Urban Tapestry practice

Allison, Jodi and I got together for an Urban Tapestry practice this weekend at my place. It was an intensive session; we were all dead tired by the end but happy with what we'd accomplished, including putting together some new songs we had never performed together before, including:

Hey, J.K.!: All of us brainstormed on the lyrics for this musical plea to J.K. Rowling, then I wrote the music. Lots of fun to perform.

The Chocolate Song: Song that we're hoping to perform with Summer & Fall. It's short but pretty dense with counterpointstuff. Allison and Jodi recorded their parts this afternoon. I'll be sending Crystal's and Eva's parts to them by e-mail soundfile. Hopefully it all comes together at GAfilk. :-)

Sing With Me: I wrote this song pretty much in one sitting.

Paper Boats: A beautiful song that Eva (of Summer and Fall, who are Interfilk guests at GAfilk) wrote. Eva says she was inspired to write this song after listening to our version (the original was by Ookla The Mok) of "Tiberius Rising," especially the line about paper boats. Eva works as a criminal judge in Germany. You can find out more about both Eva and Crystal at their Web site.

The above songs will all be performed in our concert at GAfilk in Atlanta, GA this January.



How we usually learn a new song:

We go over the basic melody/structure of the song.

Find the right key. Sometimes Allison has to transpose all her guitar chords if a straight capo change isn't enough. She had to do this several times this afternoon. Jodi and I are very grateful to Allison. :-)

Figure out an arrangement -- who sings what, if instrumentals are needed and where.

We record the main melody. If others have already figured out their harmony and counterpoint parts, we record those as well. If not, we all take away the practice recording to work with.

At the next practice, we continue to put the song together, tweaking a harmony here, adjusting a lyric there, tightening timing and harmonies. We record a new version of the song.

As the song becomes more polished, we focus more on ways we can improve our performance and make it more entertaining or satisfying for the audience.

We've worked together for so many years that sometimes we find ourselves suggesting the same tweaks in the same moment, or making adjustments to a melody or lyric during performance at the same time without planning it ahead of time. We now refer to this as a "UT Telepathy Moment."

:-D



(Above: Allison and Jodi in Germany before Filkcontinental last year.)

This is the first time I've used my new recording gear to record a UT practice. I'm proud to report that I managed to unplug everything, bring it upstairs to the living room, reassemble it...AND IT STILL WORKED! I'm finding that tweaking is needed for every song, depending on the type of music and arrangement.

I'm still figuring out how to quickly gauge optimum Gain levels on the Firebox and the pre-amp. Still haven't figured out exactly how the Output levels on the pre-amp fit into all this, but I'm gradually learning through experimentation. Also experimenting with microphone placement with multiple performers.

For just a practice recording, I just piped everything into one track in Garageband to keep file sizes down. At the end of the session, I converted all the songs into MP3 format and burned them onto CDs for Allison and Jodi to take home.



(Above: Summer and Fall (Eva and Crystal) who are flying from Germany to be Interfilk Guests at GAfilk in January!)

As always, I feel incredibly lucky to be a part of a group like Urban Tapestry. I find the creative encouragement inspirational and working together hugely satisfying. Plus we have a lot of fun just hanging out. :-)

Only two months until GAfilk!

Below: Cat Faber, Paul Kwinn and Urban Tapestry in Ohio.


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