Fun
Overview
A night in the studio with a drum machine, and SG Guitar and Bass thinking of a new song idea.
Session Name
Session saved as 100106 in Protools.
100106 Song Notes
Members Involved
Tom Ray
Mark Whitcomb
Cliff Hammer
Hooked up a drum machine and started out with a dub bass concept
changed up drumbeats on the machine to see if it would give it a new angle.
Titled: [1] - bridge idea 100106 on the audio album page.
layed down a version to tape with just guitar and bass to build off of for later called favorite idea part 100106 on protools its at 11:50 protools file is called 100106
Titled: [2] - fav idea parts 100106 on the audio album page.
mark created a bridge loop called bridge idea 101006 from a guitar run
Titled: [3] - instr at end 100106 on the audio album page.
Mark suggested to Tom singing the part hard blues like clutch or old black sabbath.
mark thought up a chorus part and sang a vocal line that Tom and him chanted together and carried the style over into the verse part.
Titled: [4] - one more vocal 100106 on the audio album page.
Marks original verse vocal idea
Titled: [5] - sassy vocal idea 100106 on the audio album page.
Audio
Album: 100106 Lorenzo's Music Practice (click link for songs listed below)
[1] - bridge idea 100106
[2] - fav idea parts 100106
[3] - instr at end 100106
[4] - one more vocal 100106
[5] - sassy vocal idea 100106
Video
100120 Song Notes
Members Involved
Tom Ray
Mark Whitcomb
on the bridge Mark looped it and said we should do sort of a whiny aggressive vocal idea.
Titled: [1-7] - 100120 ideas vocally on the audio album page.
recorded a vocal idea on a loop in the realm of the song Fame by Bowie and Lennon
Lyrics we were riffing on were "I'm just warming up my voice so I can do some things thats fun" and variations of that.
Mark said we should change voice to hands and all the things we would do with them. Tom said that sounded dirty.
Titled: [8] - 100120 ideas vocally FUN on the audio album page.
created a intro from a breakdown and looped it and sang a harmony
Then added the the vocal part from earlier and sang the harmony with the Hands line instead.
Audio
Album: 100120 Lorenzo's Music Practice (click link for songs listed below)
[1] 100120 ideas vocally
[2] 100120 ideas vocally1
[3] 100120 ideas vocally2
[4] 100120 ideas vocally3
[5] 100120 ideas vocally4
[6] 100120 ideas vocally5
[7] 100120 ideas vocally6
[8] 100120 ideas vocally FUN
Video
recorded - camera and Ustream of track Titled: [3] - 100120 ideas vocally3 on the audio album page.
100120-1-practice-vox-ideas
Tom and Mark mess with a looped part of the song for a vocal transition idea.
100120-2-practice-vox-ideas-fun
Tom and Mark loop the chorus track to try out some vocal ideas.
100519 Practice Notes
working on song structure in back warehouse.
Involved
Tom Ray
Mark Whitcomb
Cliff Hammer
played the song live to figure out what it should do.
Discovered over the course of the writing that we had 4 parts written.
We referred to them as:
A-part
B-part
bridge
B-Prime (named by Mark).
4th part is called B-Prime as its just the first section of the real b part repeating from the idea titled: [8] - 100120 ideas vocally FUN on the audio album page. from the previous 100120 practice session.
Guitar and bass after playing b-prime do a hit and pause like A-part but do bridge
For the a-part vocall we decided to go with the first version of the melody from the netcast shown here at 1:24min into it.
idea- change guitar a and b and continue verse line over it
start with warming up part (now the chorus).
guitar starts playing verse, vocals continue with chorus lyrics and melody.
sing verse go back to "chorus" -warming line
r09_0047 audio take best yet on the audio recorder referenced in audio section of this post below.
Structure from take:
chorus 2x
guit B-prime while still singing chorus vocals
verse guit drops on intro
chorus guit B-Prime/A
verse - guit half time but part b section
verse with full b section
chorus
bridge -sing right away (bridge could go 5 or fester)
chorus
Chorus with just bass and drums and vocals
Song now tentatively called "Warming Up"
Audio
This is a really bad copy of the run through we did, recorded on a digital audio recorder. Using this take just as a reference.
100526 Practice Notes
Working on the song parts we had so far with the rest of the band live in the studio.
Involved
Tom Ray
Mark Whitcomb
Cliff Hammer
Scott Beardsley
Bryan Elliott
Eric Brusewitz
Scott had so strange electric drum that could be used as a kit. It got kinda confusing cuz it kept echoing so he said he had to go and left
Chorus work:
For fun Eric played his keys like Supertramp. Then tried to apply it to the chorus key and it sounded busy. Then Tom said to Eric to do more of a left right thing and that worked.
Horn did what Bryan called classic fill in the blanks to the vocal response.
Tried to hook a wah pedal up to the Wurlitzer but that didn't sound too good.
Told mark to play it like he meant it. He was playing mellow and it was making the song sound different
Eric needs to lock his groove in like the bubble.
Verse work:
Keys were doing the same rhythm thing as the chorus part and we thought it got too busy so we told Eric to spread it out more rather than as a rhythm.
Bryan and Mark worked on him learning the guitar line to play with and Bryan added his own spin to it that turned pretty damn cool Bryan needs to remember to play sticato.
On certain parts of the verse when Bryan and Mark quickened up the part Eric would follow up by doubling though.
Bridge:
Everyone played the part in unison
out of the bridge go to the chorus as normal but it will be a key change to C
then the chorus after that which will just have drums bass and vocal will be in the normal key.
Audio
This is a compilation of the different parts we recorded through out the night arranged in the order the song should go.
100602 Practice Notes
Recording guitar and bass over the structure file we cut last time.
Involved
Tom Ray
Mark Whitcomb
Cliff Hammer
Updated song structure
The notes we had from the previous post were not correct so we wrote them down listening to the hand held audio take.
Recorded the song with vocals, bass and guitar. Mark used a room mic instead of the mic in front of the amp which gave it a brighter sound.
Tried out different vocal harmonies and ideas over the track we just recorded.
Had a hard time not using the word fun when trying to describe stuff we were tried out :)
Audio
Working track for the EP with scratch vocals, bass and guitar.
100626 Recording Notes
Involved
Tom Ray
Mark Whitcomb
working on new lyrics for the song
decided to let the "fun" response start the song instead of coming in-between
The concept we went for was looking up Fun on the thesaurus and the definition of the different words for it would be our lyrics, reworded by us for the song in a way we like.
lyrics
Verse 1:
Amused, to use, and anything you choose (as). fun
delight, alright, alright
to please, to act, to have
Audio
First verse vocal idea track
100630 Recording notes
Involved
Tom Ray
Mark Whitcomb
Scott Beardsley
Cliff Hammer
Eric Brusewitz
Song has now been titled "Fun"
Had Scott get on the kit and try and come up with a rhythm to replace the drum machine we've been working with.
He laid a funky line and Eric played an equally funky Clav keyboard part with it.
We were going to add this song to the EP but decided it needed more work to get it to where we wanted for release.