I Don’t Know

Maple leaves standing in the snow in late November
Maple leaves standing in the snow in late November

Many Maple trees, the Sugar Maples in particular, turn brilliant colors early and drop their leaves before the oaks but Norway Maples turn yellow and hang on. When they fell en masse a few days ago, with rain/wind/snow punch, they landed upright in the snow. It looked unnatural, like an art installation or something.

Recording live, as we do at the Little Theater, has spoiled me. The song is done as soon as we play it. We put a title on some and post them on the site but when we hit two hundred songs I started looking for ones to retire before putting another up in its place. The song below was recorded last week. Conceived, played, mixed and recorded in as much time as the song is long. Simple.

Multi-track recording is a whole other story. We got together here a few months ago, six sessions, a couple hours each and laid down some improvised tracks. Since then we’ve done piano overdubs. We’ve looped sections created ending through editing. We mashed a few songs together as one. Peggi doubled one of her sax tracks. We’ve replaced whole tracks with new takes. We tore the drums and bass out from under one song and put congas and electric bass on it. We’re adding bass clarinet next week. All this is a lot of work. Many nights are consumed with compressor settings and reverb plug ins. I haven’t even had time to check in here.

Does all of this sound any better than closing our eyes and knocking the songs off live? I don’t know.

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