this will be the sixth time i've been in a recording situation. i've run the gamut from the clinical fancy pants studio experience where i was alone in a basement with nothing but a persian rug and a set of expensive headphones and a heavy set guru sitting at a startrek-like console of shiny lights all the way to a DIY closet i couldn't stretch my arms out in lined with cheap mexican blankets hemmed in by a screen door. this time around, we are in the other vocalist and trumpet players' living room. it's a fantastic space with crazy high ceilings, a cozy fire place, plants, great light and comfy couches that weren't picked up from a curb.
as a group, we've all got a respect for music and have discipline from our respective day jobs that's helped us to get things down and perfected. coupled with this focus is an openness to play a little bit. as a result we've taken a couple of tunes in a completely different direction.
this is what keeps me going. when it comes to any creative pursuit it's always the process that drives me. when i am writing i love to let my mind go where it will unedited for pages at length and then go back with fresh eyes and cut and clarify. when choreographing something, it's the trying things out in response to the music that gets me going, it's the emergence of organic transitions that come with dancers just playing around that i love.
in terms of singing, i love to listen to the structure of a song repeatedly,stumbling upon a groove while improvising. once i'm hooked into it, it grounds me within the song and i can meander safely around this safe spot until a melody forms. it's only possible when every one else is willing to be patient, to keep walking along the established borders. thankfully my bandmates are incredibly patient and, like me are able to go on their own "walkabouts" when similarly inspired by something someone else has done.
the experience of writing and editing the songs as we went was incredibly fluid. one idea fuelling another. the challenge comes when you can't hear or feel where the others are going. ran into that situation a couple of times. for me, i have to almost act my way through it. envisioning a character that goes along with the genre or mood we're going for and then playing the role sonically. once i can physically get a sense of what the song is supposed to feel like, i can usually retry it in a more natural voice. really trippy experience. very sensorial and intellectual at the same time. can't think of any other way to describe it.
we played for nine hours that session in a dreamy, flowing way. hope that we can get back there again somehow. hard to replicate the intangible.
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