Work In Progress

Events conspired to slow me down a bit since my last post; my studio (which is also a guest bedroom of sorts) was getting overcrowded and I had to put some time in reorganizing it. It's all too easy to obsess over the work and spend a lot of time without making significant progress, so sometimes a break for other priorities is a good thing. I moved one major piece of furniture out of the studio, which opens up more space, and finished painting it (a job I started several months ago but was completing in slow stages; this time I made sure to *finish*).

Also lost a couple of days due to weather; the studio's on the third floor, we've never finished adding all the additional wiring we need, and thus we have to be careful how many air conditioners we run on that floor so as not to overload the circuits. The studio doesn't have one of its own yet, so on really hot days it's too much to deal with.

Oh, and I've been rehearsing for an upcoming gig with my band Lilac Ambush. That takes priority.

That said, I've gotten a few things done over the last couple of days, including re-tracking guitar parts for a song I wrote a couple of weeks back called "A Lesser Mistake." This tune's in 3/4 time and is my attempt at an anti-romantic song, i.e. the kind of song that takes love as a serious topic but also pokes a bit of fun at it. A friend of mine who's heard it said it reminded him of Andy Partridge from XTC; I won't say who *I* thought I was ripping off but Andy Partridge is certainly in the same general arena. So that's a compliment.

I don't know if it's a matter of my own timing, or the playback not being quite in sync with the recording track (I can imagine the hardware and software creating a bit of a lag), but on the guitar track I laid down with strums on the "one" beats, about 90% of the strums were just ahead of the beat, almost always by the same amount. Late last night I decided to go ahead and listen to how it sounded if I shoved them the 1/32 or 1/64th later (I didn't check--it was a very small adjustment and I had to turn off grid-snapping in order to accomplish it--maybe it was 1/128th) that they needed to go. Yes: a discernible difference, they now fall in line with the drums and the vocals just a little better. Strangely, the strums were a little *late* during the first chorus. This was all one take, so I had to split the track and adjust that timing separately.

Part of me thinks "cheating with studio trickery, I need to get my timing down." The other part of me notices, "Hey, I did an entire song in one take, and even if my timing was off, it was mostly CONSISTENTLY off." Would not have been true six months ago. Although I did have to go back and fix one entire bum chord as well--but it was mid-song and I recovered from it. I'm definitely getting better.

For posterity, here are the lyrics to the song in their current incarnation. The verse chords are B, E, F#, A (twice); the choruses are B, G#m, F# (twice), and the break is ... um, B E Db twice, then B E Cm (I think--it's meant to be a strange chord, it supports the line about singing out-of-key, ha ha) and then B E F#.

"A Lesser Mistake"

Love is romantic
And terribly brief
Love is gigantic
Quite beyond belief
You blow it a kiss
It disappears in a puff
You fill it with dreams
And it stomps off in a huff

But I'm looking for
Something slightly less boring
And not quite so huge
I'm on the make
For a lesser mistake
And I want it with you.

What if love could be smaller
Less easily bruised?
What if love was recycled
Reduced but renewed?
No calamity could touch it
It would be much too quick
It could weather the seasons
When I'm kind of a dick

So I'm looking for ...

I'm taking the piss
Out of domestic bliss
'Cause it's really a chore
When your mate comes home late
And wants dinner at eight
And commences to snore
There's no heaven in love
And the angels above
Cannot sing in its key
So abandon all hope
Gimme just enough rope
And come move in with me

I will make you a promise
Only good for today
I'll be something like honest
Yeah, quite true in my way
And if you like me tomorrow
I might promise again
We've such time as we borrow
Beg, steal, iron, or lend

'Cause I'm looking for
Something deep and enduring
One day at a time
I'm on the make
For a lesser mistake
More concrete than sublime
Yeah I'm looking for
Something slightly less boring
And not quite so huge
I'm on the make
For a lesser mistake
And I want it with you.
I want it with you.