First Meeting

So we met at The Black Sheep , sitting in the car, for Dan to hear via cassette my little song. There is a thread

about this song on the Recording Studio Forum;

specifically how a novice should go about recording 8 parts on an analogue 4-track. That was great

fun, sometimes very difficult, but I learned a lot. And yes, I did eventually score all three guitar parts.

I think it's actually an eleven-parter, 3 vocals and 8 instrument lines.

Mike Loonan had done

most of the music parts on the cassette I had and I couldn't bear to be w/out them (but couldn't get him to play again,

he was in baby exile). It took a great deal of time to [learn to] score again - Mike's 2 guitars, bass (man he's all over it!

mainly through what he doesn't play), strings. I did also score in a kind of tab form his hammond-like keyboards. I have

versions of as far as I got w/ it, learning to eq w/ the bouncing and all the rest.

It took only a week of e-mails to get together w/ Dan and put out feelers how we were both thinking

of things. I gave him a tape of the Loonan version, the my-version (sans vocals), and a snippet of

what I think of as the song's climax, right before the out. That part I used to have vocals on, but as

I crafted anew Loonan's version (based on my original version), I came up w/ both lead string and lead organ

lines, and took out the vocals completely. I wanted Dan to have that part highlighted as a supplement.

To me, those four measures are the song.

Sigh. It was really like talking w/ a producer - I mean someone very knowledgeable as a player,

as a writer, who above all didn't want to step on my stuff but wanted direction from me. And he said this

outright, and again affirmed it. At one point I asked if things were weird, was he expecting something he could

stretch out on, cause this is NOT that. And you could tell, the cat was kinda horrified - "no," the big D said, not

for him to intrude, but to help me make...my song and my deal.

He told me in his experience the 2 methods at disposal, basically track by track getting that riverbed

of rythym section down, and going back to dub or going for it live. Dan said the feel is the most important

thing to him, he wants to understand, to capture that. I told him about that great book on producers (and

he recalled Tony Visconti's last name where I didn't - one of Bowie's bassists and producer). I said Dan,

from the heyday of Motown to Visconti, those producers interviewed said it came down to one thing: performance.

So he's got the tape, and as soon as I locate the score, I'll send it - or bring it. If you recall, I'd sat in w/

Dan's band (the electronic drumkit) recently. The other guitarist (Scott) is apparently the engineer guy for

their home studio and I found out we're all 3 free the same time of the week.

At one point I asked, "will you play?" "O Sure, whatever you want." "Guitars! Bass! Keys?!"

I ventured. "Yeah, whatever you want." He told me his thing, in case it applied, is to lay off playing

the song a couple months, then rehearse just to refresh right before recording. We talked about the pros of doing

live, the freshness when people are excited and the song new, and how one can get lost in overdubbing

getting it just right. He again said he thinks feel most important, even at expense of perfection.

As perfectionistic as I can be, this is also my philosophy and work ideal (I think - kinda depends).

Naw but it's true. The energy has got to communicated, whatever that energy is - calm, jubliation, melancholy, whatever.

That's an essence of someone's self. It's your mom's homemade pancakes, or the smell of her brewing coffee in the

morn, hearing her tinkle w/ putting the dishes away and the nice greeting. The recording, if it can communicate something

so natural as that...

I had a very good day with this meeting. Then I got some more seamstress work, which I can do

at home, working with some beautiful garments. Cleaned the home and reflected on how my

homemaking stuff has bloomed. And the variety of musical situations and musics Dan has played

over the years. He's another real-life example of someone started out young, becoming really

full and rounded, simply through just doing music through life as time goes on. It is a beautiful

thing, a worthy thing.

Oh! And my tulips are coming up. I planted a memorial garden for my baby lost...and his flower stems just appeared yesterday.