Rehearsal vs Reality

Greetings from a very sunny Taipei where I’m on tour with a special version of Steve Smith’s Vital Information playing quartet for a week with Jon Irabagon.

I’m sitting in the hotel listening to the roughs from the live recording last week in LA. Straight off the board, no mixing at all, and I’m way more optimistic about what the finished product might sound like than I was the day before the sessions.

This (unmixed/mastered) version of “Como” will most likely be the take we use on the album.

There’s such a stark difference between a rehearsal and a show and, no matter how many years I notch up doing this over and over again, I seem to always forget that a little in the moment.

When you write songs and have a vision for how they should be played and how they should sound when they go to tape, it’s one of the hardest things to let go of that ideal and allow the music to run its course.

I write specifically for the musicians that are going to play the music, and despite knowing Nir and Peter both for two decades or more, there is always an element of the unknown when you present the music and first hear their interpretations of it.

We rehearsed at Peter’s studio for a couple of hours the day before the show, and my anxiety levels were pretty peaked with the pressure of not having any time or alternative options should any of the music not work out the way I pictured it. The 9 tunes I presented to the guys were going to be the show, and subsequently the album, no matter what.

We got through all the music with relative ease, but the uncertainty of the delta between us essentially playing at a whisper in Pete’s studio and the reality of a venue, a live audience, and the pressure of the red light being on while we played, all made for quite the build-up to arriving at Sam First on Saturday and setting up for the show.

This is a little clip from soundcheck, working on the ending to the closer of the show “

Feeling and hearing the music in the room for the first time was such a relief. It reaffirmed everything I thought I knew about the process, about the guys I was working with, and brought back a hint of confidence going into the night.

There are many more layers to this story, a lot more video footage, and of course the final decisions on which takes from which set to use on the album to come.

I’ll keep you updated as best I can on a release date for the album, and work on some more clips to share as and when I get them.

More soon,

Janek

P.S. I made a couple of little additions to the gear store before I left on tour…