Recording report: 1/14/09

Productive session last night, though time was limited. Lexi did the lead vocal for "Crash and Burn" and Jen did her backup part for that one plus "Duet By Myself." We only had about 90 minutes to work with so I thought it was a good night's work, considering. I thought they were both in good voice and sang their parts very well. Everybody's been hitting their parts in just one or two takes. Occasionally three. But still, that's nothing. Things are going well.

Now we just have to do the male vocals on "Crash" and Daryl's part on "Stranger," and those songs will basically be done!

Done? What's that?

Which will clear us to dive into the other four songs that we did basic tracks for more recently: "Pretend," "Catch and Release," "Edge of Forever" and "Don't Look Down." I'm anxious to get started on those because they're all songs written in the past year and are fresher to us. And you always like your new stuff the best. But these newer songs really feel to me like the band hitting its stride and finding its sound, finally. None of them have ever been performed live yet...I can't wait for everyone to hear them.

I can't give the girls enough credit. They've been singing their asses off and as a result this project is really starting to take shape. I think if we keep working hard we're gonna have a killer little CD when all is said and done.

This week it looks like we have a Sunday session coming up with a special guest that would be very cool - I don't want to jinx it by giving details yet. Fingers crossed.

I'm really starting to hear the band in these songs. Now that a few of them are approaching completion with all or most of the vocals recorded, they are really coming to life. What's exciting to me is that for a long time, in some cases years, we've lived with the only recorded versions of these songs being my initial demos, which, even though they sound OK, don't represent the band. The version of "Crash and Burn" on our Myspace page isn't really the Aviation Blondes. It's me in my home studio playing all the parts, including artificially programmed drums - only Lexi's and Jen's vocals are "real." I'm just so bored with the demos and the false impression that it's the band playing on them. So to finally hear those songs coming to life on a proper recording, played by the band, is incredibly invigorating to me. They have so much more spontaneity and spark now than in the demos. It's like before the songs were in some kind of suspended animation, but now they're alive.

Especially since we made the choice to play them without a safety net - no click track. Nowadays almost everyone plays to a click. The whole point of a rock band, it seems to me, is that it's human-powered. Your drummer is the motor. We have an awesome drummer by the name of Dave Klug who among other talents, has excellent timekeeping. So to me it was a no-brainer that we would not play to a click. I think that decision now is paying off in what I hear as that extra bit more life and excitement in the songs. It's hard to explain, but songs with a drummer keeping time just *breathe* more than when you play to a click track. Sometimes very tiny, subtle variations in tempo are natural and desirable. Especially in rock 'n roll. When you play to a click, you rob a song of its natural respiration. Some kinds of music have to be played to a click track, I do understand that...anything that uses MIDI, for instance, any kind of dance or electronic music. But a rock 'n roll band? No.

It was great to see Daryl and Dave at the session last night - haven't seen those guys for ages. We need to start doing more full-band stuff. It looks like we will have some gig announcements in the very near future so stay tuned.