Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Tribute: The Recording



Two weeks passed since the day of the last recording session of my Tribute project. All that was planned has been finished, as well as the new ideas that appeared during the process fixed in digits. Some stuff was filtered out, another got sense. The process of creation indeed contains some magical ingredient. We could talk many hours through about it, but for this Journal I am going to limit it to just a few flashbacks.

From the first day of recording (8th of July last year) through to the last one I felt as if I was diving into some adventure. Probably, it is about the responsibility taken when one wants to record a tribute (whoever it is going to be dedicated to) – someone might be judging about the original performer having heard your version.

They say you have to keep putting one foot in front of the other, so I just had to start doing something. This principle worked even when I didn’t want to go out into cold and dark night (very often we set up our meeting time in the studio to take place at 1:00AM) – you just walk out in the street and the road takes you there. So, step by step, we have reached "today".

The first five songs were finished in late Summer 2014, and their destination point was the group Tribute album (on which I shed some light in my previous posts). After everything was done I’d got a feeling which can be described as “I want more!”, so after the real candidates had been selected and necessary test-rehearsal done we started the "second season" of recording. Same studio, same sound engineer, same basic set of instruments, but different approach and direction. I wanted to escape possible repetitions, so some portion of the “new” material passed through metamorphoses. There is a point of view that changing the form of the songs that we are “accustomed to” may affect their “adequate” perception. But as for me, I would prefer to hear from my stereo what is currently playing in my head. I can do nothing about that – this is my perception of those songs.

Many ideas arrived in real time; I even got some answers to my questions on my way to the studio, and some of the solutions lied in denial of my initial ideas. I suppose, the material with justified factor of unpredictability will win in the end.

Of course, the result will highly depend on the successive mix, and this important process is currently at its initial stage. I hope I will be able to share the final list of the songs that will enter my personal Tribute album after two months or so, and to talk about each of them.

And at the end of the year of recording I’ve got a new feeling already, something like: “I want to work on something that is mine!”

Have I acquired a taste for the process of creation? Has it ripened? Have I ripened? Only when I start doing something I will be able to give any answer. But this will be (at last!) something that is mine!