Show Me The Way...Please

Yesterday the band began work on Peter Frampton's "Show Me The Way."

A couple of things stand out about this song. The first and most obvious is the "talk box," which makes a sound that is like a cross between a voice and a guitar. It is sort of a hokey sound. You also hear it at the beginning of Bon Jovi's "Living On A Prayer," prompting one band member to suggest that we play that song next year.

But the band budget does not accomodate the purchase of a talk box, so what is the KEIT solution? Do you really need to ask? It is the kazoo. I have already memorized two of the three talk box interludes in "Show Me The Way," and the third one will be improvised as only a true kazoo artist can do. A challenge of making the kazoo substitution, though, is that it is hard to play the song all the way through without Mic, our keyboardist, collapsing in laughter and losing his place.

Another thing that stands out about the song is that some of the drumming in the Frampton recording sounds eerily reminiscent of the noise made when I banged on a pan lid for the percussion part of last year's "Sunday Bloody Sunday." It's sort of ironic, given the value we placed on finding an actual drummer this year.

This picture nicely sums up a typical day in the KEIT studio: musicians, an iBook, a tambourine, a ukelele, and a plate of biscuits.

We recorded the bass track, but it gave Mic a lot of problems. We couldn't decide on the right sound, and some of the chords were bedeviling. There was also an issue of a certain set of notes that Mic referred to as "onesies" (in contrast with another set referred to as "bastards") showing up randomly in the song. Oddly, guitarist Cerin knew exactly what Mic meant by onesies and bastards, and steered him straight.

So we got a bass recording, and in a first for KEIT, we did so using MIDI, meaning the sound is recorded not as sound waves but as a digital code, with the keyboard plugged directly into the computer. Assuming I learn how to play with MIDI recordings (I have a book), this will allow us to easily manipulate the notes. Mic's recording may, ahem, need some manipulation, but I'm not complaining. I'm happy we're on our way.