Sunday: I played my two church gigs. The AM church gig had no horn section--just me. It also featured a guest vocalist from Nashville. I guess the music department is doing different things (weekly) while the main pastor is not around. The previous week featured a bluegrass band (and therefore, none of us). Anyway, this chick sang about half of her stuff to tracks, so we stood around a lot.
P.S. Singing to tracks in front of people is karaoke, even in church. Totally weird.
The PM gig was fine. Lots of vocalists. I was tossed a solo on a tune on which I had no intention of playing, and I played two really horrible wrong notes before I found the key. It felt like F, but they were in F#. Ouch.
Monday: Big day at work! My day to record for the new Yacht Rock song. We first laid down the trombone parts (with a guest trombonist, though I did write the chart). I think it turned out fine, but it was kind of weird because I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be the one coaching him through it. On top of that, I didn't know the guy at all. We got what we needed out of him, though.
Next up was my stuff. Bass clarinet went by quickly--first complete take. The flute stuff didn't take long. The clarinet stuff was super awkward to play (in C#), and it took me some time--we had to bring things to a halt so I could practice the part, and then we still pieced it together a measure or two at a time. That was pretty embarrassing. Definitely something I should have prepared instead of trying to sight read (up a whole step) on the spot. Way to go, dumb ass.
It sucks that my ears are good enough to hear the intonation problems after the fact, but not good enough to correct the intonation problems as they are occurring. Listening to the flute/clarinet combination in the control room, things sounded wildly out of tune to me. Not good! I stewed over that for the rest of the day. It surprised me that nobody else mentioned it.
Tuesday: Nick and I went back to Athens to add a soprano sax solo to the end of the song. The second take was the keeper. That's more like it!
Before we got into mixing, I asked Barbe to autotune the clarinet. He took a look at the pitch, but it was just about right on. Hmm…maybe it's the flutes? He looked at that, and it was just about right on. I think I was worried for nothing about the pitch. It must've been the timbre of the two together.
In other news…my Sakshama alto mouthpieces arrived in the mail! Sweet!
Here are videos from last Saturday's quartet gig:
davidfreemanmusic.net
