I’m so excited about the upcoming concert. Only 4 days away. And the AMBERGRIS album release is tomorrow on iTunes. (Please, CDBaby and iTunes….don’t fail me now!). I can’t wait to see all of you at the Charline McCombs Empire Theatre on Saturday. And for those of you not able to come in person, you’re welcome to join us via the StageIt live webcast.
So.
This is all quite new to me.
I’ve never heard any piece of music I’ve written played live, full band, before. Only tracked in the studio or stripped down piano/guitar while writing.
And sound from tracking, the whole production, is much different than a live performance, so by definition, we’re going to be hearing something new. An evolution of the songs. I wonder what they’ll sound like, especially in the Empire. The theatre’s got amazing acoustics. Anticipation.
To tell you the truth, I quite favor the live band vibe over tracking. Maybe it’s from so many years of sitting in the center of an orchestra. You get really good at learning not just to hear, but to feel the other musicians as you play. Music en masse takes on a life of its own, and the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. There’s an organic movement to live group music, and I’m looking forward to having live cuts of all the songs. (Which, btw, will be available for sale here and on iTunes the week after the concert.)
Anyway. There’s something special. Something relational about the live band music experience. And it includes the audience. You just don’t get that tracking to yourself in a studio.
So, I keep wondering how the heck we’re gonna make some of it work on stage. I think about the orchestral parts and some of the more complicated guitar layering and I’m just so curious.
How’s Phil gonna pull that off live?
I’m sure he’s got it all figured out.
But this one, I just gotta see…..
The picture at the top of this post is my favorite pic from our last recording session at YellowDOG. In fact, it’s taken during the actual tracking of the very last note of the very last song we wrote for you guys, “Lifting Me Up,” for the concert. It’s the closer of the closer.
Dave Percefull is playing, and the dang guitar we were using – such a gorgeous tone, but so fricken unstable – kept drifting out of tune on the last note. So Phil reached over to the tuning peg and turnsed it just enough to tweek the pitch and make it right.
The last note was tracked by the two of them playing it together.
Kinda poetic, now that I think about it.
But how the heck are we going to do that live, Phil?
-SC
“Love draws a bigger circle.”
