About Ears

Ears are very eccentric sensory instruments--moody, easily influenced by the environment, emotional states, physiological factors and just plain fatigue. In my case, add to that a imbalance that affects my right ear and a touch of tinnitus, and making an album can be an even bigger challenge. In the insular environment of a recording studio, objectivity is easily the most prized and often the rarest of commodities.

This past week, I recorded the basic track for a song I wrote eighteen years ago but never "officially" released. It's a song I could play in my sleep and the tracking went well. This song was actually the first song I recorded for the new album back in September, but a remake was in order at a slightly slower tempo. I set up one of the small mics, recorded an acoustic track to a click track, doubled it and started to record the drums. The song calls for a sort of two-step beat using brushes. It's a time-keeping part intended to push the groove along. These repetitive parts are often the most difficult to play, but I was able to nail it in a few takes. Slowing it down was a good call and I was pleased with the result.

I went to bed that night secure in the knowledge that I had what I needed. But when I woke up the next morning, my ears told me something else. I had noticed a slight sag in tempo close to the beginning of the song. The previous night, my ears told me that it wasn't that noticeable and that it added a touch of humanity to the recording--the very aesthetic I've been going for with the whole project. But now my ears had changed their opinion and convinced me that the whole drum track needed replacing.

Kate was listening from her office as I got out the brushes and sat behind the kit once again. After a few passes, I had a take that sounded pretty good to me. But Kate stopped me in the hallway and suggested that the take I had just made didn't have the same feel as the one I had done the night before. She said it had an easygoing groove that was very appealing. The track I had just laid down didn't have that "something" that made it work, and her ears, and thus her whole body, missed it. She simply didn't feel the same way when she heard the new drums.

I had almost completely wiped the pervious night's work, but I dug out my backup drive to hear the difference. She was right. When I revisited the original version, I noticed that it was the guitar tracks that dipped in tempo and that the whole thing could be saved by cutting the first four bars of drums. There was something special there that had to be preserved. Kate's ears had succeeded where mine had failed because i had lost perspective. A good woman can help steer your ship and keep your tunes in the right groove. Had she not spoken up, the song would have been less than it could have been. Kate truly saved the day.

Working on this project alone has been very fruitful and satisfying. But without an outside pair of ears popping in now and then, the whole process can become myopic. Very few people have heard these tracks, but I value the input of those who have stopped in because sometimes their mouths say things my ears couldn't initially hear. My ears are pretty finely tuned despite their shortcomings, but they aren't perfect. Music is, after all, a form of communication. When all is said and done, I want to reach people. No wonder that an extra pair should bring such needed insight into how music is felt and experienced.