Fueled By Coors Light

Tonight I was supposed to listen to some of the recordings and, you know, work some Garageband mojo on them, but instead I am watching a House rerun and updating the blog and drinking Coors Light out of a can. It would seem that procrastination is just one of my problems.

I did my part for the band today, though--I picked up 100 blank CDs, and a bottle of Coke Zero for Ann.

On Saturday, things got off to a shaky start. Mic showed up at noon, not realizing rehearsal was scheduled for 3:00. He pondered just lurking around the KEIT studio for three hours and rehearsing until everyone else showed up, or poking around Home Depot, where a homeowner like Mic or me could easily pass three hours like they were mere moments, or doing some grocery shopping at Giant, where a person could find himself still in the checkout line three hours later. That is why we call it Giant Line.

I could see that he was yearning to go home and install a range hood, however, so I let him off the hook, but not before he showed me how to do the drums on his keyboard. Now why do I need to learn keyboard drums, when Know Eye Inn Teem has a drummer this year? Because we still have yet to see Chris show up at a rehearsal, that's why. In his defense, he has been working in Kenya, then India, where he got an antibiotic-resistant eye infection in both eyes and puffed up like the Elephant Man. But still. We need our drummer, that is the bottom line.

So my remaining non-range-hood-installing, non-infected band members that day were Ann, Jonathan, and Cerin. We worked on "Show Me The Way." Mic had already recorded what we thought would be the "bass" track on The Device, but Ann had volunteered to play an actual bass track, so we're scrapping the keyboard version. 

Ann and Cerin were all business. They wanted to run through the song over and over until they perfected it. Ann's hand even cramped up.

Jonathan was preoccupied with our recording. He has brought in a super-duper microphone that really looks like a microphone, which is sort of mouthwatering to someone who enjoys having the trappings of a band, even if we sound like poop. However, the microphone proved too good for us: unless we are recording one voice or one instrument at a time, the sound is just muddy no matter whether we use the super-duper realistic microphone or just the recording device or the built-in iBook mike (which is not bad, surprisingly).

I don't mean to imply our recording device, kindly lent by Ann, is not sexy. It looks like a Taser. It's got street smarts. But I digress.

This year, I don't have the patience to record all our songs track by track. Instead, it's quicker and more fun when we're all making noise together, and frankly it didn't sound all that hot even when we did it painstakingly last year. Of course, it didn't help that we sucked last year. I will know more about whether we suck this year when I eventually put down my Coors Light can and actually get around to listening to our recordings. But again, I digress.

I am afraid Jonathan was deflated when I declared I really didn't care what the recordings sound like. I appreciate that Jonathan wants KEIT to be all that we can be. But we need to maintain our sanity and kick up our heels a bit, too.

We recorded many versions of just bass and guitar, none of which were entirely perfect. However, since we were using foolproof keyboard drumming, the timing will match up if I cut and paste the good sections of the various recordings. The keyboard drumming is not ideal; it's a little blah. It sounds quite real on The Device, and I like the fact that The Device can't get an eye infection, but I don't have the wherewithal to vary the drum sounds in the middle of the song. It was fun to play with the keyboard sounds like thunder or a galloping horse or a plane taking off or the apocalypse, but I refrained from including those in "Show Me The Way," which is going to sound plenty weird already when I include the pseudo-voicebox part.

Then we recorded Jonathan singing back-up vocals. Chelsea chose this song for the band, so she's going to sing the main vocal part. The back-up vocals will harmonize with the chorus. Harmony is a new concept for KEIT this year. How far we have come!

Aside from my really key role turning the drumming on and off with the press of a button each time we played the song, I also made a valuable contribution on Saturday by lip-synching the song during the bass and guitar recording, so Cerin and Ann could read my lips for visual clues as to their place in the song. I am not making this up. 

Tomorrow we are going to finalize Ann's song.