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January 29, 2006

Recording: Week in Review

Written by Jam Malone on January 29, 2006 2:17 PM
Permalink |  Recording Girth McDürchstein's 'The Return'  | Digg It

Wow, has it really been over a week since our last post?

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been working on the basic tracking for our latest album, Girth McDürchstein’s ‘The Return.’ The process of Girth showing us his songs and us hashing out the arrangements, a task already imbued with impossibilities, seemed all the more difficult with this album. As it’s of a more personal nature to Girth, he finds himself refusing to budge on many of his song ideas, fragmentary though they may be.

For example, a song near the end entitled “Willie’s Swan Song,” a nice ballad about the internal struggles and motivations of “Kelly Robbins“‘s disgraced fiancé, has one of the most bizarre bridge sections I’ve encountered in western music. Bear in mind, I have a Masters in music composition and arranging from Brandeis, so I’m pretty sure I have some idea of that which I write. There’s an irrational tritonic key change (from E major to Bb major), which at the end of the bridge resolves to B-minor. The most polite word to describe these changes, and the structure of this section of the song, is “ugly.”

Bear in mind, here I’m talking about actual key changes — not chord changes. In fact, the E to Bb chord (used, for example, on our own tune “Somebody”) has always been one of my favorite changes, but as far as changing the entire key, including the melodic structure and chord patterns, just sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. When I brought this up to Girth, he said, “Fuck off, motherfucker.” I could tell I would not make progress any time soon.

I suggested and played for him more suitable changes — first E major to A major, then E major to B minor (which would thus eliminate the second chord change at the end of the bridge — and after I finished, Girth glared at me. He unstrapped his guitar, set it on a stand, and approached me. His face mere inches from my own, he snarled in a measured tone, “Are you finished?”

“Yes,” I stammered.

“Good,” Girth said, the “ooh” sound causing a blast of chemical nacho cheese flavoring to infect my nostrils. Girth had had an economy-size bag of Doritos for lunch. “Now you can listen to me. We’re doing it my way. I write the songs — you’re the messengers.”

Mikey stepped in at my defense. “Look, Girth, we gotta have some say. Ya come in wit’ dis finished product, and we get no say in eliminatin’ dese songs — and some a dem, I gotta say, kinda suck ass — so da least we kin do is adjust what ya wrote ta make it a little easier on our own ears.”

“I find it exceedingly difficult to deal with this incompetence!” Girth screamed, and fortunately by this point he had backed away from me to turn his attention to Mikey. At this point, he ran from the room, slamming the door behind him, and went to lay down on the floor of the control booth, which I’m sure pleased Carlos (our longtime engineer) very much.

“Are we ever gonna take down this tree?” Riffs asked, his Judaism perhaps offended by the omnipresent Christmas tree looming at the head of the studio. Margo sighed and went after Girth, while the rest of us remained in the studio.

Eventually, we resolved the issue. Margo calmed Girth down and got him to see the advantage of playing the bridge in B minor. I suppose the only way to get through to Girth is to be an attractive woman.

Since then, the atmosphere in the studio hasn’t been particularly bad. We’ve spent most of our time tracking, Girth-style — that is, one instrument at a time, with occasional group feedback. We have the basic tracking — “basic” meaning everything but overdubs (like guitar solos, additional guitars, et cetera — for seven of the 13 songs (after tossing away three of Girth’s original 16), and by next week we hope to complete the final six. After that, we’ll add all the overdubbed music, which will take another few weeks. So far, things are shaping up nicely.

We had a group discussion during dinner a few evenings ago, and we decided that we will try to release our rough mixes to you all before the album is out. Girth has the final say, of course, and he’s often a very controlling individual who refuses to let any of our work be heard until after it comes back from mastering, but we think we got him to crack this time. He’s incredibly excited about The Return so I wouldn’t be surprised if he wanted to share it no matter how incomplete.

Have a nice work-week, fans! We’ll be thinking of you while we record. Especially you, Sandra Chalmers of Goff, Kansas. Yes, we got the pictures, and yes, you’re very lovely. Thank you for listening.

— Jam Malone