As this spring semester comes to an end, and I go through the process of helping my graduate students have their charts played by the university big band, and get ready to do their culminating projects [like a thesis], I started reminiscing about the big band chart I did for my master's project when I was in graduate school. I am just now realizing that it's exactly 20 years ago since I recorded this, so it seemed like a good time to post and share it for nostalgia. Also I feel really old...
[read in an old grandma voice] When I was a student, we didn't HAVE autotune, we had to sing it on PITCH. And we didn't HAVE digital editing, we had to punch it in and do it RIGHT, and when we did that, the old version was ERASED! And when I was in school, we couldn't book the recording studio during the day, we had to do it at NIGHT! Only between 10PM and 8AM and we LIKED IT!
Yeah, that's right, we could only book either a 10PM-3AM session or a 3AM-8AM session. I know we were young, but still... let's just say I ended up not using my jazzercise membership that semester because I kept sleeping through class. :-)
I wrote this song when I was in undergrad and performed it as an acoustic pop song at my senior recital, and then during my master's program, I converted it to a big band jazz piece. I wasn't much of a digital music notation user, I still prefer pencil and staff paper. It messes with my process to get a computer involved. So, since I was in Miami, I often took my score pad to the pool and wrote the parts that I was hearing in my head as I laid out. [Which seems pretty ridiculous... I mean have you SEEN how pale I am??]
I remember I'd written out my horn parts and filled in the rhythm section parts, and then I had to book the recording sessions. I booked the rhythm section first. Since these were wee hours recording sessions, there was NO WAY I was going to get 5 sax players, 4 trombone players, and 4 trumpet players to come at the same time and play it down the real way. I was lucky to even find one of each kind of horn I needed. So... I recorded the rhythm section first. Then, as often happens in creative endeavors, I listened to my inner muse and followed my instinct to COMPLETELY ERASE all of the horn parts I'd written. It wasn't "right" yet. So... eraser to paper, I followed my fury and got rid of my "not yet there" horn parts and started completely over. The good part of this is that I do believe I hit my stride on the rewrite and I'm quite happy with what I ended up writing. The one down side was, the rhythm section didn't have any of the rhythmic hits to support the horn lines... because those horn lines didn't yet exist when they recorded their parts. Life is always imperfect...
When it came time to track horns, I got one alto sax player, one tenor sax player, one trumpet player, and one trombone player to come in during separate sessions. Of course I was at the mercy of who was willing to come and record until 3am. The more seasoned players had no interest, and I got to work with the friendly freshmen who were looking for opportunities to record. One by one they played in all of the parts for their instrument. First trumpet part, then second trumpet part, then third trumpet part, then fourth trumpet part. Back then, I didn't play it in with midi on my computer, so I never truly got to hear with my ears what I'd written in my head until the last player recorded the last part. I'm glad it worked out because in this scenario, there was no opportunity for rewrites.
A few years later I submitted this to the 8th Billboard Song Contest, and what do you know I won 3rd place in the jazz category. How about that!? At the time it was exciting and I won a few things like a guitar and membership to taxi.com etc, but it didn't lead to being "discovered" or even getting any kind of work at all. Oh well, it was still fun.
Looking back, if I could fix a couple of things, I'd have done a vocal ad lib on the outro, and I'd have been more verbal with the guy who mixed it to make sure the bass wasn't too loud. I'm glad I have this song as it is, because I did this back when I was still blissfully disregarding what might be marketable. Hence the cheeky lyrics, and the crazy key changes on the outro. This is ME. When I'm left to my own creative whims without anyone else imposing parameters on my work. That hardly happens anymore.
And now for this little gem...
This is in the little midi lab we all had to share at University of Miami. There are so many old school things about this photo, I don't even know where to begin. Ah the 90's...
