To chronicle or not to chronicle?

Alfred Hitchcock films are a staple of my classes. Like Shakespeare to literature or The Beatles to music, his films are immensely popular and very entertaining but can also be appreciated on many levels. All of my 8-10th grade literature classes go through my Strangers on a Train unit, which is useful for having students explore characterization and learn how symbolism and motif function. Before these younger literature students are able to grapple with literary devices such as these in texts they read, it's helpful to learn them through visuals and Hitchcock provides wonderful examples- e.g. when we first see the character onscreen who we will later find out is the bad guy, the blinds from the window throw shadows across him, not only suggesting the darkness and mystery that we associate with shadows but the shadows also produce a bar pattern, which makes us think of jail and criminals. The older students in my classes who are preparing for college will watch Vertigo, viewing it through different critical lenses, feminist and psychological being the most useful in this case. Anyway, from teaching Hitchcock in classes, I've learned a lot about him and the first thing that sprang to mind when Henning proposed the idea of chronicling our recording sessions for the forthcoming SFTD album is a famous quote by Hitchcock, which stated something along the lines of how he disliked the process of filming his movies because all the exciting work had already been done in his head. He'd storyboarded the whole film, knew how he wanted things to look and had completed all the creative work, with all that was left remaining being the drudgery of filming it. There would be no happy surprises, only instances where circumstances or technology issues might prevent him from capturing exactly what he wanted to show up on screen.

So even though it sounds negative, it's similar to how I feel about the process of recording this new album. In the case of the majority of songs on this album, we've been performing them for years and the compositions are complete, the arrangements are in place already- now comes getting it all on tape, in the piecemeal overdub process that can be so time-consuming, laborious and rather go-through-the-motions-like at times. When the unexpected occurs, often it's a negative- some piece of equipment isn't working correctly- a string breaks, the computer freezes, somebody's voice is getting hoarse. Happy accidents might pop up here and there but there's not much opportunity for them if the objective is to capture planned musical arrangements on tape. The bass guitar and bass drum need to be in concert with each other, the lead guitar and keyboard flourishes that Ken and I add should not distract from the vocals and our two parts shouldn't be competing for the same sonic space. Recording each part one at a time also eliminates the live band feel- not necessarily a negative, mind you, when the song is considered paramount and the performances meant to support the showcase of the song, not the musicians. This method is effective in creating solid pop/rock recordings, and while not quite as exciting as writing songs, arranging them or playing them live with a band, it's a careful, painstaking process where you want to be relying on a good plan and deliberately not leaving much up to chance.

There's also the idea that the songs are meant to be listened to on CDs and iPODs as opposed to rushing by in the live context, which alters matters. Again, that's not necessarily bad, just different. There are these little touches and things I toss off when SFTD is playing live to fill in spaces or to amuse myself (and often other guitarists in the audience like Rick Murnane or Jason Bourgeois, and sometimes Henning himself will wheel around from the microphone with his head cocked to the side and a grin on his face) that make sense in that live context but might not make it to the recorded version, or that conflict with Henning's vision for the way these songs should sound in permanent recorded formats. In general, it's time to scale back the tinsel and let the basic structures of the songs shine through rather than the more flashy, spur-of-the-moment bits that might make concert performances of these pieces juicier. Alas, now's the time when I wish I'd really written a fantastic basic part for some of these songs because there's not much opportunity to add to them now and some of the basic things I have come up with, when you look at them under a microscope, turn out to be not quite right for what Henning has imagined for the recorded version of the song, or perhaps too distracting. When we're playing a song live that we've done and/or our audience has heard dozens of times, those little new touches, whether they're planned or improvised, may make that night's performance better, or not, but at least different. In recording, one could waste a lot of time and effort trying to shoehorn them in, or leaving them in because they're new and exciting at the time but perhaps might in the end be inappropriate for the song.

So this is a long, whiny way of saying I suppose we needn't really chronicle the process of recording the album. Just as when you watch the DVD extras of Hitchcock movies, the behind-the-scenes stories usually concentrate on how the movie came to be before the cameras started rolling. It's funny- there's a snapshot of Hitchcock sitting in his director's chair as a scene from Rear Window, I think it is, is being shot and he's not even looking at what's going on (apparently, he never looked through the camera; he left it all up to the cinematographer to follow his storyboards and direction) and the look on his face is one of, if not boredom, at least passivity. I fully expect our album to turn out great (you can't really go wrong with this particular collection of songs) just as Hitchcock saw his films through so that audiences could delight in viewing the masterpieces he saw in his head. Likewise, my Strangers on a Train unit and all the lessons it encompasses rolls along across the tracks like a charm because I've planned it all out, refined it through its first few runs and now it works beautifully- I know where that train is headed and all the stops it should make on its journey. SFTD fans, soon you'll have a recorded document of these songs you know and love in arrangements that bring out the best in them. SFTD bandmates, we have work to do.