SLAVE TO THE METRONOME
(THE BIKE ROCK RECORDING SESSIONS)

I’ve become a willing slave to the metronome.

I can trace the development to my servitude to the fact that the drummers in my hard rock trio Akimbo kept disappearing. Thankfully, they weren’t spontaneously combusting on stage, as they did in rock band mockumentary Spinal Tap, but they were vanishing nonetheless, one after another, on roughly a yearly basis. Inevitably, half the band’s rhythm section would lose interest, start grad school, get married, (why does that mean you have to quit your band?) or suddenly move away, never returning your e-mails and leaving his drum kit in your basement for two years now and counting.

I don’t blame all these guys for leaving the band. I understand that priorities change and opportunities arise. Plus, Akimbo made no money and we never had a good rehearsal space. At one point we were playing twice a week in a hallway.

Well, then the guitar player got married. It was the beginning of the end for Akimbo.

So now I’m a man without a band, and instead of putting up flyers at the music shops, I’m doing what so many musicians in my position have done before me – I’m recording a solo project.

The last thing I want to record, however, is an album of another guy singing along with an acoustic guitar. Though that arrangement can have stunning results, more often than not I’m reminded of a bad night at a coffee house open stage. I’ve always preferred the sound of a band. To my ears, nothing is musically sweeter than drums, bass, guitar, and voice coming together to make rock n’ roll. But without others to play with, I decided to play it all myself.

I found a high quality local studio that’s run by a talented and skilled engineer, and couple of days later I was laying down my first tracks to the loud clicks of a metronome.

Recording all the instruments for a band arrangement has been both exhilarating and humbling at the same time. There’s a thrill and satisfaction in getting your parts right, discovering new possibilities for a song, and creating a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts. But trying to nail a workable take can not only be frustrating and time- consuming, it can also soundly destroy any delusions of virtuosity, and indeed, competence. I found myself thinking, “I wrote this drum beat, why can’t I play it well at 110 beats per minute?” Maybe because I never practiced the part that fast with a click track before. Not only do I realize I’m not nearly as prepared as I thought I’d be, I also realize I can’t blame a band-mate for anything, and its then that I especially miss having a drummer around.

Really, the hardest part of doing it all yourself is, not surprisingly, doing it all yourself. One of the many beauties of being in a band is knowing you can count on the other members to do what you can’t, which in my case is a list of musical skills longer than I care to admit. I know that if former Akimbo drummers Rex or Thom or Heath or Brian or Justin were playing drums, I could have a kick-ass, lightning fast (dead on with the metronome!) fill going into the chorus, but I have to make do with just a cymbal crash. Instead of a guitar solo that would do Randy Rhoads proud, I just play a lead with a few notes that sound right. Could someone else do better? Sure. But isn’t that always the case? A solo project has a way of magnifying your skill level, and you have to just be satisfied with the best you can do right now, and move on.

Yet, this is one of the most fun musical projects I’ve undertaken. There may be an element of vanity involved in recording your music, but it’s like when you’re on vacation, and you hand your digital camera to a stranger to photograph you and your sweetheart. As soon as the picture’s taken, you look at the image on the screen. Of course you know what you and your sweetie look like, but you want to see how the image turned out. Recording your music is different in only one way – your songs are your sweetheart. It’s so exciting to finish a good take, walk into the control room, and hear what you performed just moments before. You know what it sounds like, you just played it. But you have to hear it to see how you “really” sound. And then to play another part on another instrument and put it together with the first! It’s almost magical. I can’t wipe the smile off my face hearing the parts mesh together and to sense a song develop into something new, even to me, the songwriter. I realize that playing these songs at home, strumming the acoustic and singing along resembles a snapshot, and the one-man-band arrangement that comes to life in the studio is like a colorful collage, not only for myself, but for anyone else who cares to listen.

--Attila