer that you stick to electric guitar for all the selections. Also, if the cues don’t have endings, could you add endings?” I’ll pass on the story of the session and perhaps you can benefit from the lessons learned. My job is to analyze sixteen parts performed on various keyboards, transcribe them to guitar, learn them, perform them, and record them, in three hours. Go! Looking at my tight schedule for the day I decided to try something different and do the session from home so I wouldn’t have to transport the gear to the studio. Despite the fact that I was able to free up a little more time for the session the workload still felt a daunting. I downloaded the stereo guide mixes from WeTransfer and we were off. Immediately, challenges emerged because the composer provided no scores or lead sheets, no click tracks or count-ins, and no tempo notations of beats-per-minute to guide me. Each of the songs had my part entering on the first beat so I absolutely needed at least a click to allow me to count into the song. So, for each cue I had to establish the tempo by turning on the DAW’s click track and adjusting the BPM by ear until it matched the track. It’s a small thing but on a limited budget for time, the small things can begin to add up. Time is time. Working alphabetically, the first four cues were variations on the same theme, designed to introduce each of the show’s stars as they arrive on screen. The composer changed the feel of the melody and the timbre, going from a mellow, popish sound on the first one to a rocky sound on the last one. It changed for each, in both timbre and arrangement. The first three I played fingerstyle on a Telecaster, going from a clean, compressed sound to a gentle crunch sound to a driven sound as I stepped between the characters. All my sounds on this project came from patches I have created on Helix for sessions. Because the fourth cue’s iteration was supposed to be more hard-edged and forward, I switched off to a Les Paul Standard with crunch to play it. That character is the big, strong masculine type and it matched his presentation. I have to say that these selections were quite “pianistic.” The composer used two hands, using left-hand bass stabs to cover his chordal movement with his right hand. Of course, as a guitarist I don’t always have that option. In some cases, when it came down to a pattern that required that sort of coverage, I broke the bass notes and the walking chords into two parts and recorded them separately to save time. Given the time challenge it didn’t make sense to spend a lot of time trying to get a perfect performance of a complex walking bass and chords on a single pass. Still, there were still some cues that were so pianistic that it was tough to convert them to guitar. To help me get as much done as possible I did a bit of triage, putting the least susceptible to translation off until last. Another challenge showed up in the choice of song keys for the pieces: Many were in E flat or its cognates. It’s no problem at all to play an inversion or capo to get to the flat but you’ll recall that the composer asked me to create endings for the cues that didn’t have them. For E flat cues that wanted to resolve to the tonic chord, E flat, I tuned the guitar down and overdubbed that final chord alone to get the fullness I wanted. Interestingly, and not particularly intuitively, the Les Paul with its shorter scale seemed to handle being tuned down just fine but the Tele seemed to get a little flabby. I would have thought the longer scale would do better. Out of the sixteen cues, my favorite cue was a smoky bar jazz number featuring a Rhodes electric piano comping chords with a vibraphone lead dancing above it. I used a Gibson ES-335 on the neck pickup with a clean Fender Deluxe Reverb amp to comp the chords. To replace the vibraphone leads I added a compressor to create a classic jazz/blues lead sound. The vibraphone lead line was built around classic blues licks so I was able to transcribe it pretty easily, calling on Larry Carlton for inspiration. By the end of the allotted session time I had pulled off eight of the cues. I probably could have pulled off more if I hadn’t had to contend with technical challenges. To be honest, I really wasn’t surprised that I didn’t get through all of the material. Three of the remaining cues were simply too pianistic to convert in a short time. One consisted of a bell sound strained through a Leslie speaker system playing a long, atonal sequence. That was the first one I decided to pass on. That left four that I may get another swing at. Once I approached session end I did all my exports, one of each element, making sure to export mono parts mono and stereo parts stereo. They I bundled them up and sent them to the composer via WeTransfer. Despite not completing all of the transcriptions I ended the session with a fulfilled smile on my face both from simply playing my guitars and from enjoying the fun of conquering a challenge. A certain amount of my final joy might just have been because I ended my playing with that smoky bar jazz number that I enjoyed so much. You've got to remember to reward yourself to keep up morale! Bob
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"It is said, 'Go not to the elves for counsel for they will say both no and yes.' " Frodo Baggins to Gildor Inglorion, The Fellowship of the Ring THE MUSICIAN'S ROOM (my website) |
#2
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A tremendous post Bob, Really enjoyed it.
First let me say, that I am in awe of your accomplishment. There is no way I could ever do what you did. I do know, that pressure....is a motivator creatively & work wise. There is no denying that. Still what you did was amazing. You had no help from anyone. And yet you finished it with a positive note in that you got to play your guitars. Kudos to you Bob. Sincerely I am super impressed.So the big questions is: What happens now with the other 8 unfinished songs? That composer set unrealistic goals for you. If he does email you back and want the other 8, I think you will be justified and telling him "Hey, I will need more than 3 hours this time" |
#3
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Hey Bob,
Thanks for sharing. I am a hobbyist and hack, but am fascinated by how the industry (broadly defined as including music, film etc) works and the creative process all artists go through. Your story of what a real pro goes through provided insight, awe, and commiseration as someone in a desk job who occasionally gets asked to do X in Y hours, despite what it may actually require. Hearing how you interpret someone’s else’s music and make it your own was fascinating. So thanks again for the post. Enlightening and fun for me to imagine a day in the life of a working musician. Cheers, Dave |
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Thanks for your kind words!
Quote:
Bob
__________________
"It is said, 'Go not to the elves for counsel for they will say both no and yes.' " Frodo Baggins to Gildor Inglorion, The Fellowship of the Ring THE MUSICIAN'S ROOM (my website) |
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My son wants to become a Recording Engineer. I sent him your story. He said “Too hard... I’ll take the easy way out and become a Brain Surgeon instead”. But seriously, Bob. You did all this in 3 hours???
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Quote:
I agree sounds like quite a bit of work for three hours, especially with no click I wonder that the no complaint, means that what you did get done, satisfied the producer enough with his "more guts" ? I'm guessing the other 8 were still quite usable even if less less gutsy , given that in context might provide more contrast between various shots
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Enjoy the Journey.... Kev... KevWind at Soundcloud KevWind at YouYube https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...EZxkPKyieOTgRD System : Studio system Avid Carbon interface , PT Ultimate 2023.12 -Mid 2020 iMac 27" 3.8GHz 8-core i7 10th Gen ,, Ventura 13.2.1 Mobile MBP M1 Pro , PT Ultimate 2023.12 Ventura 12.2.1 |
#7
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What a post, Bob!
I read this with two distinct emotions that got stronger with each word. The first was awe of what you accomplished, your obvious expertise and your equanimity and Zen-like attitude in how you told the story. The second was a kind of outrage toward the composer whose expectations are wildly unrealistic and self-serving. (I admit that that may not be the case at all and that I'm attributing motives that are my own projection). But what a story! |
#8
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Since I do the same thing (although mercifully I'm retiring in 15 months!) I'm curious as to what television show you're currently workin' on?
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#9
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Quote:
Bob
__________________
"It is said, 'Go not to the elves for counsel for they will say both no and yes.' " Frodo Baggins to Gildor Inglorion, The Fellowship of the Ring THE MUSICIAN'S ROOM (my website) |
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The "three hours" constraint is an interesting wrinkle. It's one of those good vs fast vs cheap situations. I probably would have passed.
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#12
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When I was a younger man in the industry I tended to take on whatever I was offered. I stopped that insanity years and years ago. I've done thousands of cues over the years but it's just no longer rewarding enough to put up with the rejection and grief I get from Creative Directors and Producers with caddywampous expectations. I let em pay for something from a library. I'll stick to my daily combat mixing and deliveries.....that, in and of itself, is more than enough pressure |
#13
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Very interesting challenge Bob.
In all humility, I don't think I could have gotten as much done as you did in three hours. That is really asking a lot of a recording engineer. It's pretty impressive what you got done in three hours. My son does a lot of music composition work for video, video games and for the occasional movie, and he runs into producers fairly often who think they know what they want but cannot come close to describing it. So they run him in circles for a while and use up more time without paying for it, and then very often go right back to settle on the first stuff he provided them. This would drive me nuts. I'm glad I made my living as a pump design engineer so that the difference between good and bad is measurable on a test rig. There are no opinions involved. Humans can be awfully hard to get along with at times. I get to save music for my fun time. - Glenn
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My You Tube Channel |
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Me too. As it was put so well in "Animal House," the reward for that stuff is far too often "Thank you sir -- may I have another!"
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Wow Bob!!
What an adventure!! Sounds like a fun opportunity (looking back)… I'm assuming you are healed up from your last recording 'excursion'? |