Dissonance - Chapter 5

Sunday we all drove to Raleigh in a convoy, with me and Kat in my car, Hanna and Seth in Hanna’s car, and Lyla and Marco in Marco’s van carrying most of the band’s equipment.

The first stop was Hanna’s aunt’s house which was out in the suburbs. While I wanted to see where the rest of the band was going to be living, they’d actually be further in the city and closer to the studio than we would. While that probably had seemed a good idea at the time, in retrospect, they probably should have looked for something further out.

When they’d first picked the place, the plan was for us to drive from Hanna’s aunt’s house to their sublet apartment and from there we’d all go together to the studio. The problem was, the equipment would only really fit in Marco’s van, which was a nightmare to drive, meaning he was the only one to drive it. It wasn’t until Seth made a trip out there the day after Hanna’s presentation that he realized the area the apartment was in wasn’t the best and the odds of our equipment being stolen out of the back of the van was pretty high. The apartment itself was small and on the third floor of the complex, which meant transferring the equipment up and down each day would have been a pain. Beyond that, Seth’s description of the apartment included how very small it was. It was going to be cramped enough for the three of them without having drum kits, amps, soundboards, and all the rest of the equipment we were bringing in there with them.

Admittedly, most of that stuff we weren’t going to need for the studio time itself, since they’d have some of that already set up, but we weren’t sure if we’d get the opportunity to play any gigs, so we wanted to be prepared just in case.

In the end, we’d decided to take advantage of Hanna’s aunt’s generosity and offload the van into her garage every day, since she easily had the room for it. Unfortunately for them, it meant having to drive out to us and then back into the city twice a day for the next several weeks.

We unloaded all of the stuff and they headed off to find their new apartment and buy some groceries before the week began. Hanna’s aunt had left a key with her, since Sam had some kind of soccer tournament that took them away for the whole day.

We were just sitting down to relax after the long drive when the front door burst open and Sam came zooming into the house, his mom barely being able to stop him and get his cleats off before he made it into the living room with us.

“You’re here,” he said, leaping on Hanna for a hug.

“We said we would be,” she said, laughing and hugging him back.

“Do you want to see the new game I got?” he asked, already turning on the TV. “Charlie, you can be player two.”

I’d never been much of a gamer, mostly because I didn’t have anything like that growing up in the RV and I didn’t have time for it when we moved to Wellsville. I was also tired from driving all morning and part of the afternoon, and wanted to just kind of veg for a few hours and then go to bed early, since I was going to have to be on most of the day tomorrow.

On the other hand, Sam was a good kid and I felt bad not spending some time with him. Thankfully, Kat came to the rescue. It still amazed me that she was such a nerd, but apparently her love of all things nerdy extended to video games, because in minutes she was completely into it, grinning and shooting bad guys.

Even with going to sleep early the night before, the next morning was grueling. I was tired from the drive, from packing and unpacking and repacking the van to get the equipment from home to Hanna’s aunt’s house and from the house to the studio, and most of all I was tired from a lack of sleep.

Even though we’d all called it an early night, and I’d managed to get Sam, whose room I was sharing, to stop talking and finally go to sleep, I spent most of the night staring at the ceiling, going over all the possibilities of what might happen the next day. It was like how kids felt trying to go to bed Christmas night, too excited to sleep thinking about the next morning. Or how I imagined kids acted, since I hadn’t actually had much of that experience growing up.

The studio itself was a little bit of a shock. I don’t know what I’d expected, but it wasn’t the small, dingy row of combination warehouse offices, sitting between a place that looked like they sold carpets to tool companies. Except for a small sign that identified the business as Newton Sound, which really could have been the name of any business, there was no real way to know that this was a recording studio.

I wasn’t clear if this place was some kind of offshoot of MAC records, although as far as I knew most of their operations were in Nashville, so it was probably just a local recording studio that they contracted with.

We walked through the heavily tinted glass door in the front to a very plainly decorated reception area. Since this was a place where artists and maybe voice-over people worked, I guess they felt like it didn’t need to be flashy like their primary location that would get investors, journalists, and whoever else needed to be wowed by records and posters on the wall.

Probably, a plain reception area helped keep away tourists. We gave the woman our name and she said Rowan was already inside waiting for us.

Going through the door into the rest of the building, everything changed. It was kind of like going through some kind of portal. Gone were the plain eggshell white walls and average furniture.

Everything was in some shade of black, silver, or dark gray and the walls held signed posters for several North Carolina-based groups stretching back twenty years and two movie posters for fairly big animated movies, also signed.

The place wasn’t that big, so there were only 4 doors, two on either side of the hall, both sets fairly close together. Rowan was standing in one of the doorways, waving us in.

“Hey guys, find the place all right?”

“Only ’cause of the GPS on Marco’s phone. If they didn’t have the name above the door, I would have thought we were in the wrong place,” I said.

“This place is wild,” Lyla said.

“Let me give you the tour,” he said, stepping back into the room and holding the door open for us.

The room itself was smaller than I thought it would be, with a large panel full of sliders, buttons and dials taking up most of one wall, and a large glass window looking into a larger room where the music actually happened.

Sitting in front of the soundboard was a guy I didn’t know, wearing some kind of pilled cap that reminded me of a golfer.

“This is Todd, one of the audio engineers here. He’ll be helping us get everything dialed in.”

I’d kind of thought that was something Rowan would do, since the few times I’d ever seen shots from inside a recording session in music magazines and whatnot, it was one producer in a booth, looking out at the band in the recording booth. Aside from the little bit of work and suggestions I’d gotten from Rowan, I didn’t really understand what a producer did and just assumed it was similar to a sound engineer.

Across from the soundboard was a black leather couch, leaving a smallish walkway between the two. Looking through the window into the recording booth itself I could see the other door leading into the hallway.

Although we’d brought all of our own equipment, there was already a drum kit set up in the room, along with microphones and all kinds of wires. I didn’t see any amps, although it occurred to me that we’d probably be plugged into the system for the sound to be recorded.

“We weren’t sure what we’d need, so we brought all of our stuff with us,” Hanna said.

“Bring in your guitars, but I think you should use the kit here. I looked over Seth’s kit at the Blue Ridge, and the one here is better. So, here’s how this is going to work. We’ll start by playing a song through once, so I can get a feel for it. I might ask for a few parts to be played by themselves or go through it a few times. At any point during this, I’m open to hearing anything you’re thinking, either about the song as it is now, or about any of the changes we make. Once we’ve gone through it, I might have a few questions about what you were intending with a section, either the sound or the lyrics, if it’s unclear to me. From there, we’re going to start making adjustments to try and really drill down to what the sound should be. Once we’ve gone through everything we can, I’ll have you do the new version all the way through, and then you’ll all come in here and just listen to it. If everyone’s happy, we’ll start the actual record for it. Although occasionally we can get that once through, usually we’ll break parts out, recording them separately. Just a warning, a lot of new groups are okay with the first part of the process, where we’re adjusting and making changes, but start to struggle when laying the tracks down for real. It can be grueling going over the same song over and over again, doing it the same each time, but it’s important you keep your energy up the entire time. This is what sets apart an amateur recording, where a band plays through a song once to put it on tape, and a professional recording, where each piece of the song is exactly how it needs to be, to build the entire thing. This is also what separates bands that are good on stage and bands whose music translates on the radio and in people’s homes. I know we’ve all heard bands that are amazing when you hear them live but whose records just kind of fall flat, missing that pop and energy that makes their sound really work.”

“There’s also the other way. I’ve been to several concerts where I loved the album but they sucked live,” Hanna said.

“That does happen, although it doesn’t necessarily mean what you might think. Yes, there are some people who, thanks to auto-tune and all the other effects and leveling we can do here, can hone their sound in a way that doesn’t translate on stage, but a lot of the time, it’s about bands that have very energetic stage presentations. You guys, at least now, are mostly static on stage. You stand there, maybe pace back and forth a little, playing your music. Which is fine. But there are some artists who put on a whole show. It’s high energy and usually involves a lot of choreographed dance moves. True, these aren’t usually people playing their own instruments, but if you think playing and singing, remembering to hit all of your marks, and keeping your sound tight is hard, try doing it while pulling off a full dance routine. It’s tough to keep everything sounding great when you’re out of breath from all of that.”

“I didn’t think of that,” Hanna said.

“There’s also the notion of how tightly they schedule some of these tours. I’ve looked at yours and it’s not that bad, with just over twenty shows in a month. Even with that, you’re going to be struggling near the end of the tour, what with driving all day, setting up, playing with full energy, breaking down, and getting ready to drive to the next city. It takes a toll on your body and your voice, and that’s not even close to the schedule some of the bigger names have to hold! Since shows are the real moneymakers for both venues and labels, there’s a lot of pressure to do them pretty much every night, and sometimes two a night. It’s why, if you want to see a band, pay attention to their whole schedule and try to find a way to see them early in the tour, instead of later when they're feeling the effects of it.”

I could see what he meant. Even though we’d been playing almost every day to get ready for this, we just didn’t play as hard in practice, even when we were trying to. Some levels of energy just couldn’t happen without a crowd around to feed off of. While we played multiple shows a week, shows that I felt were high energy even without all the dancing and whatnot, we also had the rest of the week off, so it wasn’t the same. We’d have to see how everything sounded once we got on tour, since Rowan was right, we were going to be playing a lot more than we were used to.

“Okay. Go grab your instruments and let’s get everything set up. We’ll do a few sound checks for levels and get to work,” Rowan said.

When I’d first looked at our studio schedule I’d felt pretty good about it, since we had a full week to record fifteen songs, and during practice, we could manage to get through all of those songs in a solid afternoon. After we finished the first day, I realized how badly I’d miscalculated. By the end of the first day, we’d only managed to get Country Roads recorded, and it should have been the easiest song we had to record. Country Roads was the song we’d played the longest and everyone felt was the most locked in. Most of the changes from the original version to how it currently sounded were based on suggestions Rowan had given me early in the spring, and yet somehow it had taken the entire day. At this rate, we’d need two more weeks, maybe three, to get all of the songs done.

Rowan promised us this was normal, that the first song we tackled would take longer, since we’d have to get used to the process, and I hoped he was right. There were a lot of false steps as we didn’t always understand what he was suggesting and had to give it several goes before a given section actually changed the way he wanted. There was also the problem that, except for myself, since I wrote most of my songs alone with just my guitar, most of us hadn’t played the music by ourselves, so when it came time to break out a part and make small tweaks to it, we’d fumble with our section.

I had to admit, hearing Country Roads when it was finished and locked in, was something spectacular. Originally, I’d thought Rowan might do some kind of effects in post, layering sounds or playing with tone and pitch, since he’d done that with several of the bands he’d produced for in the past. Instead, aside from some slight changes to notes in the chorus, almost the only thing done to it was getting the pieces broken out and then properly balanced and mixed. Although I was biased, I really liked Country Roads and thought it was our best song so far, but I’d also only ever heard it recorded on someone’s phone or just as we played it. Although we tried to adjust some of the sound when we played on stage, we weren’t really set up to do much, so the volumes of everyone were more or less at the same level, meaning some of the more subtle stuff could be hard to pick out, and there were times when the drums or guitar would drown out Marco on his keyboards.

What Rowan and Todd did was pull back some of the instruments making everything play well off each other, instead of competing to see which could be heard over the others.

“It sounds great,” I said.

We were all crammed together on the couch, with Seth sitting on one arm since there wasn’t enough room for the six of us. Everyone chimed in with their agreement and I could see an amazed expression on everyone’s face that matched my own.

“I agree,” Rowan said. “Of the stuff of yours I’ve heard, this has been my favorite, which is why I wanted to do it first. I like what you guys did in practice since the last time I heard you play it a few weeks ago, especially how you toned down some of the country elements and made it closer to modern pop. What we need to do now is make sure that everything else on the record follows the same pattern. It’s okay to have country pop, rock pop, and straight pop on a record, but you want to keep enough of the pop in each one that it feels cohesive. I know I heard one other song you guys played when the scout came out to see you that was a lot more rock than pop, and that’s the kind of thing we want to avoid.”

“So once we lock in on a genre, we need to stick to it?” Seth asked.

“No. You can jump genres as much as you want, as long as the records themselves are internally consistent. I would recommend that you don’t constantly jump, because you’re going to confuse and maybe lose some of your audience, but you can go pretty far before that happens. Look at Faith Brown. Her first two records were straight country, the second one even charting really high on the country charts, while her next three were all very pop, getting her on billboard’s top one-hundred pop records for one of the songs. I haven’t seen the entire record yet, but tracks I’ve heard from the record she’s working on now really go back to her country roots. The key thing is that, even though she jumps back and forth between genres, each record itself is internally cohesive. That’s the goal you’re going for.”

“We’re going to have to do a lot of work on a couple of songs then,” Lyla said. “Charlie’s stuff all has that pop sound but I know Seth’s song is really just straight rock, closer to the stuff out of the eighties than post alternative.”

“I don’t know, I think a few of mine have too much edge to really be pop,” I said.

I don’t know why I’d gotten defensive, but I didn’t like being pigeonholed. When I thought of my songs, I thought of them as being closer to my classic rock roots than I did as pop. Yes, some of the songs I’d written were purposely designed to be pop, because those got better reception when we played at the Blue Ridge and because everyone was always saying we’d have better luck if we stuck to that genre instead of trying to make ourselves into either a country or a classic rock focused band.

“We’ll have to hear them to be sure, and it’s okay to have some edge in a song. While I do think we want to keep this album thematically consistent, there isn’t a rule that says the songs should all sound the same either. You can move through the different flavors of a genre and still be consistent.”

“My concern is how much time this is going to take,” Hanna said. “Like you said, this song was already pretty close to what it needed to be when you all started this morning, and it still took the whole day. If you’re going to have to make major changes to some of the songs to get them to fit the rest of the album, is it even possible to do that in the time we have left?”

“It is,” Rowan said. “You saw how much time we spent on the language of recording. Today was mostly about the learning curve, so you could get what we’re pushing for when I made a suggestion, but still do it your way. The worst thing a producer can do is be specific in directions, because if the musicians change to exactly what the producer is asking for, it becomes the producer’s song and not the musicians’. You lose the band’s voice in the song, which is going to be different from how it would sound if I played it. So when I say we need to back off on the drums or slow down a section or tighten up the chorus, we have to find a way to do that in the band’s style, and not just make specific changes. It’s also why I’m never specific when talking about rhythm or the sound of a section, but instead give a sort of non-specific sing-through, so they can hear what I’m going for, but still have to translate that into actually playing it, which will make it their style again. A lot of what we did today was learning to communicate and riff from suggested changes. You’ll find tomorrow we’ll go a lot faster.”

“I hope so,” Hanna said, sounding uncertain.

I don’t think she was being pessimistic. She enjoyed helping with the band, but she wasn’t a musician, so I don’t think she got what Rowan was saying. I got it though, and it made sense.

Honestly, I was kind of excited to see how things went when we started working on songs that needed more changes.