If You Think KEIT Is Bad, Try Us In Your Car

Recently I received the following email from loyal KEIT groupie Ellen Marshall. It was clearly blog-worthy.

I was driving from DC to the Eastern Shore on Friday night, and had the benefit/joy of having your disc with me….and while I had heard it before, I must confess I listened to it on my laptop, which doesn’t exactly have the best audio quality. But now…hearing it on a nice car stereo I need to let you know you made my day, and thanks for sharing it. I really loved hearing it, and getting a picture in my minds eye of you all making that music. I found myself humming songs over the weekend – a strong indication that they can really stay with you.

Brava to you music makers.

Thanks, Ellen!! YOU made MY day.

2008 Listener's Guide

I gave out the first copy of Slightly Off Beak today, to a friend at work, Shimon. To be honest, he did not seem properly impressed. I'm positive that will change when he listens to it. It's going to rock his world.

If you've been following the blog, you may already know more than you want to about Slightly Off Beak's songs, but here are the producer's notes upon listening to it all the way through for the first time tonight.

By the way, the album is very short. Under 22 minutes for all the songs. You're welcome.

1. Mister Barista
This is my favorite song on the album, because of its energy and its innocent charm. And how many songs do you hear with a bass solo? Not enough, I'm sure. I like the part after the first chorus where it goes "da da da da da da da....BOOM," which sounds like a part in INXS's "Never Tear Us Apart." The recording tends to blur the words, unfortunately, so I include them for you here. They may have changed slightly in the final version:

When I walk from my house in the am (whoa-oh)
The coffeeshop is jazzing my brain stem (whoa-oh)
Cause that is where you work
Oh oh that is where you work
And the caffeine's a nice perk but you're the gem.

My nervousness at seeing you's acute. (Whoa-oh)
Black glasses and tattoos make you so cute. (Whoa-oh)
I can't suppress my sigh
You're just my type of guy
But to you I'm just an order in a suit

CHORUS:
Mister Barista I'm the gal of your dreams
Wake up, smell the coffee, stop playing with steam.
Jump over that counter and into my arms
We'll live happily after once you see my charms.

(Bridge)

I plot and plan my order in advance (whoa-oh)
Will caramel lattes rate a second glance? (Whoa-oh)
Or will you just fill my cup
Barely pausing to look up
I'd drop witty comments but I don't have a chance.

Don't you feel the smoldering behind my mug? (Whoa-oh!)
Are you blind to every eyelash bat, you lug? (Whoa-oh!)
My longing looks, my smiles;
My every feminine wile;
Zip zilch reaction, not one lousy shrug.

CHORUS
Your lack of interest's leaving me bereft (Whoa-oh!)
Could you possibly be socially inept? (Whoa-oh!)
Social anxiety disease
Has never before pleased
But at this point I'll take what hope I get.

If you're afraid of making the first move (Whoa-oh!)
A plan of action I think you'll approve (Whoa-oh!)
Is to have you quickly blink
When I come to buy my drink
And all my unhappiness will be removed.

CHORUS

2. Qualifiers
When we finally finished this song, Jonathan noted that it was not at all how he had originally written it, but he was okay with that. I think he should be proud; it is a very solid finished product. My personal reaction to the song went from despair at the beginning of the month, when I just couldn’t imagine what he wanted it to sound like, to finding it catchy, and stuck not unpleasantly in my head. “The age of deities is over…”

3. Show Me The Way
I cringed when this song came on, having tried to forget it ever happened in the 48 hours since I finalized it. And yet it’s not so bad (or my expectations were just sufficiently low). Jonathan and I each did our duet parts without listening to each other, and you can tell, but I actually like that “not quite lined up” effect. The pace is good, and the bass line is impressive. I know you are wondering about the “voice box.” Yep, that’s me again. You kind of don’t know whether to laugh or cry, right?

4. Iron Kiss
What is so amazing about this song is that it showcases our violin player, Brad, in a couple of different starring roles, neither of which involves the violin. First, he wrote this song, and coaxed it ably from a page of lyrics into the final version. Second, Brad played the drums on this song. Now, the drums have been sitting down in the KEIT studio since July, and plenty of amateurs (I’m a leading offender) have sat down and attacked them with sticks from time to time, but no amateur had made them sound like they’re supposed to sound until Brad came along. He claimed to be as surprised as anyone else. By the way, we determined, with some regret, that KEIT had outgrown the violin this year. There was simply no good spot for it. Luckily Brad has those other talents!

5. Washington, DC
I love Chelsea’s singing on this song. If you have heard the original, by The Magnetic Fields, it is very simple (hence its selection for our repertoire). I think we are both true to the original and give it an injection of garage-band sincerity, including the new irreverent piano ending. Mic was great at playing this ending improvisationally, so it was different in each take, and I cut and pasted from two of those takes to get the final version.

6. Kevin, Shake That Bacon
It would have been ideal to have real drums on this song, as we did when we played it at Kevin’s birthday party (see http://aluminumalbum.blogspot.com/2008/07/kevin-shake-that-bacon.html), but with geographic difficulties, I had to settle for the canned version. Mic took creative liberties with the keyboard drums and at one point toward the end, I am perturbed to discern a repeated noise like a cat coughing up a hairball, but I like that the rest of it has a little percussion funkiness. Again I must congratulate myself on my brilliant software orchestration of the voiceover interlude. Tossing aside the humility that would be appropriate when describing a song I co-wrote, I must say that I think it is a great number and am tempted to re-record and assemble it track by track into a really great finished version, then send it to Kevin Bacon. As the voiceover explains, I have no interest in stalking him; I just think he should know that there is an awesome song about him out there. Wouldn’t you want to know?

7. All Mine
The Portishead original reminds me of a James Bond theme, and I believe that our version captures that mysterious, glamorous darkness. Cerin’s guitar solo is perfect. She was a little like a sorceress with the amp, conjuring up fierce feedback while trying not to lose control and let its power overwhelm her. Go ahead, lay heaps of praise on me for my baking sheet stylings on this song. It comes in at the end, right after the last words, in case you’re not sure what you’re listening for.

8-10. Bonus Tracks
If you’re still listening (bless you), you’ll be delighted to realize the album has three bonus tracks! Two are short, amusing clips of conversation from rehearsals. The other is the off-the-cuff swing version of “Iron Kiss.”

You are encouraged to use this blog to make comments on the album! As usual, making fun of us is not just acceptable, it is mandatory.

It's Done

Slightly Off Beak is complete as of 11:15 last night, the result of about 20 hours of work over the weekend. I feel like I shoved all the songs into my mouth as fast as I could and swallowed them without chewing them properly, and now they are making me queasy.

As Ann noted, it is amazing that I managed to sit there for 20 hours without stabbing a sharp object through my eardrum.

Much to everyone's dismay, I did end up doing the singing part on "Show Me The Way," and it is just as bad as you might have feared. I recorded a lot of takes. I started out focusing on hitting the right notes, which is not a strength of mine, but those takes sounded like I was singing the song at a school recital. So then I tried picturing myself singing it to an arena full of screaming fans, but it was still lacking. Then I tried singing it like I was angry. I was getting closer. Finally, I tried singing it like I was suffering from some grievous wound, like maybe intestinal bleeding. That's where it ended up. I sound a little like Axl Rose, I think. When I put the layers together, I turned up the instruments and turned down my voice, to minimize the pain to listeners.

I'll be posting a Listener's Guide to accompany the album just as soon as I can bring myself to listen to it all the way through.

Meanwhile, now's the time to hit up KEIT members for your copy!

Leaps and Bounds

I finally started redeeming myself as a producer yesterday when I spent about ten hours working on the songs, finalizing six (six!!) of them for the album. I didn't even leave my house all day. It looked pretty cold outside anyway.

 

Thanks to our shortcut, more-fun method this year of doing almost all of the playing together, rather than track-by-track, a lot of the songs required little more than a fadeout at the end and some volume adjustments in the middle.

 

Others were more tricky. There were a lot of takes of "Iron Kiss" and "Washington, DC," none of them perfect all the way through, so I did elaborate cut-and-paste jobs to get the good bits from various takes. The ending was never the same twice in "Iron Kiss," with different combinations of voice and guitar and drums, which made it hard to synchronize the pieces. I ended up adding one drumbeat and one guitar strum to keep the rhythm, again cut from elsewhere, in between two larger chunks, and consequently there is a little roughness there on the final version, but that's as good as it's going to get.

 

I found, to my delighted surprise, a perfect "b-side" version of "Iron Kiss" amongst all the different takes. I had forgotten that we blew off steam that day by playing a slow swingy version of the song. It's going to go on the album at the end, not acknowledged in the list of songs. 

 

"Kevin, Shake That Bacon" was another challenge yesterday. I already knew I'd have to pair different endings and beginnings, but I thought it would be easy because the song has a very clear break in the middle during which there is some talking (by me) over light guitar picking. What I didn't anticipate was that the break turned out all wrong when we recorded it; you couldn't even hear the guitar under the words, so it sounded like the song came to a screeching halt and I just started having a conversation at the end, then we picked up again. It was unacceptable. 

 

So I re-recorded my speaking part and gave it a groovy echo, and then, drawing on my new, book-learned GarageBand skills, I plucked a pre-fabricated guitar fragment out of the software's selections and looped and layered it underneath my voice. Then I took a snippet of the last notes before the break and looped that with a fade, to make the transition less abrupt. THEN I copied Cerin's guitar strum from the end of the talking part in the original recording and added it to the end of the new talking part, giving it some hyped-up sound qualities for drama, and then linked it all up with the song's ending. Those twelve seconds of the song took forever to get just right, but I'm proud of it. It sounds better than we had originally planned. 

 

The only thing that is left is "Show Me The Way." My brilliant plan to get Chelsea's track after work last week fell through when I learned that she had zipped off to Guatemala for two weeks. My overtures to an alternate singer have gone unacknowledged. I can scarcely bring myself to say it, but I am afraid I am going to have to sing this song myself. It is December 7. It just needs to get done.

 

Leaving that aside, however, I think that the rest of the album is pretty impressive. As anticipated, the sound quality is not as good as if we had recorded track-by-track, but the music is so much better than on "The Aluminum Album." Know Eye Inn Teem definitely delivered this year.

Slightly Off Beak

While I have been procrastinating on finalizing the songs this week, I have made great progress on the CD inserts.

Here is your preview of the album cover!

You will see that we settled on the title, "Slightly Off Beak."

Cerin originally made the suggestion of "Slightly Off," which we all liked quite a bit, given the aptness of the description to KEIT's music.

Apparently this was not random enough for Mic, who volunteered "Slightly Beak." "Slightly Beak," what does that mean? I didn't and still don't have a clue. The conversation took place during lunch and quickly turned to our favorite holiday foods, and the next thing you know, someone suggested that our album title feature the word "parsnips." Parsnips, for those who don't regularly dine in the British Isles, are a superior version of carrots.

I wish I could have worked in "parsnips," but the beauty of "Slightly Off Beak" is twofold: just like our band name, it is something of a play on words, making us think of "slightly off beat," which we often are; also, I like the randomness of "beak," straight out of the bizarre depths of Mic's brain.

There were other suggestions, too, that were soundly rejected. Brad offered "Geneva 3-1-C," referring to the portion of the Geneva Conventions that bans "Outrages upon personal dignity; in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment." Apparently convinced that the only way to improve on an album name referencing the Geneva Conventions is a DIFFERENT album name referencing the Geneva Conventions, he also offered "Geneva 3-1-A," referring to the provision banning torture.

This is what happens when you ask Washington policy types to try to think like rock stars. The results aren't pretty.

I still have high hopes of getting the album out the door this weekend. Remember when I feared that RCN was going to cut off my cable (http://aluminumalbum.blogspot.com/2008/11/not-just-rock-band-barack-band.html)? Well I did a little research, and decided it was all a scare tactic. And then the bastards cut off my cable. They're sending me a box to fix it, but it won't arrive till next week. Without my "House" reruns to distract me, I should be able to finish "Slightly Off Beak" in no time.

Future Band Members

This is EXACTLY what KEIT has been missing all this time! A saxophonist and a guy in a wetsuit!

photo from Christian Science Monitor

It's A Wrap

Know Eye Inn Teem wrapped it all up yesterday...almost. I realized sort of belatedly that I still need to get a vocal recording from Chelsea for "Show Me The Way," but since we work in the same office, I'm thinking I will just bring the laptop to the office one day and make her belt it out after hours. Aside from that, we are dis-banded.

Yesterday the first thing we did was to redo "All Mine." Mic had recorded a keyboard track way back in early November, but was nonetheless stymied all over again when he sat down to play it yesterday. There was a lot of fussing. Finally, a lightbulb went on: he was playing the wrong chord. Problem solved.

The recording featured me in one of my finest roles ever for the Teem: I played the cookie sheet. Yes!! The cookie sheet! When you bend the cookie sheet back and forth, it makes a waka-waka-waka sound that sounds very similar to the sound at the end of "All Mine." I was a virtuoso on the cookie sheet yesterday.

After we redid "All Mine," we redid "Qualifiers." We had layered bass and drums over guitar and voice earlier, but that was backwards. You always want to do the drums first, obviously. But since Chris is off battling third-world parasites half the time, we didn't have that option right off the bat. So Cerin had been forced to keep time while she played the guitar, and it seemed like she did a pretty good job. That is, until Chris tried to drum along to the voice/guitar track, and found himself having to speed up and slow down at points. He has a lot of skill and covered up as well as he could, but there were spots where you could hear the incongruity.

"Qualifiers" is Jonathan's song and I told him I would play the layered version for him and we could re-record it if he wasn't happy with it. He listened to about 2 measures and immediately requested a redo, and no one would blame him. But Chris made a request: could we play it TWICE AS FAST? He just thought it would be cool to play it really fast.

Jonathan, being more open-minded than me about changes to his vision (I would have said no way), said "sure," and the band was off, at near Chipmunks speed. Never again will a band member refer to this song as funereal. It's lively now!

We toyed with the idea of redoing Ann's song, "Mister Barista." Our recording had featured Chris playing our crummy yard sale drums, before we had hauled his rowing-machine-esque electronic babies to the studio. But we listened to it, and decided it wasn't bad, and were unmotivated to give the song another go.

Incidentally, Ann is working on a sequel to "Mister Barista." The original is about a cute coffee shop employee. The sequel will be about a cute British lawyer and will be called.....

"Mister Barrister." Ha ha ha ha ha!!!

Anyway, thus ended Know Eye Inn Teem's 2008 odyssey. Now it falls on me to make an album cover, and turn the tracks into songs and load them up on the disks. I think it shouldn't take too long. By the end of next weekend, there is no reason we should not be handing out our album to scores of shrieking fans. They will be shrieking in dismay, of course, not admiration, but bless their hearts, many of them will consent to listen to it, or if not we will force them. Rockstars have our means of persuasion.

The studio looks pretty empty now, without everyone's amps and instruments and sheet music and extension cords strewn all over the place. Now it's just a basement again.

By The Way....

Side note: have you ever gone to the top of my page and clicked on "next blog"? Other people's blogs mostly fall into one of three categories, I have found:

1. Blogs in other languages
2. Blogs by Jesus freaks
3. Blogs about people's offspring

No one else blogs about recording an album in a month in their basement, can you believe that? It's like I'm all alone out there in the blogosphere: an English-speaking childless atheist with a makeshift rock band. You'd think we'd be a dime a dozen, but you'd be wrong.

Time To Face The Music

Loyal KEIT groupies deserve an apology: I have not been delivering as a record producer this year, and I am sorry. It has been a rough month personally, and my response has been to drink too much, eat too much, and watch a lot of "House" reruns. I have neglected the tracks; I have neglected my GarageBand studies; I have neglected the blog. I have utterly failed to rally in the face of adversity.

I will say this: I have kept the band well-fed and -watered. It is possible that this is the only reason they have continued to show up. I make wicked good brownies.

I wish I could predict that the last four days of the month are going to feature a redeeming spurt of activity, but USA Network is running a "House" marathon tomorrow, and there's turkey to be eaten. Let's not hold our breath for my comeback.

I don't want my own appalling shortcomings to diminish what the rest of the Teem has done this month, and I also don't want to give the impression that we have not had fun. On the contrary, the Teem has exhibited a brilliant combination of talent and humor. Rehearsals have been a real bright spot in the sometimes gloomy past few weeks. The band has lifted me up.

Ann works hard. Ann plays hard. When necessary, Ann plays hard in her work clothes.

Other times, Ann plausibly passes for a rock star, although maybe not a drummer.

We are having one final rehearsal on Sunday, the 30th. We have some serious problems to fix with "All Mine" and possibly "Qualifiers." It's not worth going into details. They are problems, people, and we're going to fix them. And then we are going to cathartically rock out during whatever hours or minutes remain before the month runs out. And then we are going to go back to our regularly scheduled, other-eleven-months-of-the-year lives, and at least one of us won't be sorry to say goodbye to November, but she will be really happy that she spent part of it making crappy music with some truly extraordinary people.

Chris finally showed up with his electronic drum set! I think it looks like a Stairmaster.

Fueled By Coors Light

Tonight I was supposed to listen to some of the recordings and, you know, work some Garageband mojo on them, but instead I am watching a House rerun and updating the blog and drinking Coors Light out of a can. It would seem that procrastination is just one of my problems.

I did my part for the band today, though--I picked up 100 blank CDs, and a bottle of Coke Zero for Ann.

On Saturday, things got off to a shaky start. Mic showed up at noon, not realizing rehearsal was scheduled for 3:00. He pondered just lurking around the KEIT studio for three hours and rehearsing until everyone else showed up, or poking around Home Depot, where a homeowner like Mic or me could easily pass three hours like they were mere moments, or doing some grocery shopping at Giant, where a person could find himself still in the checkout line three hours later. That is why we call it Giant Line.

I could see that he was yearning to go home and install a range hood, however, so I let him off the hook, but not before he showed me how to do the drums on his keyboard. Now why do I need to learn keyboard drums, when Know Eye Inn Teem has a drummer this year? Because we still have yet to see Chris show up at a rehearsal, that's why. In his defense, he has been working in Kenya, then India, where he got an antibiotic-resistant eye infection in both eyes and puffed up like the Elephant Man. But still. We need our drummer, that is the bottom line.

So my remaining non-range-hood-installing, non-infected band members that day were Ann, Jonathan, and Cerin. We worked on "Show Me The Way." Mic had already recorded what we thought would be the "bass" track on The Device, but Ann had volunteered to play an actual bass track, so we're scrapping the keyboard version. 

Ann and Cerin were all business. They wanted to run through the song over and over until they perfected it. Ann's hand even cramped up.

Jonathan was preoccupied with our recording. He has brought in a super-duper microphone that really looks like a microphone, which is sort of mouthwatering to someone who enjoys having the trappings of a band, even if we sound like poop. However, the microphone proved too good for us: unless we are recording one voice or one instrument at a time, the sound is just muddy no matter whether we use the super-duper realistic microphone or just the recording device or the built-in iBook mike (which is not bad, surprisingly).

I don't mean to imply our recording device, kindly lent by Ann, is not sexy. It looks like a Taser. It's got street smarts. But I digress.

This year, I don't have the patience to record all our songs track by track. Instead, it's quicker and more fun when we're all making noise together, and frankly it didn't sound all that hot even when we did it painstakingly last year. Of course, it didn't help that we sucked last year. I will know more about whether we suck this year when I eventually put down my Coors Light can and actually get around to listening to our recordings. But again, I digress.

I am afraid Jonathan was deflated when I declared I really didn't care what the recordings sound like. I appreciate that Jonathan wants KEIT to be all that we can be. But we need to maintain our sanity and kick up our heels a bit, too.

We recorded many versions of just bass and guitar, none of which were entirely perfect. However, since we were using foolproof keyboard drumming, the timing will match up if I cut and paste the good sections of the various recordings. The keyboard drumming is not ideal; it's a little blah. It sounds quite real on The Device, and I like the fact that The Device can't get an eye infection, but I don't have the wherewithal to vary the drum sounds in the middle of the song. It was fun to play with the keyboard sounds like thunder or a galloping horse or a plane taking off or the apocalypse, but I refrained from including those in "Show Me The Way," which is going to sound plenty weird already when I include the pseudo-voicebox part.

Then we recorded Jonathan singing back-up vocals. Chelsea chose this song for the band, so she's going to sing the main vocal part. The back-up vocals will harmonize with the chorus. Harmony is a new concept for KEIT this year. How far we have come!

Aside from my really key role turning the drumming on and off with the press of a button each time we played the song, I also made a valuable contribution on Saturday by lip-synching the song during the bass and guitar recording, so Cerin and Ann could read my lips for visual clues as to their place in the song. I am not making this up. 

Tomorrow we are going to finalize Ann's song.

A Fly On The Studio Wall

I am sitting right this moment in the Know Eye Inn Teem studio, commenting on a rehearsal in progress so that you don't miss a thing. It's like you're right here with us, going to town on the egg shakers and washboard. What a treat for us all.

Hold on a moment, I've been called upon to give a count-in. This is illustrative of my key role during rehearsals.

We are working on Jonathan's song, abstractly named "Qualifiers." There has been some confusion over diminished guitar chords, but I think Cerin has made sense of it. It is just me, Jonathan, and Cerin tonight.

Jonathan offers for Cerin to make any changes to his chords that she sees necessary, and Cerin retorts that she is merely the tool to make his vision a reality. He instructs her to speed up, and she adopts a pained expression, and makes a sarcastic remark about not being able to psychically divine what he has in mind. Jonathan acknowledges making a mistake: the song should be in cut time, not whole time. 

Jonathan expresses concern that he will come out looking like a jerk in the blog entry, but of course, that's all up to him.

The chorus is a puzzle. There's a bridge, with all the chords that really drive Cerin crazy, then four bars of E-flat, then some other stuff.

Cerin has been instructed to stop playing for four bars of the song, after a B-flat. Well, it might be seven bars, Jonathan thinks. Yes, he's pretty sure. He will give her eye contact to come back in. No, it will be eight bars. Then verse, verse, chorus again.

Cerin fears she has copied down the wrong diminished chord. Yes, she has. It is "wrongness personified." No, Jonathan argues: it sounds good. "You don't get the bass note on the A chord because it's not in the chord," Cerin tells him. But he likes it when she plays the chord's top four strings.

High F, low F, Jonathan doesn't care: whatever's easier.

They are giving the first verse a whirl. It sounds better than I expected, frankly. I like the guitar part; it's smart. There is a debate over what the strumming should sound like, and some expressed bitterness from Cerin that we are playing in cut time. Whatever that means.

Jonathan has thanked Cerin for putting up with him, but she cautioned that we are only halfway through the song, and she may yet be compelled to kill him, especially when we get to those diminished chords.

I have just made a vastly intelligent contribution to tonight's effort by observing that the faster we play this song, the shorter it will be.

We just had a discussion about why I like those vexing minor chords so much. I was offered a totally incomprehensible explanation based on music theory.

We are all happy on Mic's behalf that there's not a keyboard part on this song, because he learns things by ear rather than by reading music, Cerin said, and according to Cerin, Jonathan has arranged the song eccentrically, with some things that repeat within other repeating things, which would stymie someone trying to learn it quickly by ear.

Jonathan has called for what I feel is a horribly, horribly wrong chord in the chorus. I have stated my firm opposition, verging on loathing, to this A-diminished chord. He and Cerin are trying out other options. They have arrived at one that meets with my approval, an A-minor chord.

Cerin is bitching about Jonathan's changes. Now SHE'S worried she's going to sound like a jerk to all this blog's countless devoted readers.

My second bottle of beer is disturbingly empty. I get another one.

Cerin is dismayed to learn that the song does not end when she thought it does: instead of four verses, it has five, plus two bridges. Cerin: "I had no idea what I was getting myself into." She warns that it is starting to sound "dirge-like." We speed it up again. 

Cerin is now pursing her lips, refusing to play faster at my command, and asserting once again, pointlessly, that she is "not my guitar monkey." You know, if it makes her feel better to think that, I'm cool with it.

Cerin says there are so many repetitions that she forgets where she is in the song. A moment is taken while Jonathan ponders what elements of the song he can cut, and laments the idea of axing a line he likes. But he grits his teeth and crosses out a verse and a chorus, mercifully. Cerin acknowledges, with some trepidation, that now when she loses her place, it will be her own fault.

They sing/play again, and Cerin argues for more cuts. Radical cuts! Jonathan resists. Cerin argues that with extra notes playing in spots where Jonathan isn't singing, the song is actually twice as long as a song with five verses. Jonathan agrees to try the song with some additional, Cerin-imposed cuts. "It's going to be hard for me," he says. Cerin generously offers to give Jonathan two measures back per chorus, but she has still managed to cut a whoppin' 24 measures from the dirge as a whole.

We're going to try to record a guitar track. Jonathan and Cerin are negotiating hand signals to cue her chord changes. Eight of the cut bars are reinserted, to Cerin's and my dismay. I play with the egg shaker. 

Breakthrough: two entire verses and their accompanying choruses are cut. Cerin insists that this cut gives the song a new and elegant symmetry. The play/sing it again; we still haven't recorded a thing. It has ended, and the ending is rousing. I approve. The cut breathed life into the song.

We have just made a solid recording of the guitar and solid recording of  the voice. We are pleased. Jonathan was surprised that his voice has so much vibrato.

He comments that it might sound good if we "run it through a filter" and give it a "low-fi sound." Cerin and I cynically remark that it could not possibly sound more low-fi than it already does, but Jonathan explains it might sound good with a crackly 40s-record-style sound, and I have to agree. Might give that a whirl.

Meanwhile, another rehearsal has drawn to a close. Tomorrow is another KEIT day.

The Teem Swings Into High Gear

Know Eye Inn Teem got its act together this weekend, and made two final or near-final live recordings.

On Saturday, we attacked The Magnetic Fields' "Washington DC." Ann had suggested this song for the KEIT repertoire, which is ironic, because it is our only song that doesn't need a bass guitar, which Ann plays. I am going to make Ann put a bass line in anyway, but absent that, the song is done. It is less than 2 minutes long, with some cheerleaderesque chanting and a simple yet endearing melody. In short, it plays to our strengths, plus we love that it is about Washington.

The song has only a couple manic spurts of marching-band-style drumming. Given that our drummer won't return from far-flung parts of the globe until the 15th, I did the drumming. The fuzziness of the recording and brevity of the drumming is such that you can scarcely tell I can't keep the beat. The biggest challenge was to play quietly enough to avoid overwhelming the other band members. At one point they tried to force me to play the drums from the laundry room, but I would have none of it. How undignified would a drummer have to be to play from the laundry room? Please. I have my pride, even if I don't have rhythm.

We got a fairly good recording pretty early in the rehearsal, and then spent I don't even know how long trying futilely to improve upon it. Mic noticed that as time went by, our cheerleaderesque chanting grew ever less perky. Finally we threw in the towel and decided to stick with our original winner of a recording.

Yesterday we took Brad's song, "Iron Kiss," and cooked it from scratch into a bad-ass anthem to love as a dictatorship. Or something like that. I had thought it was a song about Sarah Palin, but apparently I was wrong. In any case, it is a gritty song and I like it. I thought we were going to have to add drums to it on a later date, but when I was upstairs making dinner for the band, Brad sat down at the drums and somehow morphed into a reasonable facsimile of a drummer (Brad is our violinist). This is what I love about Know Eye Inn Teem: I am continually taken pleasantly by surprise.

So we wrapped up "Iron Kiss" yesterday in one day, and even had enough time to goof around afterward, which is how I ended up on Cerin's guitar....

...and Ann's bass. You are fortunate that this blog does not convey the sounds I was making.

Given my crisis of faith last week, I really needed these two wins this weekend. It feels like such a relief to have two songs now more or less in the bag. Jonathan has this bee in his bonnet about getting a "better quality recording," but it's just not a priority for me. I just want to make sure that by November 30, one way or another, we'll have our seven dubious megahits on a disc and we can get trashed and hit the town like proper rockstars during the holiday season, fighting off groupies and paparazzi, lighting off firecrackers out of the sunroof of our moving limo, and engaging publicly in lewd acts under clumps of mistletoe. Like last year.

Our success last weekend really took Ann by surprise.

Not Just A Rock Band: A Barack Band

The band took Tuesday night off to learn that at long, long last, we were not going to wake up the morning after a presidential election and wish we could just die. No, I am ecstatic that we have entered a new era, one filled with rainbows and puppies and other overwhelmingly happy phenomena. To illustrate the sweetness of victory, I baked blue Democratic cupcakes and frosted them with blue Democratic frosting. They were darned tasty.

You kind of assume that nothing will ever be lackluster again in the rainbow-and-puppydog era, but I have to confess that my faith in my insane band project has been foundering. Was it

 ludicrous to take this on? What have I gotten us all into?

The other members of the band cannot be held responsible for my doubts. A lot of it probably has nothing to do with the album at all. Everyone's life is complicated, right? I got back from a trip to India ten days ago and haven't fully unpacked. The election gave me piles of things to do at work. I have raccoons in my attic. I don't seem to own enough pairs of pants, and I don't seem to have time to shop for pants. I am preoccupied with family issues. RCN is switching to digital programming and I won't get any channels anymore. A guy I had a stupid crush on a decade ago appeared on MSNBC wearing a wedding ring. My Smartrip card spontaneously ceased working. I worry about money. 

So, let's not blame the album for my fretting about the album; there's got to be some transference going on here. But still, there are things that really ARE about the album that are gnawing at me. We're a week in, and we've got almost no tracks laid down to show for it. We spent an evening on Lucky's song, and I don't even know what it sounds like yet. Our drummer has been jetting around from continent to continent and won't be available for a rehearsal until the 15th. I haven't gotten past reading Chapter One in my illuminating book on GarageBand software. The thought of Chinese food, a rehearsal staple, is already starting to make me feel nauseous.

Really, I am happy that Bill has found fame and a successful career and a wife. Oh yeah. He deserves it. 

Cerin, who is my rock in addition to being a rockstar, reminded me that there are some real things to feel good about with respect to KEIT's work so far this month. Annimal's song, for example, is a seriously fun little number. People kept telling me "All Mine" would be hard, but Cerin has it down cold, and Mic called his part "a piece of piss," which translates from Irish to "it's easy" in English. We now know what MIDI is and we're not afraid to use it. We borrowed an amp from loyal KEIT groupie Chris Oropeza and it makes the guitar sound like an actual rock band guitar, which is so fantastic. It's too early to freak out and give up, Cerin said.

And probably I had these sort of doubts last year, early in the month. Probably I could just scroll down in this blog and be reassured that any doubts are normal and will fade away.

Whatever about Bill and his wife and his national television audience. I mean, I have a band, you know. Does Bill have a band? Oh please. I think not.

Tomorrow we'll be playing "Washington DC" with a huge cast, by our standards. There's going to be like five of us. I think we can do a live recording and the only thing we'll be missing is the bass, which we can layer on later.

Anyway, just because he's married doesn't mean he's happily married, not that I wish him anything but perfect wedded bliss, of course.

Show Me The Way...Please

Yesterday the band began work on Peter Frampton's "Show Me The Way."

A couple of things stand out about this song. The first and most obvious is the "talk box," which makes a sound that is like a cross between a voice and a guitar. It is sort of a hokey sound. You also hear it at the beginning of Bon Jovi's "Living On A Prayer," prompting one band member to suggest that we play that song next year.

But the band budget does not accomodate the purchase of a talk box, so what is the KEIT solution? Do you really need to ask? It is the kazoo. I have already memorized two of the three talk box interludes in "Show Me The Way," and the third one will be improvised as only a true kazoo artist can do. A challenge of making the kazoo substitution, though, is that it is hard to play the song all the way through without Mic, our keyboardist, collapsing in laughter and losing his place.

Another thing that stands out about the song is that some of the drumming in the Frampton recording sounds eerily reminiscent of the noise made when I banged on a pan lid for the percussion part of last year's "Sunday Bloody Sunday." It's sort of ironic, given the value we placed on finding an actual drummer this year.

This picture nicely sums up a typical day in the KEIT studio: musicians, an iBook, a tambourine, a ukelele, and a plate of biscuits.

We recorded the bass track, but it gave Mic a lot of problems. We couldn't decide on the right sound, and some of the chords were bedeviling. There was also an issue of a certain set of notes that Mic referred to as "onesies" (in contrast with another set referred to as "bastards") showing up randomly in the song. Oddly, guitarist Cerin knew exactly what Mic meant by onesies and bastards, and steered him straight.

So we got a bass recording, and in a first for KEIT, we did so using MIDI, meaning the sound is recorded not as sound waves but as a digital code, with the keyboard plugged directly into the computer. Assuming I learn how to play with MIDI recordings (I have a book), this will allow us to easily manipulate the notes. Mic's recording may, ahem, need some manipulation, but I'm not complaining. I'm happy we're on our way.

Go!

Know Eye Inn Teem's 2008 album kicked off today with a rehearsal of bassist Ann's yet-to-be-named original song. This song has a catchy tune and tells a bright story about a woman's infatuation with a tattooed coffee shop barista.

There was perhaps some foreshadowing today of what it will mean for me to be the only band member this year without musical talent: for a while there, I was just kind of a lump on the couch, entertained by Cerin and Ann assembling the song in a back-and-forth sort of way. As I experienced with my own songs, Ann had not preconceived what Cerin's guitar part would sound like when she composed it, so she presented the tune and lyrics to Cerin and they found the strokes and chords that worked.

I hauled out one of my miscellaneous drums in hopes of contributing, but, frankly, it sounded horrible when I beat on it, so I abandoned the drum and sang instead. In the eleven months since we finished our last album, I have in no way improved on my ability to sing on key, so KEIT fans will be relieved to learn that I will not be singing on the final version of this song. I was just chipping in to give us a first, rough recording so that when we come back to this song and record it for real, which may be a couple weeks from now, we won't have forgotten what it's supposed to sound like.

Everything came together in a remarkably short period of time. We actually finished rehearsal early.

Our planned playlist this year consists of 4 original songs by band members, plus covers of the following:

• Show Me The Way (Peter Frampton)
  
• Washington, D.C. (The Magnetic Fields)
  
• All Mine (Portishead)

As always at the start of this sort of endeavor, I'm feeling a little nervous about how it will all turn out. I am so psyched to have a drummer this year, but Chris is out of recording range in malaria-endemic locales for much of the month. That may be our biggest obstacle. Damn the mosquitoes. There are still a lot of question marks on the schedule, and I am not coping well with the uncertainty. But we have enough sheer talent to pull us through any rough spots.

Ready, Set

We held auditions tonight and things went swimmingly. The talent on display was real, it was raw, it was impressive.

First up was Chelsea (stage name pending), who sang along with Journey to "Lights." Which made me think, hey, maybe "Lights" would be a fun song for Know Eye Inn Teem to cover, especially on account of that part in the middle where Steve Perry belts out "It's sad, oh, there's been mornings out on the road without you, without your chaaaaaaaaarms, ohhhh woooooah, na na na na na na..." I love that part.

Then we had Jonathan ("Lucky"), who also sings, and did my favorite They Might Be Giants song, "Birdhouse In Your Soul," a cappella. It was marvelous.

Finally, as if sent from heaven, Ann ("Annimal") auditioned for us on the....BASS!! YES! We have a bass player! Who can genuinely play the bass! And it sounded great! Wheeeeeee!

So things are looking POSITIVE. Also many of our band members are stepping up to the plate with songwriting this year, including violinist Brad, bassist Annimal, vocalist Lucky, and talentless me (with due credit to Cerin, without whom my songs would just be awful poems).

The rookies listened to some of 2007's The Aluminum Album and politely refrained from running out the door screaming. Jonathan said we weren't that bad and that some legitimate bands, eg. the Moldy Peaches, have a sound not unlike KEIT's. Ann suggested that if KEIT was feeling insecure about ourselves, we should just listen to a 60s girl band called the Shaggs and we're sure to be heartened.

New Album in the Offing

November and KEIT's next album will soon be upon us. An invitation to join the band will shortly be issued to a select, elite group comprised of everyone I have ever met, musical and non-musical, plus their friends and acquaintances. There are rumblings that a male vocalist is interested in joining the Teem this year, which has us all a-twitter. Having successfully indentured a drummer (Chris), if the male vocalist rumor turns out to be true, then the only truly vital element of a band that we will still be lacking is a bass player. Imagine, KEIT's music could actually sound GOOD this year!

Bass players, where are you? KEIT needs you.

Speaking of our indentured drummer, he is the new owner of a set of electronic drums. Apparently they are sort of rubbery flat things that make startlingly realistic drum noises when you hit them with the sticks. He has a whole darned set. The beauty of them is that they can be transported readily to and from the KEIT studio, and their volume can be adjusted to give us the right level for recording. I am kind of old-fashioned and would be more excited about real drums, but I can't deny the practicality of the fake version.

Kevin, Shake That Bacon!

Know Eye Inn Teem rocked our very first performance before a live audience on Saturday, debuting our original tribute to Kevin Bacon, "Kevin, Shake That Bacon." The occasion was Kevin's 50th birthday party, which I hosted.

The song was not only the highlight of the party, but in fact one of my favorite moments of all of 2008. The audience ate it up. They even sang along to the chorus. Kevin said we put the Bacon Brothers to shame.

This was the also the debut of our brand-new drummer, Chris White. Chris was fantastic. The song with his drumming sounded innumerably many orders of magnitude better than without the drumming. It was like he took the song that Cerin and I wrote, and made it MUSIC. Unbelievably, he had not even heard the song until he showed up that night, but he dove right in and blew everyone away. Chris has signed on for our next album this November, and I am wildly excited about it. Expect big things from KEIT in November!

Marching To The Beat Of A Different Drum

Know Eye Inn Teem violinist Brad Scriber is Band Member Of The Month for June, because he found us some drums. No more banging on pan lids in 2008! Yay!

Brad has a neighbor, Dirk, who finds auctions and estate sales irresistable, and the man had acquired himself a boatload of drums. Wanting to clear some space in his basement, Dirk offered me all of his drums (maybe a dozen?) for a hundred bucks. I was tempted, obviously, but keeping in mind that I have limited means of transportation, and limited storage space and, well, I don't actually play the drums, I settled on 3 pieces, a stool, and some miscellaneous accessories for $50. Pretty sweet.

But what's missing from this picture? Right, a DRUMMER. Which leads to my second piece of news: we MAY have lined up a drummer. My coworker Chris White is a drummer, and was on board for our next album for about 10 golden minutes after I told him about the band, until I stupidly told him about NaNoWriMo (http://www.nanowrimo.org/), which got me my start in music (see my very first blog entry). At that, Chris decided he wanted to write a novel in one month in November, not record an album. Consequently, I am considering recording our second album in October instead, so Chris can participate. However, I got a lukewarm reception to this plan from keyboardist Mic, who thought there might still be good weather in October, and he might want to go out and enjoy it rather than spending hours in the gloomy, 70s-style, fake-wood-paneled KEIT studio, i.e. my basement. I'm pondering this.

Meanwhile, there's more. I have written lyrics to a new song, and I even kind of know how I want it to sound. It is a depressing song about a break-up. It is not autobiographical, because for me to write an autobiographical song about a break-up, I would first need to get someone to go out with me.

I am also working on a tribute number for Kevin Bacon's 50th birthday, which I hope to debut at the party I will throw for Kevin in July. It is called "Kevin, Shake That Bacon."

And finally, KEIT got some great publicity when loyal groupie and talented photographer Kristian Whipple featured a photo of me in his series, "Half-Truths." My half-truth? "I am a rock star," of course! All the photos in the series were displayed at Artomatic (http://www.artomatic.org/). That made me giddy.

Parallel Universes

After months of silence that I suspect many of you found blissful, there has been a flurry of activity in the Know Eye Inn Teem world that I must relate.

First, loyal KEIT groupie Erin from Arizona (Erin! Who are you?! Apologies if we are BFF and I just didn't put two and two together...) sent me this piece from the NYT which I enjoyed thoroughly, and you will too.

March 9, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
And the Band Played Badly
By ALEXANDER
McCALL SMITH
WHY should real musicians — the ones who can actually play their instruments — have all the fun? Some years ago, a group of frustrated people in Scotland decided that the pleasure of playing in an orchestra should not be limited to those who are good enough to do so, but should be available to the rankest of amateurs. So we founded the Really Terrible Orchestra, an inclusive orchestra for those who really want to play, but who cannot do so very well. Or cannot do so at all, in some cases. My own playing set the standard. I play the bassoon, even if not quite the whole bassoon. I have never quite mastered C-sharp, and I am weak on the notes above the high D. In general, I leave these out if they crop up, and I find that the effect is not unpleasant. I am not entirely untutored, of course, having had a course of lessons in the instrument from a music student who looked quietly appalled while I played. Most of the players in the orchestra are rather like this; they have learned their
instruments at some point in their lives, but have not learned them very well. Now such people have their second chance with the Really Terrible Orchestra. The announcement of the orchestra’s founding led to a great wave of applications to join. Our suspicion that there were many people yearning to play in an orchestra but who were too frightened or too ashamed to do anything about it, proved correct. There was no audition, of course, although we had toyed with the idea of a negative audition in which those who were too good would be excluded. This proved to be unnecessary. Nobody like that applied to join. Some of the members were very marginal musicians, indeed. One of the clarinet players, now retired from the orchestra for a period of re-evaluation, stopped at the middle B-flat, before the instrument’s natural break. He could go no higher, which was awkward, as that left him very few notes down below. Another, a cellist, was unfortunately very hard of hearing and was also hazy on the tuning of the strings. As an aide-mémoire, he had very sensibly written the names of the notes in pencil on the bridge. This did not appear to help. At the outset, we employed a professional conductor, which is a must for anybody who is reading this and who is already planning to start a similar orchestra. Find somebody who is tolerant and has a sense of humor. The conductor also has to be sufficiently confident to be associated with something called the Really Terrible Orchestra; after all, it does go on the résumé. Our initial efforts were dire, but we were not discouraged. Once we had mastered a few pieces — if mastered is the word — we staged a public concert. We debated whether to charge for admission, but wisely decided against this. That would be going too far. So should we go to the other extreme and pay people to come? There was some support for this, but we decided against it. Instead, we would give the audience several free glasses of wine before the concert. That, it transpired, helped a great deal. We need not have worried. Our first concert was packed, and not just with friends and relations. People were intrigued by the sheer honesty of the orchestra’s name and came to see who we were. They were
delighted. Emboldened by the rapturous applause, we held more concerts, and our
loyal audience grew. Nowadays, when we give our annual concert at the Edinburgh
Festival Fringe, the hall is full to capacity with hundreds of music-lovers. Standing ovations are two-a-penny. “How these people presume to play in public is quite beyond me,” wrote one critic in The Scotsman newspaper. And another one simply said “dire.” Well, that may be so, but we never claimed to be anything other than what we are. And we know that we are dire; there’s no need to state the obvious. How jejune these critics can be! Even greater heights were scaled. We made a CD and to our astonishment people bought it. An established composer was commissioned to write a piece for us. We performed this and recorded it at a world premiere, conducted by the astonished composer himself. He closed his eyes. Perhaps he heard the music in his head, as it should have been. This would have made it easier for him. There is now no stopping us. We have become no better, but we plow on regardless. This is music as therapy, and many of us feel the better for
trying. We remain really terrible, but what fun it is. It does not matter, in our view, that we sound irretrievably out of tune. It does not matter that on more than one occasion members of the orchestra have actually been discovered to be playing different pieces of music, by different composers, at the same time. I, for one, am not ashamed of those difficulties with C-sharp. We persist. After all, we are the
Really Terrible Orchestra, and we shall go on and on. Amateurs arise — make a
noise.
Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the forthcoming novel “The Miracle at Speedy Motors.”

Second, loyal KEIT groupie Michael Minkus sent me this link: http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/48759-little-happyness and it shocked me to my very core, not only because of the band name, and the fact that The Aluminum Group has a photo of an eye on their album cover JUST LIKE KEIT DOES (see http://aluminumalbum.blogspot.com/2007/12/some-of-urgency-went-out-of-finishing.html), but also because KEIT, too, has a "sophisticated, highly designed, and reserved aesthetic," don't you think? However, unlike The Aluminum Group's album, I guess most people don't argue that "There is not a note or phrase out of place" on The Aluminum Album. But as the review notes, such a characteristic "could be a recipe for sterility." Clearly, this is why some of our notes are out of place.

The final excitement for Know Eye Inn Teem is that loyal KEIT groupie Joaquin Esquivel has written some code that will permit you to listen to our music on the blog. Of course, I am an imbecile and have no idea how to make it work. Do I paste the code into my blog entry? Or....what? I am clueless, but hopefully Joaquin can help me make this happen soon.

We're The Next [Fill In Blank]!

I am grateful to loyal KEIT groupies Dave Cranor and Beth and Andy Byers for offering up the feedback on the album for which I have been longing. According to Dave, "It is perhaps the fowlest peace of music I've ever herd." Well put!

Andy compared us to Cake, which I take as a considerable compliment. Know Eye Inn Teem has also been compared to The Bangles, and The Barenaked Ladies. No one has compared us to U2, The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, or any of the other artists whose songs we covered, but probably that was just too OBVIOUS.

I had an eery experience last weekend. I gave a copy of the album to some friends at a dinner party, and they popped it into their stereo. We listened and poked fun at it for a while, then the conversation veered elsewhere. While the music was still playing, in the background. I was stunned to realize that The Aluminum Album is normal enough to function as background music at a dinner party. That blew me away.

Keep those reviews coming, fans!

The Silence Is Deafening

Over the past couple weeks, I have handed out dozens of copies of The Aluminum Album. It often happens something like this:

Casual Acquaintance Making Small Talk: "Hey Jennie, what ever happened with
that album you were recording?"

Me: "Here it is!" (whipping a CD out of my purse) "Keep it! Look, I want you to know that we know it's terrible....that is its charm. No really, keep it! No, I INSIST."

The absolute worst thing, as far as I'm concerned, would be if someone thought that WE thought that the album was actually good. Because then they would pity us. Ha. We have no illusions about it being good. But I hoped that being up-front about its badness might prompt some humorous jokes about it. I pictured people listening to it, and having a good hearty laugh, and writing some sarcastic reviews on the blog.

Instead, pretty much no one has said anything about it to me at all, to my huge disappointment. The exception is one listener's inquiry as to whether he was correct in believing that the background noise in "You Know I'm No Good" was generated by a bevy of constipated back-up singers (it was not; that's the kazoo). I was grateful that someone finally made a joke about it, but it doesn't really count in terms of "feedback" since it came from Brad, who is in the band.

Sigh.

Maybe the rest of you haven't even listened to it?

Please, make some jokes!

Listener's Guide

The seven songs on the album speak for themselves, of course (and perhaps unfortunately), but I was compelled to make some notes about them that may prove enlightening as you listen. Naturally, all the blog entries over the past month and a half also shed some light. If you are checking out the blog for the first time after seeing the web address on the CD, it will probably make more sense if you read my first blog entry: http://aluminumalbum.blogspot.com/2007/10/auspicious-beginnings.html

Above all else, as you listen, keep in mind that we recorded the album in 30 days (more or less) and while it may not inspire any talk of a 35-city live tour, I do think it features moments of musical brilliance - however fleeting! I should also mention that the KEIT members surprised me over and over again with their creativity, dedication, insight, and courage. I am so grateful to them for making my wacky idea a reality.

1. 6AM
This was our sole original song, of which we are all really enamored. We find the chorus really catchy. We want to hear you humming it as you walk the dog, and singing it in the shower (which is not to say we want to take a shower with you, necessarily). I added the background vocals as an afterthought and became obsessed with the echo sound enabled by the software. Probably it is a bit over the top, but I don't care. Also, I really like the end of the song.

2. Super Freak
Mic did such a great job on this that it was really criminal that I had to ruin it with the kazoo at the end, but we had no good alternatives. Derrick, man, you have to locate that saxophone before November 2008! (oh yes, we'll be doing this again in '08)

3. Sunday Bloody Sunday
This was our only live number; the rest were recorded track by track. We kept accidentally speeding up as we played it, because the percussion wasn't very prominent. In the end I decided I liked it played fast, so I just followed the keyboard/guitar with the percussion. Consequently, it starts at U2 pace and finishes at U2-on-amphetamines pace. The amazing thing about that is that Brad had to play the violin part toward the end a LOT faster than U2 plays it, and you know what? He was amazing. Bono should think about using him. Also, I cannot resist pointing out that I think I sound EXACTLY like Bono when I sing the "wipe the tears from your eyes" part, so listen for that.

4. Brighter Than Sunshine
A big thank you to KEIT Guest Recording Artist Jamie Bellis for stepping in after technical crises threatened to doom this song. We wanted Jamie to be in the band all along because she has an angelic voice, so it was like a homecoming.

5. I Just Called To Say I Love You
It took only 2 KEIT musicians to record this song, isn't that remarkable? Mic did 3 tracks on The Device and Peter did the vocal track. I have always been a 70s and 80s Stevie Wonder fan but was especially struck, as we recorded it, by the complexity of what sounds on the surface like a pretty simple song (which was why I naively chose it). That Stevie has a genious beyond what I understood back in October.

6. Eleanor Rigby
Too bad we didn't have a KEIT Guest Recording Artist on the day we did "Eleanor Rigby," because you got stuck with me instead. I know, I know, I cannot hit the right notes, except the very last line sounds miraculously in tune, somehow. Anyway, try to ignore me and just focus on the rich sound of KEIT's 2-person string quartet.

7. You Know I'm No Good
This was the first song we recorded, back on November 2 when we were oh so green. The product reflects that greenness. You have to start somewhere!

Flying Off The Shelves

50 of the CDs have been burned, with more finished every 5 minutes! The CD case inserts have been printed, cut, and folded! The Aluminum Album is FINALLY ready!

Want a copy? Prepared to be blown away by its wonderful awfulness? Think it would make an excellent Christmas gift for your Great Aunt Bessie? If she's largely deaf, you may be right!

All those interested, just say the word, and I'll have The Aluminum Album in your eager hands in no time.

Freaking Lasers

This evening I started recording the songs onto CDs. This went swell the first few times, but with the fourth disc, I started getting an error message indicating that "the device failed to calibrate the laser power level for this media," whatever that means. It is as if Dr. Evil sent a school of sharks with laser beams on their heads swimming around my iMac.

I have a portable CD, um, thing (what are they called?) that I have plugged into my desktop computer because its built-in CD thing also conked out at one point, so I plugged the portable thing into my iMac and proceeded. It works great, but takes about 5 minutes per disc. So with 96 discs remaining, that translated to 8 hours of recording.

If anyone has bright ideas about speeding this up, I'm all ears. So far I have recorded a whopping 11 discs.

And no, I still don't have the CD inserts printed. It is frustrating to finally have the darned songs all ready to go and yet be mired in the logistics, twelve days into December.

The good news is that none of these issues impairs my ability to go to holiday parties and brag about my album. So I'm doing plenty of that.

All Songs Are Go!

I finished assembling all the remaining songs tonight and exported them to iTunes to be copied onto the 100 CDs I bought at Target this morning. I haven't finalized the song order yet, though. I do know that it will start with "6AM," our strongest song, and end with our weakest, "You Know I'm No Good." There are a total of seven songs.

I had been procrastinating on finalizing "You Know I'm No Good" because when I put all its tracks together last weekend, I was alarmed to find that it simply did not contain enough music. It sounded like it needed more instruments and more musicians. There was one part of the song where no one was playing anything, except the percussion! Desperate times call for desperate measures, so I whipped out the kazoo tonight and did a little filling in. It sounds bad, of course, but not as bad as I had feared. It will have to do. I am counting on the fact that many listeners will be so put off by the mediocrity of the first six songs that they won't even still be listening by song number seven!

Incidentally, I can't help noticing that Amy Winehouse was nominated for six Grammies, yet Know Eye Inn Teem only snagged five nominations. What gives?

Just kidding. Actually we only received four Grammy nominations.

The Aluminum Album Proceeds In Slow Motion

Some of the urgency went out of finishing the album today as we learned that logistical considerations would prevent us from holding an album release party on December 10. I confess that I was relieved as much as disappointed. I was starting to freak out about the party.

The album is close to done, however. Technical unpredictabilities necessitated the re-recording of the vocals on "Brighter Than Sunshine" by KEIT Guest Recording Artist Jamie Bellis, who did a lovely job at 10 PM on Monday. Then Mic's unflagging willingness to take on Stevie Wonder prompted him to volunteer for yet another keyboard track on "I Just Called To Say I Love You" last night. This wasn't even at my request. I told him I was happy with it as it was, but he was very keen, in true Know Eye Inn Teem spirit. We've got keenness going for us.

Absent the need to frantically mix tracks and obtain CDs and CD cases and copy songs to the CDs and produce a CD insert and get color copies and cut them down to 4.75 inches squared and promote a massive party and figure out beer and food and obtain a microphone for a live performance, things have slowed blissfully down. Tonight, on the way home from work, I stopped at Home Depot and spent a good ten minutes just sniffing Christmas trees (they smell so good), then I came home and put on fleece and watched an hour and a half of television. You could look at this as a sign that I am single and pathetic, or you could look at it as a sign that I am relishing my newfound free time.

Here is a sneak peak at the cover of The Aluminum Album:

KEIT Triangulist Julie Flinn

Photos from Wednesday's rehearsal. Julie was working on percussion for "6AM."

Verge of December

The month of album recording will draw to a close in 15 minutes. Loyal KEIT groupie Carina Armenta tagged along to the final rehearsal tonight and supplied champagne and orange juice, so we wrapped up the month in style with mimosas.

While there is much rejoicing about having reached the finish line, we won't actually cross it until I finish assembling all the tracks into final versions of songs, which I figure I can wrap up by the middle of next week, most likely. I need to create an album cover, too. I'm going to base it on the description in the novel. That's right, the novel I wrote.

Then you can listen to The Aluminum Album.

We are also hoping to have an album release party on December 10. It may not happen, but if it does, you will not want to miss the chance to join the screaming throngs of fans assembled to hear Know Eye Inn Teem live in concert, and mingle with the rock stars in person. So mark your calendar.

Miracle Button

Big, BIIIIIIIIGGGGGG sigh of relief: I just figured out how to fix our 11th-hour technical problem. I was messing around with "You Know I'm No Good," and I realized that depending on which cute icon I pick for each track, I can make it sound different. And here I was just choosing the icons based on how pretty they were! I was especially fond of the red guitar.

Anyway, I used the icon button to make KEIT sound really awesome on that song, and then moved on to "Sunday Bloody Sunday," which had a volume problem from the beginning because we recorded it live so a lot of us were aiming sound waves at the microphone simultaneously. I was scrolling through the icons and settled on one called "Live Performance" (actually just a silhouette of a man's head; not pretty at all), and poof! Volume problem solved.

The implications for my two troubled keyboard tracks were immediately evident. I opened up "Brighter Than Sunshine," clicked the miracle button, and held my breath.

And it worked!!!

I am so excited, I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to sleep.

Feeling Faint

Something awful happened tonight when I assumed my usual spot on the couch with the laptop, shoveling leftover turkey, stuffing, and apple pie into my mouth (yes, I'm still reliving Thanksgiving at every meal, and loving it). I pulled up "Brighter Than Sunshine" and began listening to the tracks, and realized that the keyboard track was way, way too quiet. There must have been some sort of wiring issue between the keyboard and the recorder.

I did everything I could think of to fix the problem. I opened up the GarageBand "help" file. I went back to the original .wav file of the track. I made duplicate tracks and played them on top of each other. I experimented with buttons labeled "compressor" and "equalizer." I adjusted volume curves.

Nothing helped; it was still too faint. I tried to rationalize to myself that a song with "brighter" and "sunshine" in the title was just as easy to discard as ones with "happy" in the title, but the thought of tossing aside another song after the band had already done so much work on it was dismaying.

I tried to shrug it off by moving on to "I Just Called To Say I Love You," and horror of horrors, it has the SAME PROBLEM. There are two keyboard tracks: one, recorded on the 15th, is fine; the other, recorded on the 19th, is unusable. Oh it was terrible. Here we are, a mere five days from December, and suddenly two of The Aluminum Album's songs are in jeopardy.

Mic thought he was all done with the album last week. I have, via email, thrown myself at his feet and begged him to re-record those tracks on The Device, which is something of a logistical pain, especially on a tight schedule. If he will do it, I then have to get another violin track and vocal track, even though there was no problem with those tracks, because otherwise the timing won't match up. It pains me. Does Stevie Wonder have to deal with this sort of setback? Does Aqualung? I think not.

Giving Thanks for One More Song in KEIT's Repertoire

My weekend so far is going something like this:

1. Sprawl on couch with laptop, play with GarageBand software.
2. Eat excessive quantities of leftover turkey, stuffing, gravy, apple pie.
3. Repeat. Repeat, repeat, repeat.....

Yesterday Brad and Cerin came over to record "Eleanor Rigby." Earlier in the week, some ominous band email traffic had given me low expectations for this rehearsal. The emails contained negativity along the lines of "that's not gonna happen" and "couldn't find anything" (referring to the proper sheet music) and "have we given up hope?"

I sat my string section down with some beer, pie and whipped cream as soon as they arrived, and braced myself for the bad news. Was "Eleanor Rigby" just another pipe dream, destined to be abandoned by KEIT like "Happy Together" (dearth of horn players) and "Happy, The End" (too damn hard)?

No, KEIT rose to the occasion, as we so frequently do -- leaving intact our record of dismissing only songs with "happy" in their title. As a tragic and depressing song, "Eleanor Rigby" sparked our can-do attitudes. In fact, we sailed through the rehearsal with very few problems.

Cerin dragged her parents to this rehearsal, poor dears! They are in town for Thanksgiving. Both are musicians themselves and delightful people. I couldn't convince them to contribute to the album, though. Maybe next year!

One of the fun things about "Eleanor" was that Cerin and Brad recorded two different tracks each on their cello and violin, respectively. This made it sound like they were a quartet. The final version is quite textured in that respect.

I insisted that Cerin record a vocal track, then I also tried one myself after she left, for kicks. My voice is a little deeper than hers, which gives me more of a McCartneyesque sound, but she has the advantage of being on key far more often than me. At the risk of tooting my own horn (band joke! SO funny!!), I really did pretty well with my vocal track, to the point where I can't decide whose version is better. Or less bad, if you prefer. So I kept them both. I will need someone else to decide which version goes on the album. But make no mistake, I will cry myself to sleep for a week if that person chooses Cerin's vocals over mine. Got that, neutral third party? : )

Cerin Dresses The Part

It turns out that Brad was offended that I described his last rehearsal as unnoteworthy, so I hope I have done justice to yesterday's rehearsal.