And.... I'm laughing at myself

So today’s meeting with producer Dean Baskerville was fantastic. We listened to all the tunes on the demo, listened to some tracks by my “influence” artists (Madeleine Peyroux, Norah Jones, Sarah Bareilles, and dare I say… Colbie Caillat?), and did some dreaming for each song. We talked about possible instrumentation, changing keys in some songs, players we could use, and just an overall feel and approach to the project. I can already tell that working with Dean is going to take my songs to the next level.

For example, he mentioned a studio drummer that has something like 15 different snare drums, so he can create just the right sound for a particular song. What? I thought a snare was a snare.

And, he was gutsy enough to give me some constructive criticism on my singing – which I appreciate probably more than he realizes. He has a great ear, great ideas, and is honestly just a nice person to work with.

So… why am I laughing at myself? Well, as we were listening to Madeliene Peyroux and commenting on her warm, laid-back guitar style, Dean asked me if I played guitar. I said, “Well, yeah, nothing fancy, but the basics.” He asked me to try some guitar playing on the tracks, so he could see what he has to work with. So tonight, I busted out ye old guitar.

I did some playing around on the guitar with my songs, but it sounded pretty campy. I get stuck when any chord with a flat in it comes up. What the heck was I thinking when I told him I could play guitar? I am a retired Young Life song leader, so I’m pretty good at songs like “One Tin Soldier” and “Closer to Fine”. I can even play a decent “More than words”, the rock band Extreme’s hit from 1990 – complete with the little knock-knock on the guitar body.

Even though I wasn’t all that pleased with what I was coming up with, I figured I could try at least one song. I fired up Garage Band on the MacBook and attempted my first guitar track on “Words or not”. I say attempted because I couldn’t make it through the whole song. My fingers hurt too much from the strings and my lack of guitar-playing callouses. Then I listened to it with my piano track muted, with just the partial guitar track and my vocal track playing….

And…. I’m laughing at myself. It sounds like a pretty good singer with a drunk guitar player. The rhythm is all uneven, there are these weird twangs and twongs when I pluck strings too hard, and this AWFUL sliding sound when I move my fingers up and down the fretboard. Plus, you can hear the guitarist laughing at herself in the track as she misses note after note.

So I don’t really think the idea of me playing guitar on the record is going to go anywhere. I know what I’d like to hear from a guitar, I just don’t know how to do it myself. Good thing there are plenty of talented guitarists I can hire, because if it were up to me, this project would be sunk.

Sheesh, laughing at yourself sounding absolutely ridiculous on a guitar is some good fun.