The Maestro

by T. Davis Bunn

  “For the singers, you know, to protect the mikes. Some of those babies cost two thousand bucks a pop. You get somebody who sprays out his words, you let him do it on something that won’t matter if it rusts.”

  Near the back of the room stood a series of mobile walls on big rubber rollers. Beyond them was a baby grand piano.

  “Movable walls, for setting up chamber effects,” Mario explained to Hans. “One side is mirrored, the other baffled. Gives us a chance to decide what kind of effect we want. Use them with drums, singers, pianos, hollow-body guitars, percussion, sometimes with horns.”

  The door to the control room opened, and Jake stepped inside. He gave the room a brief glance, said, “We’re gonna use Stephan’s room for a prayer time. You guys ready?”

  * * *

  André ruled the studio like a quiet tyrant. He never lifted his voice above a murmur, never showed ruffled feathers over the great mish-mash we made in setting up. He simply did not notice our mistakes or our nervousness. It helped us immensely. Tempers that might have become frayed gradually eased. Smiles began to reappear. The tension cooled, the excitement became a game.

  Spacing in the live room was crucial; everybody needed to see everyone else and also be able to see the window to the control room. We were positioned in a wide semicircle with Sameh against the back wall, protected on both sides by the movable baffles. Amy stood in the center.

  Microphones sprouted throughout the room like trees in a metal forest. Sameh’s drums used eighteen, Pipo another eight. Amy had five taped together and slung from the same stand; André said he’d use the initial takes to see which one best suited her voice.

  There were no amps. The guitars and keyboards and all the mikes were plugged into a squat box on the floor under the control-room window, covered with jack inputs like an enormous pincushion. Mario took over one plug at a time, calling out the input numbers to André, who noted them down on the long sheet laid across the mixing board.

  When we finished with the setup, André came in. “We’ll need a couple of hours to set the levels for drums and percussion mikes. Then we’ll start on the repertoire you want to use on the album. You all need to become used to hearing your music through the headphones.

  “The time some of you have had in the studio before doesn’t matter so much here. It’s always different when you’re cutting your own album. You’ll feel stiff and self-conscious at first. It’s perfectly normal. We’ll just keep at it until everybody feels comfortable.”

  From the tone of his voice, it sounded like a speech he had given a hundred times before. He went on. “We’ll run through all the songs as often as possible today. The day after tomorrow we do it without horns, keyboard, guitar and vocals, taking down bass, and drums. You’ll still be hearing the others, but they won’t be playing anymore. I know this is standard practice for those with studio experience, but bear with me. I like to lay all these things out at the start. We have to get one microphone user at a time down on tape.

  “Days three and four, then, are bass and drum tracks. We’ll put in a few of the percussion tracks here as well. Day five we start with the other instruments on a song-by-song basis. Has the order of songs been arranged?”

  “Mario’s got the list,” Jake said.

  “Right. Guitar first, then keyboards, then horns, the remaining percussion, vocals, backup vocals, special effects. There is a good chance that we may be bringing you all back up again, and I want to mention that now. Song restructuring is often required once the studio work has begun. A lot of songs are just too long in their pre-recorded state. I’m hoping we can avoid a lot of that, since I understand both your songwriters have studio experience. But it can still happen, and if it does, we need to work through these changes as friends.

  “I may need to suggest chord alterations if I find the song you’ve got is too close in sound to an existing melody. I may feel that a new bridge is required, or something else to jazz up the standard melody you’ve set out. Whatever it is, I need your honest input. But just as important, I need for you to feel as if I am doing this because I want your songs to be as successful as possible.

  “Join me in the mixing room whenever you like. Tell me whatever is on your mind. I need your input. I want to hear how you feel each instrument is supposed to sound. Anything you think is important, I need to hear it. My job is to take these feelings and work them into a form that will be commercially successful.”

  André looked at Jake. “Anything else?”

  “Time pressure,” Jake said.

  “They’ll find that out soon enough,” André said. “Questions?” No one said anything. “Okay, drums and percussion stay up, everybody else move downstairs. I’ll let you know when we’re ready to start with the whole band.”

  Downstairs meant out the side door of the live room, across the courtyard, through a door decorated with a sign saying “Ready Room” and a poster for the movie “Top Gun,” and down a flight of stairs. The basement was enormous and contained a television-video corner, a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf full of films, a pool table, a kitchen, a practice room equipped with a portable mixing board and sequencer, and numerous comfortable sofas and chairs. It was carpeted, quiet, comfortable, and very calming.

  Jake drew me into the little kitchen alcove, said, “Should have done this sooner, but with one thing and another I didn’t pick them up ’til last night.”

  He drew out a sheaf of papers from his jacket, unfolded and flattened them on the counter. “You got two choices. You can take my word for it that this is a fair deal, or you can have a lawyer check it out. Either way’s fine with me.”

  “What are they for?” They looked like my old studio contracts, with the dozen pages all containing places at the bottom for signatures and stamps.

  “Song rights. Fifty-fifty split. I hold the right to give ten percent from each of us to the producer and another ten each to the band if we end up making a lot of changes here. License rights here for the album only. Everything else stays in our hands.” Jake inspected me. “You understand what I’m saying?”

  “I think so.”

  “Maybe it’s better if you go see a lawyer, let him spell it out. Don’t want anybody ever feelin’ like I pulled a fast one.”

  I thought it over, held out my hand, and said, “You got a pen?”

  Jake showed no emotion as he reached in his pocket again. “Gotta sign every page.”

  “I know.” I completed the pages, folded them up and handed the packet back. “Thanks, Jake.”

  “I’ll make copies for you and get the copyrights registered.” He put the papers away. “Sure feels good doin’ business with people who trust each other.”

  I nodded. “It sure does.”

  Two and a half hours later André called us all back upstairs and set us to work as a group. Our first couple of songs sounded absolutely miserable. We were so ragged I found myself wondering whether the whole idea wasn’t some enormous mistake.

  André wasn’t the least bit put off. His calm, almost bored voice came over the headphones after the second song, “Don’t fight it. Expect that for the first couple of hours you’re going to sound like a cat who’s been left out in the rain.”

  “Another hour of this and I’ll be climbing the walls,” Pipo said.

  “I sounded better when I was three years old, singing in the bathtub,” Amy agreed.

  “Try to stop thinking,” André said. “Strange as it may sound, it’s the best thing you can do for your music. You’re all busy trying to figure out how you need to sound on tape. It’s too early for that. Just play the songs and concentrate on your feelings.”

  After ninety minutes of straight playing we took our first break. The mood was a little lighter as we trooped downstairs; we could all hear the sound coming together. The earphones felt less heavy and strange, and I was beginning to grow accustomed to hearing our music over them. Our music. Our album.

  André joined us, leaned against the wall by the kitch
en alcove, and waited for us to settle down with coffee and drinks. “Now comes the second step. You need to try to recapture the feeling you had the first time you played each song. That magic of discovery needs to come back into your music. The listener needs to feel as if he’s there and taking part.”

  Hans wiped his face with a towel. “What happens after that?”

  “The man makes you sound as good as you possibly can,” Jake said, reaching for his own cloth.

  André nodded, added in that calming voice, “If it goes right, you’ll do the finest work you’ve ever done in here. We keep doing each track over and over until we’re sure, all of us, that we’ve gotten the very best you have to give.”

  ****

  Eight very tired and sweaty bodies left the studio that night. Eleven hours in the studio, with a fifteen-minute break every hour and a half, had left us without a dozen words between us.

  I barely had energy left to undress before sprawling into bed and conking out. I awoke several hours later, absolutely famished. Jake heard me rummaging in the kitchen and joined me, wearing his shirt, underwear, and one sock. Between us we demolished a bag of apples, half a kilo of cheese, and almost an entire loaf of bread. Then I went back to bed and slept until Amy waved a cup of coffee under my nose.

  We were back in the studio by ten the next morning. It was rough going at first, with everyone stiff and grumpy and out of sorts. Soon enough, however, hearts started pumping faster, faces began to wear a sheen of sweat, the air started smelling of hard work, bodies started moving, and grins began to appear. The feeling was there. We had passed some invisible hump. No longer were we bored by playing the same song over and over. It wasn’t just another exercise. This was the real thing. We were in the studio, making our first album.

  André felt it, too. When we broke at midafternoon for sandwiches and coffee he told us it was time for phase three.

  “All rules are hereby canceled,” he said. “Nothing is taken for granted anymore. Start from the idea that nothing you’ve played has been exactly right. Question every note. Experiment.”

  It troubled us all at first. There was a return to the awkward fumbling of the day before. It distressed me to watch the others slip changes into the music. Yet slowly, slowly, we began to relax. The music was becoming tighter, and we could all hear it. All of us were stretching, searching, finding the path that suited us best. Hesitantly I began to respond, experimenting with plays that brought greater power to what they were doing.

  By the following afternoon we had succeeded in playing each of the songs another dozen times. There was a looseness in the room now, a sense of deep understanding. André clearly agreed. “Sameh, Jake, and Pipo are the only ones I’ll need to see for the next two days. The rest of you can do whatever you like—stay and listen or go relax. Put your instruments up, come and go as you please. It would be nice, though, if everyone could plan to spend at least a couple of hours in the recording room with me. No special time, no order or anything. Just come in and let me hear what you think of the songs as we work on them. Think of it as a time of sowing seeds.”

  The rest of that afternoon I spent in bed. By early evening I was drawn back to the studio. I missed the atmosphere, the sense of being at the heart of something powerfully creative. I spent the next few hours watching Jake, Pipo, and Sameh alternate in the live room, sweating and pumping and working hard. I talked with the others as they came and went. André remained very quiet, preferring to watch and listen and let us discuss among ourselves. Yet his presence was felt by us all. It remained both a stimulus and a challenge. It called us to search deeper than ever before. It drew us out, stretched our musical talent in ways and directions never before considered.

  I spent the next morning and early afternoon lazing about the apartment, dozing and leafing through magazines and playing brief runs on my guitar. When the phone rang about four-thirty I started guiltily, as though caught doing something improper.

  It was Mario. “André’s ready for you, Maestro.”

  “When?”

  “Right now. We’ve got about three takes left before you’re on. Grab your gear and come on down.”

  I was slightly breathless as I clambered from the taxi and pulled my guitar from the trunk. I walked through the empty outer office and tried to calm down. Even after all of the experience I had had in studios all over northern Italy, I was scared.

  I pushed open the double doors and entered the control room. Jake sat in one of the chairs alongside the back wall. He was dripping sweat and drinking a Coke with shaky fingers. Sameh sat propped against the wall beside Jake, his head hanging down between his knees, a towel draped loosely across his shoulders. His shirt was plastered to his body.

  I asked, “Where’s Pipo?”

  Mario sat with legs propped on one of the effects racks, chewing on a pen. He gave me a vague wave without looking up from the papers gathered in his lap, “Downstairs drowning in the shower.”

  The mixing board was covered with paper. André stood over a long sheet, making tiny notes in the graph-like blocks. “Which ones do I have down for guitar?”

  Mario dropped his feet, leaned over another page on the console. “Five and eleven. You told me to ask about the voice gate.”

  “Later,” André said, and looked at me. “I want you to hear something.”

  “Come sit down, Gianni,” Jake said, and waved me to the seat beside him.

  André hit the rewind button on the MTR remote. Mario grinned, leaned over and punched my shoulder. André hit the stop.

  “Okay,” André said, “we’re going to start with ‘Playing for Keeps.’ This is take one from two days ago, your second day in the studio. Concentrate on just the bass, drums and percussion.”

  He pushed the play button. The music rushed out. It was very strange to hear my own music come pouring from those giant speakers, with André standing over the immense console, calmly sipping his coffee, occasionally adjusting a knob. So clinical, so professional. It was a totally different experience, hearing my own songs being played in the studio. Little ideas that came from my head and heart were being squeezed and fashioned and smoothed and polished and made ready to give to the world.

  The music sounded good. The three of them played well. But there was an uncomfortable moment here, a missed beat there, a gap that should have been filled.

  When it was over André hit fast forward, consulted another chart, hit the stop, said, “And this is the one we’re going to use.”

  I was shocked out of my fear. The song was transformed. They played with uncanny precision, running along a path totally of their own making. Mario mouthed the words to Amy’s voice and bounced in his chair. He turned and gave me a thumbs up. I agreed. The song was fantastic.

  When the song was over Jake looked at Sameh. “Think it was worth it?”

  Sameh raised his head, gave a tired smile. “No question.”

  André said to me, “This is what I want you to do.”

  I licked my lips, said, “I’ll try.”

  “You ain’t gonna just try,” Jake said, rising to his feet. “You’re gonna go in there and burn.”

  Mario grinned at me. “Blow me away, Maestro.”

  “Clear out for a while,” André said to Jake and Sameh, and to me, “Go hook up, Gianni.”

  I played four solid hours without a pause. Over and over the same song, until I felt as though the notes had been pounded into my brain. Four hours of one song.

  Something was not right. The guitar simply did not fit to the slow churning beat of the song. It clashed almost everywhere. I had tried everything but smashing my guitar against the wall, and still could not find the sound I felt we needed.

  I refused the others’ invitation to join them for a late dinner. I was not hungry. Instead I walked the streets, trying to clear my mind of the clutter of sounds. I stopped in a little corner shop that served coffee and grilled meats and had round chest-high tables where people could stand. I need your help, F
ather, I thought as I stood and looked around, listening to the prayer in my mind and feeling the distance between me and the others in the shop. I pray for all of my brothers and sisters here, I heard myself silently say. Look at the vague hopelessness in their eyes, Father. How can I help them when they don’t want to hear? Is the music an answer? If not for them, for someone else? I felt myself both shielded from these people and joined to them by my prayers. A sense of calm grew around me as I stood there sipping at a drink I did not taste, eating food I did not want. Help me, Lord.

  When I returned to the studio, I pulled out my Ibanez steel-string guitar and began playing runs. By the time the others arrived I knew what was needed. I had been wrong, using the Stratocaster. The sound was too dominating. I was going to play without a pick, strum with a fingernail grown long for classical guitar, and hold myself back as tightly as possible. André gave me a careful look when he saw what I had in mind, but did not say anything.

  As soon as we started I knew I was finally on the right track. I began pulling out everything possible, stripping off every unnecessary note and putting nothing in its place. Most of the song became a series of gaps connected by little double-note slashes. The verses had simple trills at the end of each line, and the chords were nothing more than a quick-wristed flash of sound.

  An hour and a half later I was almost satisfied. I leaned toward the voice mike and waited for André to signal that it was on. “I need to ask Jake something.”

  André nodded through the window, asked, “Is it about the solo?”

  I nodded. “I have an idea,” I said, and ustrapped my guitar.

  I found him in front of the television. “I want to change the song and use the classical in the solo.”

  Jake thought it over, asked, “Mind if I listen in?”

  Amy stood up. “Can I come too, Gianni?”

  “I don’t mind.” Having two friends there would help a lot.