Where Do We Go From Here?

We had devised a songwriting system over the next several months--I'd create the tracks that seemed to best fit the musical style we were going for, and on her own time Nesrin would write fresh lyrics to those tracks, or tailor some previously written words to whatever track worked best. It was a painstaking, clunky process at first, and sometimes nothing worked with anything and the song was trashed until further inspiration struck. We'd since evolved from the five-dollar lapel mic to a twenty dollar stage mic and base floor stand, complete with a homemade wind screen. This amenity came compliments of Dane (or "Six-Nine" as he was affectionately known) a co-worker of mine and fellow musician whose hands were strong enough to twist up a very efficient gooseneck 'clamp' from a wire coat hanger, around which we stretched a single knee-hi nylon stocking to prevent vocal pops. I can't claim any innovative genius from this, as I'd seen it done during my MC days at various bedroom and garage studios in L.A. But it served our purpose as it'd served theirs, and so we set it all up in the bathroom 'booth' and recorded "Where Do We Go From Here", a nice percussive little mid-tempo dance tune with a 70's disco/soul vibe. I strummed out an acoustic rhythm guitar part to the best of my limited abilities and played 'bass' on the lowest strings of a careworn Yamaha electric guitar, bequeathed to me by another former co-worker who left it in my keeping when he hastily relocated, then never came back for it. (If you're out there, Dan, it's still yours, and I've kept it well, but it needs to be restrung).

Nesrin did several vocal takes, even allowed me to stay in the house while she recorded; we were making great strides, and our recent 'upgrades' with recording gear had given us both a certain degree of creative confidence. But my job had only just begun...again. Nesrin's vocals were done, and now it was off to the land of editing tedium for me.

I knew very little about vocal mixing and was several hundred thousand dollars shy of turning our homespun recordings into the polished gems of Ruffhouse or Universal. All I had were my own ears, Fruity Loops' stereo and reverb settings, and a few decades as an avid music consumer to guide me through another ten-hour editing session. That, and a faithful adherence to our independent grassroots beginnings, a philosophy which tends to play tricks on the sonic integrity of any project that's been endlessly looping and repeating and reverberating for hours. When it was finished, I was proud of my work. The vocal arrangement was lovely. I'd chosen all the best ad libs and 'backs' and placed them into the mix just so, with a little chorus effect here and a bit of delay there, just enough. I played it for Nesrin, and she frowned.

"Why do I sound like I'm in a giant box all the time?"
"It's called reverb."
"Well, I think you're using too much or something, 'cause I sound weird. Like the music is louder than me. Like I'm there but not there." Then she conceded. "I guess it's okay." She took off the headphones and sighed, sadly. "I thought that new mic was supposed to make it better. Guess I wasted twenty bucks on that."

"It did make it better, better than that other thing," I insisted. "You wanna sound like a pro, you gotta spend the dough, dude. The mic we used at Missing Link studios in L.A. was a thousand dollar mic. That thing could pic up your friggin heart beating if you stood close enough, shit. We don't have it like that, so we make due. That's the beauty of it. There's perfection in the imperfection."

She rolled her eyes with a huff. "Well, there's just imperfection in our imperfection, and it sounds low budget. Still."

"But in a cool way."

"Not really." She shook her head. "Don't worry about it. It's fine. I know you worked really hard on it, so we'll just use it."

Another crossroads. We'd accumulated all that our wallets would allow, only to have produced an over-reaching under-achievement. And I had such hopes for having avoided an inevitable financial impossibility. All we'd truly accomplished was a solid foundation in what would be called "pre-production" by local recording gurus.

We'd built a ship with intentions to sail the world; it looked like an oceanliner, felt like one, smelled like one, but it seemed the two of us just couldn't row fast enough to get it out of port. It was time to consider a little professional help. But with our incomes as an underpaid line cook and an over-worked server manager, I wasn't sure if we needed studio engineer, or a psychiatrist.

Nesrin Asli "Listen" Ft. Marshall Ruffin on guitar