Wound a Little Tight

Moodiness, angst and frustration are the order of the day. The band is preparing to go into the studio and record a demo. Next week. Last night was the first of two rehearsals for this project. And I'm here to tell you they are going about it all wrong. This is going to be such a freaking trainwreck that I don't even know where to begin describing it.

It is the classic scenario of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. Our other guitarist, who is an expert on every aspect of the music business, is pushing this through with his usual end-gaining haste. He's been in the studio twice before, and knows how things are done there. I, on the other hand, know nothing, in spite of the stack of CD's sitting here with my name on them as producer and / or engineer from the ten-plus years I spent as owner / operator of a studio. But, you can't tell him anything, so I just shake my head and try to get on with it.

This whole thing is a recipe for disaster. He is planning for failure, and doing everything possible to assure that outcome. Change everything at the last minute, practice it once or twice, then go in and rush through the first parts and go back to fix them later. I have only briefly met the engineer, and he seems like a good guy, and is by all reports knowledgeable, but I find myself a little leery of his insistence that we use a click track, especially given his reasoning. We have never played with a click before, and this is no time to start. It didn't go particularly well last night. And there is no faster way to suck the life out of a song than to lock it in to a click track. The whole line of thinking is that if we have one, it will make it easier to go in and fix our mistakes on the computer. It is already assumed we are going to screw up, and so we take steps to guarantee it. Rule number one: we aren't there to make his job easier, he's there to make us sound good.

I could go on for days about this, but it would only bore you and frustrate me more - lol. I'm hoping that I am reading into this, and it doesn't prove to be a case of somebody who is so enamored / addicted to Pro Tools that they forget the nuts and bolts of how to do things. The computer should not be what dictates how the session is run. It is easy sometimes to get so wrapped up in how to do things that we forget why we do them, and that sometimes a different approach is needed.

I really hope I'm just being paranoid, but I kind of doubt it.