AVOIDING STRESS IN THE STUDIO
by Kevin Young
CANADIAN MUSICIAN VOL.XX NO.1 (JANUARY & FEBRUARY 1998) keyboards
Just because something is effortless to play live doesn't necessarily mean that it will translate to record without a fight. The simple fact is that live audiences tend to be far more forgiving and less pessimistically critical than audio tape, tired producers, and you yourself may be while recording. Besides, if you make a mess of something live it may be momentarily embarrassing, but by the time you've noticed it's far too late to do anything about it except glare poisonously at some other musician onstage and hope the people in the front row are gullible enough to believe that it wasn't you. In the studio however, you have the luxury of screwing up as many times as you like and, if you can't seem to find something that works to your satisfaction, the dubious option of electing to preserve those screw ups for all time.
Whether it's a loss of spontaneity and objectivity in the face of sheer repetition, the permanence of your performance, or the simple fact that what you've written is not working, at some point you'll feel as if you're playing with someone else's fingers. Usually someone whose hands are encased in oversized mittens and who doesn't seem to play the piano at all – at least not well enough to carve a place for a keyboard part between layers of guitar that have sprung up overnight on tracks 12 through 22.
Rather then spend a gloomy hour and a half staring stupidly at the console tearing my hair out and trying to decipher what "Alt git 3 (a) Russian pedal acoustic double" means, I try to work through songs and parts ahead of time using exercises that help to keep me relaxed, flexible in my approach, and most importantly possessed of immediate concrete options on which to build a new part if I run into trouble. Each of these techniques stress improvisation in a framework that can be as loose or as focused as needed, and are as useful for warm ups as for composition. They also need not be confined to the exploration of musical concepts alone. I find that adding effects as well as switching between various synth options and analog keyboards in conjunction with taking new approaches to harmony, melody, rhythm, and form tends to compound their effectiveness. The more you throw into the mix, the more varied and numerous the ideas you generate will be.
As a starting point, the first of these techniques requires very little save a complete lack of intent. The idea is to sit down at your instrument of choice, place your hands on the keys randomly, and paying absolutely no attention to what you're doing, play for about ten minutes without pausing. This is not nearly as easy as it sounds. The temptation is to focus on the first reasonable idea you come up with and expand on that. Don't. The whole point of this is to slough off some of your frustration while finding a number of different ways to approach your material and not to fall in love with yourself and the first thing you play all over again, rush back into the studio and get all inflexible and pissed off when someone suggests that you may not quite have it yet. Relax. Now add some limitations to your improv. Start by playing through the basic changes and re-harmonizing them by making substitutions, adding extensions, and using alternate voicings while still maintaining as much of a lack of intent as you can muster. Don't worry too much about how dissonant some of your choices sound or the fact that you may be straying away from what the song calls for. The point of this is to break away from the established tonality, generate new ideas, and explore choices that you may have overlooked when encumbered by the existing form. Now add a simple melody over the top of your new-found changes and as you play weave your brand new melodic idea in and out of one of the previously written ones. While you work melody in one hand, continue to explore alternate harmonies and feel with the other.
This is only one of many ways to apply this exercise; try playing the melody in one hand against contrary motion improv in the other, harmonizing the existing melody with thick chord stacks in both hands, or slipping back and forth between time signatures and drastically altering the feel and tempo of the song. It really doesn't matter what the focus is as long as you're playing by instinct. Keep a small microcassette of mini disc recorder close at hand so that you can easily record any ideas that seem promising while disturbing the flow of your improv as little as possible. As you get closer to something that works for you, record enough of the idea to be able to revisit it accurately later on and then move off in another direction.
Sometimes a more directed approach is necessary to get deep into a song and find new options, particularly if you're dealing with extremely dense instrumentation. Strip the song down again to its basic harmonic elements, i.e. simple triadic harmony or even intervals, and run through the form a couple of times. Now add any relevant extensions and substitutions to account for any diversions that other musicians may be making from the basic chord structure, and run through the form again. Don't hesitate to drop notes that seem to undermine dominant melodies, or add completely new extensions or substitutions to highlight specific moments as you replay the form. It's a good idea to isolate the sections that are giving you the most grief and go after them one at a time, as well as to play along with a version of the song that's as close as possible to what you will be dealing with once you start recording in order to avoid stepping too far outside. While it's possible that you may find what you're looking for fairly swiftly by looping the entire form, sometimes you have to work through it in tiny increments to find just the right combination of voicings to build your part on.
OK, you've re-harmonized, rewritten, and come up with a brilliant part, epic in scope and perfect in subtlety. This is heart, mind, and spleen all rolled into one. Unfortunately, it still doesn't seem to work all that well, it's well past 3 a.m., the deck is playing your latest effort back endlessly like some satanic parrot with the musical equivalent of Tourette's syndrome, and you're sitting in the booth listening to your inspired, but completely inappropriate performance, and looking around desperately for something to put your fist through. At this point you have a head full of ideas, and probably have something workable; you just have to sift through it all and pull out the hooks. First, simplify your part drastically by creating as much space as possible. Start by altering the rhythmic complexity of your part then go after the harmonic, and melodic components, decreasing their density while still maintaining the basic integrity and movement of the part. If you find that you're losing more than you can live with, take a brief trip in the other direction. Over complicate your part and move the pieces that are really important to you into new positions in the form. For instance, say there's a specific melodic passage that had previously been used as a counterpoint to the vocal line, but was just too busy to exist in the same place. Try using that same idea elsewhere as an introduction to a new section or as a transitional phrase.
This is not meant to be a gruelling process. I'm not suggesting that you over work the song until you're completely bored with it, just that you get to know it a little better and increase your repertoire of readily available ideas in general. If you have a few concrete options at your fingertips you can roll tape and take a run at all or part of the song. Take several. Chop them up and then put them back together. Overlap them. Whatever it takes. Often your first instincts are correct and all that's required to bring out the right part is to let your subconscious sort it out in the pressure of the moment.

Kevin Young is a keyboardist for Moist. He just wrapped up Moist's 'Gasoline' tour of Canada and will be writing for their next album in the new year.