Shaping the project - music and collaborations Part 3

I had to go to Marcel’s place once again. I was quite confident we would can both songs pretty quickly and we’d have time to talk a bit and eat hot dogs… I’m an eternal enthusiast, some kind of a dreamer. It didn’t go as planned. The intro was a problem; the transition between the 2 main sections of the song wasn’t right. The whole thing was way too long, lacked certain dynamics.

But we kept at it. The clock was playing tricks on us again. Time is passing and we haven’t even started working on Winds of Mongolia. In fact, my part was done (hey I’m the composer!), my riffs were all complete; as for Marcel, he didn’t really know where he was going. That song was supposed to be an instrumental score, so it had to have something special.

Anyway, the whole morning session was spent on Le fantôme Brisé, again. We really thought we had something. We were tracking in two weeks. It’s a very nostalgic song, but it needed a drive that would take it to a new level, an aerial landscape of spiritual wandering, a feeling of floating above the world all the while feeling as heavy as boulders. You bet, when I left at 2 pm, hot dogs under my belt, we felt ready, Marcel & I, for that recording session.

Winds of Mongoliawould just have to wait. I told Ben we were ready. Two weeks later (I’d practiced a lot), we were quite confident that we would get those two guitar parts in only a few takes. We knew our respective parts, we had our Mojo on. That’s without counting on music demons thrashing the whole affair…

We were all set in Ben’s underground studio, ready to roll. Ben wanted a live effect on the track, both guitars playing at the same time, and recording, one left, one right. It implied no mistake, only perfection… It’s like doing some sort of musical sequence shot, where we both have to be perfect. This is unforgiving. Our two guitar parts were completely different, so if one or the other missed, we had to restart from the top! 1 take, 2 takes, 3 takes, we’re getting there, Ben also needs time to balance the sound… Marcel keeps the beat with his foot (get your shoes off Marcel!)… We breathe too heavily. I make a small mistake; then it’s Marcels’ turn. Man, we are sinking.

“Take a break, guys… Let’s go breathe some air…” Ben, that’s experience and wisdom… After that, Ben just started recording a track and we played on it for the better part of 2 hours, always the same loop. We did it again and again until we got it right in one shot. We prayed for Ben to tell us at some point, that he had enough material, that he was going to be able to build something by knitting bits and parts together from the mega track we’d just created. My Classical Alvarez was heating up and Marcel’s Larrivée was beginning to grind.

Ben let us leave with the bounce of the track, to decide what we should keep or not. Fuck, we called each other on Sunday, Marcel and I… What was wrong? We didn’t want to keep anything on that track. Long road til heaven !

Fred