Practice 2 and 3 recording notes...
Fight For Your Right - Sounds kind of empty.... needs more voices... John on for sure? who else? we need to decide right now so that they can have ample prep time by next practice, Ryan I trust you with making the call on if we want anybody else to participate and sing.. and if so, I trust you with whoever you want to sing with you.... needs a more perfected Joel solo...
Hit Me With Your Best Shot - need to practice with Dana... need high harms...need a perfect Joel solo.... it's important that Dana makes the next practice...
Talk Dirty To Me - Ryan's got good vocals... J's got good high harms on verse....J said he might need help on harms during choruses....don't forget that Fight For Your Right and Talk Dirty Joel and Ryan are tuned down.... Joel seems to have this solo well done...
Sugar We're Going Down - not the greatest recording... need better levels... Ryan has to master the beginning intro on guitar.... vocals sound pretty good... need to master all harms and bridge harms... a good start... but we need to stay on top of it...
What I Like About You - good vocals and guitar.... need to master all harms.... J on low... Eric on high...keytar is freaking awesome... need more voices on heys!...
In Bloom - Joel had tough time with this beginning....good vocals... better recording levels... was J flat on harms? or was that right? not sure... need a more focused Joel solo... J harms sounded more accurate later in song.... Ryan needs to remember how far to take the ending...
Wherever You Will Go - nice guitar picking recording levels... vocals need to be slightly higher on Joel...Ryan needs to perfect complimentary melody in beginning... Eric needs to work on harms locations earlier in song.... work on pitch for go's at end...
Meant to Live - need to work on beginning guitar parts... recording levels were a little lower again, not as crisp, don't know why.... nice Ryan vocals...Eric needs to find where to fit in on harmonies... Eric needs to figure out bass part on bridge....
Barracuda - everyone needs to just practice this song every day for two weeks... timing is so important... this is a very difficult song... it needs to be treated as such...
Take Me Out - slow down part needs to be a little more pronounced for my taste... need to figure out if harms are present and where... guitar and bass really need to memorize where we are in the song... vocals are good... to really move the crowd... Ryan will need to go all out and have a certain mastery over the vocals... nice start for Joel on all the guitar licks... more vocals on power 'take me out!'
Relay Anthem - good start.... need more words for verses and choruses... needs to go one more place musically, melodically, lyrically...good start on guitar solo... structure at least for song has to be nailed down by next practice if we're going to have enough time to let it simmer and be decent for kubo... figure out outro...
In general it's a good start toward the kubo gig.... a great first step for NWJ for 2010.... but we're still far away from where we want to be as far as just content for each song.... we'll need a lot of individual practice and some very strong group practices to bring this thing together in time and have the gig be the type of quality that I'm comfortable with.... Everyone please take another good hard look at each song individually... First understand your responsibility in each song so that we can get through it well.... and then ownit and master it so that it/ we can really soar come the gig....For us as a group it means a strong level of memorization for each song... individually, it means practicing each song so that we can do it in our sleep or half drunk if necessary and still do a quality job....
In my opinion these next two weeks are huge in defining how well kubo is going to go... the next practice on 4/24/10 is very important.. we need excellent quality practice recordings coming out of that practice.... pamper party is that day and goes until 7pm... so we need to bear that in mind also....
Ryan and I had a really good talk last night about the band room and our hopes and dreams for it and us and the music.... I'll send out notes on that also one day.....
off to practice barracuda.....
peace out...
e
