Rock/Blues Recording Session

**Ed Svoboda** · 10-27-2008, 03:33 AM

I've been roped into a Rock/Blues recording session courtesy of my youngest brother. He has a studio and a band and apparently I have a saxophone.

So next weekend I'll be doing a two hour recording session with the Bari and maybe the alto. I'm tempted to just take a tenor but I'd rather think in E flat.

One of my goals has been to challenge myself with playing out more. It's fun to sit in with a group and sight read all night. This will be a different experience in that the recording I've done previously has been on stuff I've created.

**sideC** · 10-27-2008, 03:45 AM

Sounds like fun. Ed, this will definitely make you a star!

Keep us posted, man.

**tjontheroad** · 10-27-2008, 01:31 PM

Bring the tenor. R-n-R bleeds for tenor

Have fun.

**Ed Svoboda** · 10-27-2008, 03:27 PM

Thanks guys.

I should just bring the tenor but I am thinking that the Bari will add a totally different element. Plus I'm playing lots of Bari and I am more locked in with the fingers in e flat.

One thing I am thinking about doing is using some effects like a bit of distortion. I will probably have it done post production though.

**saxphil** · 11-11-2008, 11:18 AM

Hey Ed ... how'd it go?

**SuperAction80** · 11-13-2008, 06:11 AM

Yeah, I'm curious to hear that distortion on the Bari tracks. Sounds like a cool idea.

**Ed Svoboda** · 11-15-2008, 04:34 PM

There were issues . . .

Mostly it revolved around the space and having a scene going on that didn't jive with what I associate with in my own life. I'm having him send me the tracks so I can just work on them in my home studio.

So not much to report yet. I'm still waiting on the tracks.

**sideC** · 11-15-2008, 11:09 PM

<reading between the lines here>

Yeah, sometime it's best to just step off when things start to get crazy.

**SOTSDO** · 11-16-2008, 12:02 AM

What is this "scene" to which you are referring? Something not suitable for family viewing? Inquiring minds want to know...

When I was in heavy rotation in theater pit orchestras in Saint Louis back in the 1970's, I once did a production of Company at the Rep. Equity rules, very high production values, two baritones in the pit orchestra - the whole nine yards. And, for a musical comedy, the show was pretty leading edge for 1972 or so - marjuanna smoking on stage, open talk of affairs and divorce. Little of this affected me, a nerdy bass clarinet player with enough saxophone and clarinet skills to get by. But, once in a while, the trendy young moderns who were in the cast and stodgy old me would interface.

I made it a rule to get there early in order to get supper in (coming from day job, I had to grab a couple of roast beef sandwiches from Sala's cafe on the way out from downtown - the place is long time gone but not forgotten)) and get all of the horns set up (baritone, bassoon, bass clarinet, clarinet) and get it all just so in the pit (offstage to the right, not down in the decked over orchestra pit; this was the age of the huge thrusts in every theater on the planet).

So, there I am, putting it all together while gulping down my supper when one of the girls from the off-stage chorus (the Vocal Minority, in show terms) approaches me and asks if I would like to go to a group sex party.

At that point, I either inhaled a reed or a sizable chunk of roast beef on Italian bread. Regardless of what I did, my response was not very intelligible. In either case, I was nonplussed, to put it mildly. The young lady took what occurred as a negative, and moved on before I was capable of normal speech.

Thereafter, I was very friendly to the young lady (a voice major at then-Webster College), but never got another invite.

**tictactux** · 11-16-2008, 12:22 AM

Originally Posted by SOTSDO

Regardless of what I did, my response was not very intelligible.

Glad to see I'm not alone. Usually a would-be adroit reply materializes only hours later, on the loo, at the stove. Oh well.

Enjoyed your story; you got a fine pen.

**Gandalfe** · 11-16-2008, 01:48 AM

See and here I'm practicing my quick and fancy responses, a canned repertoire just in case I ever get asked those kind of questions. Never happens.

**Ed Svoboda** · 11-16-2008, 02:00 AM

I'll just say it was young guys being young guys. Not my thing. I'm old and married and rarely drink.

**SOTSDO** · 11-16-2008, 05:29 AM

Drinking does tend to make those who drink seem even funnier and cooler, while at the same time it makes those who don't drink seem stupid and dull...to the ones who are drinking.

For the guys and gals who don't drink, it tends to work in the opposite direction. One of the reasons I don't condone drinking on the job (although a few sneak a drink now and then, particularly with an open bar) and don't do it myself ever.

And, for the record, I don't see why that gal asked me to go in the first place. I was dating one of the female 2nd leads in the show at the time and it was common knowledge to the members of the cast. Maybe she (the inviter) was just trying to make me ill at ease. In any event, I wasn't cool enough for that kind of thing, then or now. (Well, maybe not now...)

**pete** · 11-16-2008, 05:31 PM

I used to work for a company whose headquarters is in Brussels. Their American offices tried very hard to be like the Brussels office ... down to serving hard liquor in the cafeteria.

Needless to say, I got a major drop in difficult callers and computer-repair tickets after lunch.

**Ed Svoboda** · 11-17-2008, 02:54 AM

It wasn't drinking that was the issue.

**Merlin** · 11-17-2008, 03:44 AM

Originally Posted by Ed Svoboda

It wasn't drinking that was the issue.

Ok, now I'm curious.

**sideC** · 11-17-2008, 03:09 PM

<reading between the lines here>

Maybe there are times when certain musicians feel, for whatever reason, that they are free to indulge in certain "recreational" activities while they are in the process of making and creating music. I'm sure that the large majority of us here know that this activity is not going to help the musical process, we are lucky if it doesn't ruin it completly. But this backwards thinking seems to persist, the idea that it's ok to alter one's feelings and moods in the name of, or for the use of, musical creativity.

I try to stress to the younger, or more inexperienced, players that this is a gross misconception, an "urban legend." It's the best way to ruin your ability to play on that day, and you're taking risks with your physical and mental health in the long run.

Plus, you're usually talking about indulging in an illegal, criminal activity. You can go to jail for just being in the same room with those miscreants.

**rleitch** · 11-17-2008, 09:55 PM

Most of the guys I play with smoke pot like fiends! I honestly don't know how they do it. It blows (pun intended), but it's definitely part of the territory on our local "scene."
There does, however, seem to be little tolerance around here for harder stuff, which is good; I'm not sure I'd be at all comfortable with that.

Rory

ps. I was going to add, ages ago, that I like doing unfamiliar stuff in unfamilar keys. Keeps me from playing too many notes.

**Ed Svoboda** · 11-18-2008, 01:16 AM

Basically a lot of pot. Nothing was out in the open but you could tell what was going on. I'd like to think that was all that was around but who knows. I stay away from that scene. If I'm going to blow cash I would rather buy a prime steak from my local butcher. Maybe put away an expensive bottle of wine for a future anniversary. Something a bit more worthwhile to me.

**SOTSDO** · 11-18-2008, 08:15 AM

Drugs now seem to be on the downslope side of the usual cycle of such things. They've lost their "isn't this naughty?" cache with most adults (outside of the rural folks and the underclasses), and they just aren't "cool" any longer. Maybe with the jazz crowd you might see a little, but I tend to move outside of those circles.

Not so in my younger days. When I was a young sergeant in RVN, riding atop my new tank just picked up to replace one too badly damaged by a roadside expedient mine (IED in "military new speak") for my crew to repair, I busied myself rummaging through the 40 mm ammunition cans welded in the bustle rack, seeing if anything interesting or valuable had been left behind by the previous owners.

What I found were six sizable plastic bags, all full of cut and dried marijuana plants - enough hemp to keep Woody Herman and the Herd high for a decade if brought back stateside. (Like in rural America, including on my father-in-law's property in IL, marijuana grew wild over there.) While a big "stash" in CONUS terms, over there that much weed was nothing more than an afternoon's effort at collection by the roadside.

Being the square commander of a group of three other squares (none of my guys either smoked or drank - fewer mistakes that way, in my opinion), I split the bags open and dumped the whole pile of it in a river that we crossed on the way back to the greater Pleiku area - no point in making things any worse than they already were.

**willbjammin** · 02-11-2009, 01:39 AM

Originally Posted by Ed Svoboda

Basically a lot of pot. Nothing was out in the open but you could tell what was going on. I'd like to think that was all that was around but who knows. I stay away from that scene. If I'm going to blow cash I would rather buy a prime steak from my local butcher. Maybe put away an expensive bottle of wine for a future anniversary. Something a bit more worthwhile to me.

That reminds me of a recording session I had with a reggae band.

After recording tracks in the soundproof room I was asked into the engineer's room with the members of the band to hear the recording. The place was filled with smoke, the engineer and I were the only ones visible (white).

They asked me to play flute on a track and suddenly the producer was holding a mic in front of my flute in the same hand that was holding a smoldering joint.

I still don't know how I pulled it off.