So Steve couldn’t come to practice today (he has a job or something) so it was just me, Eddie and Jackson. Great! We practiced. It didn’t go very well. My voice was pretty much killing me by the end and it was all really unfortunate because usually I can blame Eddie for sucking and in turn bringing everyone around him down to his level. But tonight was different. I was screwing up a lot of easy stuff that I don’t usually mess on. It all could have been for a couple reasons.
- Maybe because Steve wasn’t there. He adds a lot to the mix and to have played with him the past few practices and to now have him not there, it feels like there is a big, wet, sloppy, gaping hole in the music. And Steve can fill it, what can I say? But it needs something else.
- It may be because of the arrangement (or in our case, lack thereof). To work through a song that has structure but no arrangement can be very frustrating. When there are parts of the song missing like vocal harmonies and important lead parts that I know will add to the overall feel and energy in the final product, I start to overcompensate in practice, which gets painful.
The solution: Get some goddam recordings done. Arrange everything properly with overdubs and parts the way I want them. I’m sure there are some people out there writing songs on their guitars or pianos and they can also, if they please, just whip out a drum and bass part like it’s nobody’s business. If you are one of those people, I hate you. You have no friends. You people who can lay down that shit to sound just like a real drummer with real feelings, you can go straight to hell.
I’m not one of those people. I have to spend my time with the band (ugh), taking time to get them to learn (Eddie is special, he needs extra time), to know the songs, to come up with parts that don’t make me want to scream and don’t make them want to quit. So… what we’s gonna do is pre-production. We’re going to take our time and make it real good. And you’re gonna love it.
The new songs, as we play them now, are in pretty good shape. What we need is to get separate tracks of all the drums, bass, guitars and vocals and then I can go to town with my mouse and key commands in the digital editor and make some cool ass shit.
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Band Practice Foibles
So Steve couldn’t come to practice today (he has a job or something) so it was just me, Eddie and Jackson. Great! We practiced. It didn’t go very well. My voice was pretty much killing me by the end and it was all really unfortunate because usually I can blame Eddie for sucking and in turn bringing everyone around him down to his level. But tonight was different. I was screwing up a lot of easy stuff that I don’t usually mess on. It all could have been for a couple reasons.
The solution: Get some goddam recordings done. Arrange everything properly with overdubs and parts the way I want them. I’m sure there are some people out there writing songs on their guitars or pianos and they can also, if they please, just whip out a drum and bass part like it’s nobody’s business. If you are one of those people, I hate you. You have no friends. You people who can lay down that shit to sound just like a real drummer with real feelings, you can go straight to hell.
I’m not one of those people. I have to spend my time with the band (ugh), taking time to get them to learn (Eddie is special, he needs extra time), to know the songs, to come up with parts that don’t make me want to scream and don’t make them want to quit. So… what we’s gonna do is pre-production. We’re going to take our time and make it real good. And you’re gonna love it.
The new songs, as we play them now, are in pretty good shape. What we need is to get separate tracks of all the drums, bass, guitars and vocals and then I can go to town with my mouse and key commands in the digital editor and make some cool ass shit.
Related Posts: