The Blue Wires

Please don’t judge me. I know not what I do. I’ve just finished watching the season finale of the Celebrity Apprentice. I know, I’m a horrible person because of it. But that’s not the point. Near the end of the show they had Trace Adkins perform his latest single. Trace is a country singer, who granted, I’ve never heard of before, but who is apparently a HUGE celebrity in those circles. Over the course of the season, yes I watched the whole season, I’ve really come to like Trace. I liked him right up till the end of his performance on the show tonight.

At the very end of his song, Trace went to hit a few big powerful notes, unfortunately what happened was the auto-tune they had on his voice went a bit hay wire trying to find the right note. Now, those of you who don’t know, auto-tune is a program that helps ‘fix’ notes when someone is singing. This isn’t the same as lip syncing. Trace is NOT Ashlee Simpson!

I just think that it’s wrong that a guy with such a great voice, feels as though he has to resort to having a computer enhance his performance. I, personally, would have much rather have heard a bum, yet soulful, note then the horrible sound of auto-tune gone awry.

I’m not going to say that I don’t use auto-tune on my vocals. I do. I use it when I record vocals. I do it because, well, I’m not an amazing singer. I’m nowhere as close to as good a singer as Trace is. What I don’t do, is it live. When you hear me live, good or bad, you get me. The real me. That’s the point of ‘live’. In the studio, it’s no different then any other effect that gets used in the studio. People edit drums to be in time. They cut guitar parts together to get ‘the perfect take’. Keyboard parts are quantized to be precise. And of course, vocals are tuned.

Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to pick on Trace, I’m just annoyed with musicians these days, who can’t just perform ‘live’. Try it. It’s fun. Play your ass off! Enjoy it. You’re not going to be perfect. You’re not going to hit every note. Who cares!?! That’s music. That’s life. That’s entertainment.

The recording process is moving along, albeit at the break neck speed of a turtle, but it’s moving along. Yesterday Jason came over and laid down some funky bass parts. By funky I mean pretty straightforward rock bass parts, so there really isn’t a lot of ‘funk’ hanging out there, but I couldn’t think of a better single word to describe the tracks.

He came and nailed Like You’re A Mouse in 1 1/2 takes! From there we moved on to Go Love Yourself and the eventually on to Yellow Star. That’s where things got a bit tricky. For a pretty simple, straightforward song, it so far has seemed to elude those who have tried to record it.

The first travesty was with my demo scratch track. How my playing could be that far out of time, I will never know! I ended up laying down a simple, and quantized to all hell, keyboard part just so Kevin could play his drum tracks. Then it took Kevin a few takes more then the others to finally get what he wanted out of the drum tracks.

And then there was the bass part. Jason, who nailed the other two songs in just a couple of kick ass takes, struggled with Yellow Star. We went section by section, but we were eventually successful in getting a really rocking track.

I’ve spent the day editing the bass parts together to form one super take for each song. Now they are stronger and more rocking then before.

Up next, yours truly has to start recording his parts. It’s so much easier for me to sit back, press record, and criticize others playing. Now I have to be the one under the microscope. Not fun. The only good news is that I can do the parts without anyone else around. Which is great because I can spare others the torment of my guitar playing. Unfortunately, I probably won’t able to do that when my vocals come around. But that’s a post for another time.

On Sunday Kevin “Machine Gun” Rothermel came over to record the drum tracks for the three songs we’ve chosen to record. In what turned out to be a six and half hour long session we manged to get all three songs tracked and edited.

The drum tracks have a great ‘humanized’ feel to them. In the next two weeks Jason will be next on the list to lay down some of those groovy bass tracks of his so we can really kick this bad boy into the stratosphere.

Well, tonight, the process of recording the first of The Blue Wires songs officially commenced. I recorded ’scratch’ tracks for the three songs we’re going to start recording on Sunday.

A ’scratch’ track, for those not in the know, is a rough (and trust me, it is VERY rough!), recording of a guitar and a vocal track that Kevin can play along with. The tracks are recorded to a metronome, so it will ensure that our drummer man, and subsequently the rest of the band, are in time with not only the song, but each other!

I really hate doing these types of ’scratch’ tracks because they take a while to do, but they always get thrown away in the end. They’re meant to be disposable. Now if there isn’t a metaphor there for the state of music industry, I don’t know where there is one!

More as it comes.