Little gravel paths wound among the graves. Most were family plots adorned with wide, highly polished tombstones. Upon the older markers were photographs printed upon metal, and then enameled onto the stone. I paused to look at the pictures of stern-faced people, all dressed in somber black. Most of the graves had summertime flowers planted around the marker. I strolled and enjoyed the peace and listened to the birds singing and wondered at the absence of fear and pain.
A familiar figure looked up from where he was raking a gravel path, and his rheumy eyes opened wide. He dropped his tool and came over as fast as his old bones would allow.
“Signor di Alta, buongiorno, buongiorno.” He wiped a dirt-stained hand on filthy trousers and offered it to me.
I shook the weathered hand. Signor Bernasconi had been the warden of the cemetery since before my grandfather had passed on. He received a pittance from the church, and an occasional paltry sum from patrons who wished him to help care for the graves of relatives. He lived in a minuscule cottage that came with the job, two cramped rooms built into the corner of the cemetery wall. I asked Signor Bernasconi how he had been.
He waved the question aside with the stiff-armed gesture of an old man, as though it was silly to ask such a thing. “You’ll be wanting to see your family’s plot. I’ve kept it just as I promised, have no fear.”
I realized he thought I was checking up on him. Until then, our contacts had been restricted to occasional meetings in the village cafe. Whenever I had seen him I had slipped fifty thousand lire, about thirty dollars, into his pocket—certainly more than he was receiving from anyone else in the village. He had never said anything about my never having visited the grave. The money had been taken with a simple nod and an assurance that the graves were all in good order.
I allowed him to grasp my sleeve and lead me toward the cemetery’s lone tree. My great-grandfather had built the cemetery wall on the occasion of his own father’s death—he had had no money to pay for plot or funeral, and the church had decided that a retaining wall was more than sufficient payment. The plot he had chosen was shaded by a tree that had grown massive and gnarled in the passing years, and was surrounded by the music of birds who nested in the crowded branches. I stood at the base of the plot and took time to assure Signor Bernasconi that all was fine and nicely done, marveling all the while at my heartfelt calm.
Once Signor Bernasconi had accepted my gift and shaken my hand again and left me alone, I turned and inspected the graves. The headstone was a light pearl-gray marble, fashioned by my grandfather’s father for his wife’s burial, large enough to include most of the family plot. At its center was a bas-relief of two angels kneeling and praying, with a name and date and picture of a stern-faced woman between them. The photograph of my great-grandmother was faded to smoky shadows, but the one to its right, that of my grandfather, was still very clear. I stood in front of my grandfather’s grave and remembered the feel and the smell of him. I remembered the way he had explained faith to a hurting little boy, then turned and watched a leaf fall from the gently waving tree.
My grandmother was buried to the right of my grandfather, just as she would have wanted. I stood before her grave for a very long while, lost in memories and love, wishing there were some way to tell her of this healing.
Not until I turned away from the grave did it occur to me that perhaps she already knew.
Chapter 14
The two weeks between our return to Dusseldorf and our entry into the studio flew by. We had time to go through each song very carefully, studying our parts, making minor changes, becoming utterly comfortable with the music. Yet there was not enough time to lose the edge. The prospect of recording our music was with us always. We lived, ate, breathed, and spoke only of our songs. One moment, two endless weeks of grueling practice stretched out in front of us. The next, and it was time.
The van was very quiet when we pulled up in front of the studio. Jake cut the motor and leaned back. We sat and listened to the engine ping and waited for Pipo’s car to appear with the rest of the band.
“I’m scared,” Amy declared.
I nodded. It felt very different, going into the studio to make my own album, to put my own music down on tape.
“I’ll tell you what you’re gonna do,” Jake said. His deep voice carried a soothing calm. “You’re gonna walk through that door and show the world what the good Lord has given you.”
“No chance,” Amy said. “My heart’s going to give up halfway across the street.”
“Just go in there and sing as you always do,” Jake said.
“This is your last and final warning,” Amy replied. “You sure you want to lose me so soon?”
“Whole world’s gonna hear the Holy Spirit at work,” Jake said.
“One last gasp, clutch the old ticker, keel over, and that’s all she wrote. Next thing you know I’ll be tuning one of those little harps, trying to find a couple of angels who want to praise His name to a funky beat.”
“Here they come,” Jake said, and opened his door. “Ready?”
“You go ahead,” Amy said. “I want to sit here and enjoy life a little while longer.”
Mario pranced around and opened the van’s sliding door. “Hans has never been in a full-blown studio before. I’m gonna give him a quick tour. You wanna come along?”
Pipo came around to Jake’s door, grinning from ear to ear. He said to Amy, “All those years I thought ecstasy was something that’d have to wait until I saw St. Peter’s face? Forget it. This is a major rush.”
Amy groaned. “Can we have a little respect for the dying?”
“Lady’s got a slight case of the nerves,” Jake explained.
“Aw, hey, that right?” Pipo tried to make a serious face. “Don’t worry, doll. They got machines in there to make a foghorn sound like major talent.”
“This is your way of making me feel better?” Amy looked at Jake. “Do I have time to wring a conga player’s neck?”
“Ain’t worth the trouble,” Jake said.
Mario led me and Hans across the street. There was a cloudless blue sky overhead and the air already tasted of coming heat. The trees lining the street spread their leafy canopies in utter stillness. It was all a gift, laid out especially for us this day. I would carry the memory of this moment with me for the rest of my life.
The building that housed the studio had a facade of heavy gray stone. Mario walked up to the glass-and-metal door and worked the buzzer. A large brass plaque announced that the first two floors were taken up by the studio—Stephan Kramer, proprietor.
The door buzzed. Mario pushed it open with a flourish and bowed low. “Welcome to dreamland.”
He directed us into an enormous outer office where a girl with long hair and bluejeans punched at a computer console. The wall behind her desk was decorated by three framed gold records signed with illegible scrawls. The girl looked up, spotted Mario, yelled for Stephan in a bored voice, returned to her work.
A chubby man in his early thirties appeared at the door of an inner office. His eyes were squinted against the smoke rising from his cigarette. His close-cropped hair was already gray. Pale, puffy features spoke of late nights and little exercise.
He nodded at Mario, asked, “Where’s Jake?”
“Outside. Amy’s having a nervous breakdown.”
“It happens,” he said, hitched at his pants, and headed for the door.
“I wish I could find some way to reach that man’s heart,” Mario said quietly, watching Stephan stride from the room. He shrugged off the somber moment. “C’mon, guys, let me show you around.”
Mario led us down a hall, stopped in the doorway of a glass-fronted room. He waved a hand at four massive tape machines. “Here you got your basic ATR’s, audio tape recorders.”
“Why are there four?” Hans asked, holding back as though afraid to enter the room. The machines rose up as high as my chest, decorated with gauges and flashing lights and crystal diode counters. The pair of la
rger machines ran two-inch tapes through a complex series of spindles that bounced softly as the tape started and stopped.
“The two big ones are Sony 48-track recorders, or multi-tracks, or MTR’s, take your pick,” Mario said to Hans. “You record your different instruments one by one on the MTR; then you play all the instruments back together and mix, getting the balance of sound just right. What you’ve got at the end is a stereo mix, which is what you hear on the record. The stereo mix is put on the master machine, those two smaller ones there. You gotta have two master machines to make safety copies.”
I glanced at Hans’s face, saw the nervous confusion, recalled how scared I had been the first time I worked in a studio. There were so many new impressions, so much strangeness to the scene. Most musicians felt a complete loss of control over their music when entering a studio for the first time. They felt overwhelmed by the massive banks of controls, the sterile isolation of the recording room, and the constant stream of commands coming from the producer. It brought out the worst in some, pushing them back to a level of immobile hostility. In others it brought out the best, spurring them to reach deeper than they ever had before, urging them to play to the utmost of their ability.
A good producer—and there were not many of them—used this alien setting to develop a sense of bonding with the musician. Time was of the essence in a studio; every extra moment spent building the sense of teamwork meant more money down the drain. A good producer became the interpreter; he or she took the dreams and unfinished songs and roughed-out ideas, worked them through this strange new world with its vast array of frightening equipment, and transformed the dreams into reality. The essential element here was trust. The musicians, many of whom had spent years playing together and yearning for the moment when they would cut their album, needed to trust the producer so completely that they would place the single most important element in their lives—their music—into this stranger’s hands, and do so willingly. A good producer used the studio’s strangeness to impress upon a new group how important this trust really was.
Mario opened a thick cloth-covered door, revealing a second door. Through it I could now hear a faintly thumping bass. He swung the lever and pushed, and we were awash in music.
Inside the second door was a small landing with three narrow steps leading down to the main floor. The walls were a beautiful pattern which alternated brick, rosewood paneling, and the same cloth baffling that covered the doors. The floor was carpeted except for a polished wood square where four chairs stood. The ceiling was high and set with recessed lighting.
At the room’s center, spanning its entire width, was a massive control board. It was built like a fifteen-foot-long desk in the same rosewood paneling as the walls. It angled up from a line of levers interspersed with tiny square buttons to row upon row of multicolored knobs. Above them were gauges and madly dancing power-level indicators. The top of the desk was built as a level shelf, and supported two computer monitors frozen in graph-like displays. Spreading out on either side of the computer screens were three pairs of bookshelf speakers.
Two men were seated before the console, enclosed on three sides by their equipment. They listened, adjusted knobs and levers, listened again, talked with their hands. The man nearest me reached toward the MTR remote, the control for the tape machines in the other room. It was a lighted computer-type counter whose lowest numbers spun so fast I could not read them. He punched a button and the music stopped.
He looked at Mario, asked, “You guys ready to start?”
“Almost.” He motioned at us, said, “Like you to meet two members of our band, Gianni and Hans. Guys, this is Jurgen, Stephan’s number-one sound engineer. He’s gonna help André mix our album.”
Jurgen had a droopy Zappa mustache and weather-beaten features. Weary blue eyes crinkled with a hint of a smile. “Hope you won’t give us as much trouble as this one did.”
“Not a chance,” Mario said, winking at me. “We’ve got a Power on our side.”
“Right.” The two engineers exchanged glances. Jurgen asked, “You mind if we go through this a couple more times?”
“Go ahead. I just want to show them around.”
Jurgen nodded to his assistant, and the music poured out once again. He adjusted the master-volume lever, and the sound diminished to a level where Mario could make himself heard.
Mario pointed to the wide rosewood shelves that extended from the console like a pair of electronic arms. “These are known as your effects racks,” Mario said. “Top machine is the small reverb unit, then a multi-effects unit, a chorus flanger, a digital delay processor, aural exciter, then the graphic and parametric equalizers. Against the back wall, the computer console there, that’s the sequencer. We use an Atari here, with a Cuebase software system by Steinberg.”
The outer door opened to admit a stranger. Jurgen nodded to him, reached to the MTR tape control, and shut off the music. In the silence Hans asked, “What do they all do?”
“Make you sound the best they can,” Mario said. “Right, André?”
“Just your ordinary miracle machine,” the new man agreed, and offered Mario his hand. “How is everybody?”
“Except for a slight case of nerves, we’re raring to go.” Mario turned to us, said, “Guys, this is André Fredricks. He’s going to produce our album.”
André had a strong face, handsome in a careless sort of way. His gray eyes appeared to look for reasons to smile. His voice was quiet, his manner very reserved. He shook our hands, studied us carefully. He carried himself with an air of utter professionalism.
“Hans hasn’t had a chance to spend much time in a studio,” Mario explained.
“None at all,” Hans corrected.
“I was just showing him around.”
André nodded and looked at me. “You’ve had some studio experience, is that right?”
“Never on Christian music, and never in Germany,” I replied.
“Experience is experience,” he said quietly. “Have you ever worked with any groups I might know?”
I named a couple of the better-known Italian groups with whom I had recorded. The light in his eyes focused in tighter.
“I have some of their albums,” he said. “This is very good news.”
Mario laid a proprietary hand on my shoulder. “The Maestro is one of the best guitarists I have ever heard.”
“Is that what everyone calls you? Maestro?”
I felt my face grow red. “Mario labeled me with that when I was a kid. I’ve never been able to shake it.”
“Wait ’til you hear him play,” Mario said, moving my shoulder back and forth. “You’ll see why.”
“I look forward to it,” André said in his quiet way, clearly holding back. “Well, perhaps I should go see if Jake is ready to start.”
He gave the two sound engineers a friendly nod, turned and walked from the room. Mario said to us, “He’s the best there is in Europe, Gianni. I’m really glad Jake got him to come down and work with us.”
“He seems like a real professional,” I agreed, very reassured by the man’s attitude.
“Back to the tour.” Mario pointed to a tangled web of wiring attached to the side of the console. “That’s the patch bay. It connects the different outboard gear to input channels. You want to use the compressor on the guitar, which you’ve got coming in on tracks two and sixteen, right? So you connect the machine to those tracks only, then maybe the aural exciter to track twelve, multi-effects to four and eighteen, and so on.”
I leaned over close to a very scared-looking Hans. “You really don’t need to worry about any of this. Relax and enjoy the show.”
He scanned the room, taking nothing in. “I never thought it would be so confusing.”
“It’s not your job to know how all this stuff works,” I assured him. “Just play the best you can, and leave the rest to the producer.”
“These are the reference systems,” Mario said, indicating the small speakers on the
console. “When you think you’ve got the mix right, you play the song through these little speakers before doing the master tape. It gives you the chance to hear how it’ll sound on somebody’s home system.”
He pointed to two giant speakers imbedded in the front wall, said, “Urei professional monitor system. Best in the world. Nineteen thousand dollars for the pair.”
He grabbed Hans by the arm. “C’mon, guys, time to see where it’s all gonna happen.”
We passed behind the console and along the side wall to a second cloth-covered door. Mario pulled it open to reveal a short hallway and a second door. One wall of the hallway was set with a series of shelves, all filled with more blinking, flashing machines.
“Big Lexicon Reverb Units and Room Simulators,” Mario explained. “Lexicons to a pro.”
He pushed open the second door, stepped through and switched on the lights. “This is it, guys. The recording room. Also known as the sound room, session chamber or live room.”
On the left as we entered were forty or fifty sets of headphones hung neatly on individual racks. Hans pointed and asked shyly, “What are these for?”
“You’ll see,” Mario said, and gave me his number-one grin. “What do you think, Maestro?”
“It’s fine,” I said, and it was. A real professional setup.
The room was large, perhaps twenty meters long and ten wide. There was the same brick, cloth and rosewood pattern to the walls, the same calm effect from recessed lighting. The floor was hardwood and brightly polished. Through a thick window set in the side wall I could see Jurgen and his assistant working at the mixing board. But when Mario closed the connecting door the room was so quiet I could hear the pounding of my heart.
The entire right wall was lined with microphones and stands, along with a number of little circular screens with a very fine mesh. Hans asked Mario what they were.
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