Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Practice 2 of 4

The Cast:
  • The Leader, on vox (plus, potentially, electronic keys and electric guitar)
  • Keys, on the grand piano
  • Hammond, on the organ
  • Rocker, on bass
  • Animal, on drums
  • Sans, on acoustic guitar
Keys is the same Keys as before. I play with him every Wednesday plus on occasion for fun. We know each other. Hammond is cool enough. Right now, the spinning-horn amplifier is not connected to my mixing board, so I do not get to hear him, which is not good.

Rocker is a good bass player. He wanted me to give him an E, and from there he tuned all five strings of his bass. He's a very active player. The other bassist I regularly play with could easily be replaced by an absence, so this is a nice change.

Animal is a good drummer. He's got a double-kick setup here and he know how to use it.

But...

Imagine taking the bassline to "Pulling Teeth" and the drums to "The Immigrant Song" and starting the tracks at different times. When the song you're trying to do is much more like "Big Log" to begin with.

Rocker and Animal aren't so much listening to each other. It depends more or less on the song, but when you can't pull it together for the slow songs, then nothing is going right. And where does that leave me? I'm on acoustic guitar! Where do I fit in?

2 comments:

Pribek said...

"Where do I fit in?"
Sounds like you don't.

Not to say you can't but, somebody has to give you some.

Dave Jacob said...

That's exactly where my head's at about this. I talked to Leader, told him my concerns. I started out with an Ibanez w/o onboard and a soundhole pickup, and I developed the strong right arm that can take the low E down to Db before the end of the song. I'm trying to play softer now, to bring out guitar tones that are not the hardest, the loudest, the brashest that the instrument can get.

Leader loves having the acoustic in the mix, though. It's really more an issue of reigning in Rocker and Animal than anything else, I think.