We worked at it over an hour. There were so many things to try, so many different ways I could play it. My moves became almost mechanical, as though only part of me was there.
At the end of a take André flicked on his mike and said, “It’s almost one o’clock, Gianni. One more take and we’ll call it a night.”
I nodded dumbly and wiped my face. It was too much trouble to search for words.
“One more time,” André repeated. “Push it hard as you can.”
The control room’s mike was attached to a metal arm coming from the center of the mixing console. Jake leaned forward, holding his face turned so he could speak into it and see me through the thick-paned window at the same time. “Everything you’ve got, Gianni,” he said.
“Light up the room,” Amy called from her place against the back wall.
There were two mikes for the acoustic guitar—one directly in front of the guitar’s mouth, and another a meter away at my right. I adjusted my position so that I was centered in front of the mike, eased the headphones from where they were pressing painfully onto my ears.
“Let’s hear your very best this time, Gianni,” André said.
Play, Professor Schmitz had said. Don’t think. Just play.
I leaned over my guitar, set my fingering, gave a sharp nod.
I knew immediately that I finally had it right. There was no question, no doubt, no worry about a wrong move somewhere. From the first moment, the guitar, the music and I were all one. I did not think about what to play. I did not think at all. The music chimed throughout me. I played what was. Each note went exactly into the place that was made for it.
When the song ended I kept my eyes closed, savoring the moment. I understood. The repetition and the exhaustion had been necessary to break down the barriers and tap that deepest well.
When I opened my eyes they were all watching me—André, Mario, Amy, Jake. I felt such a bonding with them. Such a powerful unity. We were all part of this, building something far beyond our puny human reach. There was a divine purpose here. I knew it more clearly in that moment than ever before. It all seemed so clear, so marvelously simple.
Amy said something; I saw her lips move, but the mike was still off. I tapped the headphones with my finger. Amy turned, said something to André, who jerked slightly as though coming awake. He punched a button and I heard the answering click.
Amy asked, “Can you hear me now, Gianni?”
“Yes.”
“I’m really glad I was up here to see that.”
“So am I.” So close. The feeling just kept on building, the Holy Spirit so real that seeing it with my physical eyes could not have made it any clearer.
“I . . .” She hesitated, looked at Jake as though asking for him to say it for her. But Jake was still looking at me. Amy turned back. “Every time I hear this song, I’m going to remember this moment.”
I nodded. There wasn’t any need to say anything else. I understood.
“I’m not afraid anymore,” she said. “You just showed me how it’s got to go.”
Jake turned to her, asked, “You mean it?”
She nodded, her eyes still on me. “I’m gonna knock ’em dead.”
Jake looked at André. “Think maybe we could move up the vocals, start ’em first thing tomorrow morning?”
André shrugged. “Why not? Guitar’s sure as goodness done. You ready, Amy?”
“Yes.” Her eyes never left my face. “Will you stay up here with me, Gianni?”
“Sure.”
“Just to remind me, you know, what I’m supposed to do.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I told her.
****
Lead vocals for that one song took the better part of the next day. Keyboards, percussion, backup vocals, a chiming effect with the sequencer, and horns ran well into the evening. We followed Jake’s lead and tried not to worry over how long it was all taking.
The next morning we gathered in the control room, jamming in behind the mixing board, and listened to the raw takes. The music had not been mixed, there was no clear balancing in the songs. But the power was there. The song had been transformed into something enormously better than what we had originally brought into the studio.
Without being asked, André played it through five times. I concentrated on each instrument in turn, and found transformations on every level. Jake had taken what before had been a simple bass run and changed it into a sharp one-tone punch in time to the bass drum. He stayed on the one note until the chord change, then moved to another deep note and continued striking the beat hard with his thumb. On the refrain he alternated the steady rhythm with a sharper, staccato beat. Bam, bam, pause, bam-ba-ba-ba-bam-ba-ba-ba-bam, still droning out the same deep note. I saw what he was after. It emphasized that key driving force, that steady beat marked by Sameh’s bass drum. I had not noticed it when I was playing, but now I could see how the short punches were accented by my flicking guitar movements.
The sharp punching action was imitated by Hans and Karl on horns, by Lothar’s racy little keyboard chords, and by Pipo. He had held back incredibly, playing the congas as an alternate beat only at the end of each verse, then slipped a whisper of the triangle in on another track.
And over it all were laid Amy’s vocals. She was the swooping force that tied us all together. In direct contrast to our sharp punching sound, she soared. I looked around the room. Everyone was moving their hands, tapping fingers, nodding agreement. Such little things, minor changes when taken one at a time. Yet joined together they amplified the song’s power tremendously.
André stopped the music, gave us a chance to chatter excitedly, then signaled for us to calm down. In his quiet voice he said, “This is what you need to be doing with all your songs. You see now how it should go, and what can happen. We need to start working for more speed now. Your fears and hesitations need to be left at the door. Try to come into the studio ready to reach deeper than you ever have before, right from the very beginning.”
The words sobered us. The eight remaining songs stretched out before us like an impossible task.
“Sometimes you find a song that sounds okay live but just won’t hold up when it’s on tape. You can’t become discouraged by this. Don’t feel as if it has to be dropped. Try instead to find a way to rework it. Every time you hear it, ask yourself, ‘How can I make this better?’ ”
André checked a number on the sheet in front of him. “I’m going to play all the remaining songs for you now. Once again, when a song is down on tape like this, you find sometimes that it is a little weak. Don’t let it discourage you.”
He made an adjustment to the master volume and went on. “You must listen with the attitude that it is basically a good song, but it doesn’t have that special catchy something you need to make it commercially successful.”
We avoided one another’s eyes as the songs spun through. It was a good thing André had prepared us. After hearing the completed tracks of “Playing for Keeps,” it was extremely disappointing to hear what we had down for the others. The bass, drums, and percussion sounded polished and tight as he was playing the tracks intended for the final cut. But the music hung upon them was sloppy. The cohesive force needed to make them sparkle was missing. And there was a sameness to some of the melodies that shamed me. Too many of them sounded cut from the same dough.
It was very quiet when the music stopped. The mood of exhilaration had vanished. André told us, “Once again, all of you need to put preconceived ideas aside. We don’t have time for the breaking-down process again. We are a team, out to make the very best music we can. In order to do this in the time we have, we are going to have to work on absolute trust.”
“And faith,” Amy said quietly.
“Faith in the Lord, trust in each other,” André agreed. “The two cannot be separated, especially not here. We are a family out to do His work, to spread His Word.”
He nodded at Jake. “Now might be a good time for
us all to join in prayer, don’t you think?”
* * *
We did our R&B number next, a rock ballad called “Like a River.” The going was as swift as it had been tough during the first song. I walked into the live room fairly certain of how it needed to be played. After an hour of takes André and Mario agreed that it was done. Lothar was upstairs for even a shorter period. When he came down, he looked confused. He struggled to find a way of explaining it, finally said, it was there waiting for me as soon as I walked in the door. By evening André was ready to start on the vocals.
Amy emerged four hours later pale from exhaustion, and announced she was going home for some serious vegetation. We spent an hour doing the backup vocals, ran through a couple of possible special effects, and closed up shop before midnight. The atmosphere had brightened immensely since that morning. It seemed possible that we might finish the album after all.
That night, tired as I was, I could not sleep. There was something nagging at the edges of my mind. Every time I began to drift off it would return, a whisper of something left undone.
I was heating water for tea when Jake came stumbling into the kitchen. “What’s up, Gianni?”
“I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
He waved it aside. “You ain’t the only one with music on his mind.”
Now that he was there, I was glad to have someone to talk with. I told him of my nagging doubt and the frustration of not knowing what it was.
He listened to me in silence, stifled a yawn, and said, “Sounds to me like we need to take it to the Lord, Gianni.”
I felt a vague sense of defeat as I lowered my head. I was tired, and the return to the studio was just a few hours away. It angered me that I couldn’t work out what needed doing.
“Our dear Father in heaven,” Jake began, setting a sleep-loosened hand on my shoulder. “It’s really something to see you at work, helpin’ us get our songs ready for release. We ask your help in makin’ this the very best music we can, Lord, because we really want to do this for you. My brother Gianni is in need of rest, Father. He has to be back in the studio tomorrow, and he is tired. But there’s something here that he feels needs seein’ to, and he can’t figure out what it is. We ask your help. Guide my brother to understand what it is you’re callin’ him to do.”
His eyes still only half-open, he stood and yawned again. “Did He speak to you, Gianni?”
The clarity of what had been pestering me was so sharp that it shamed me. “Yes.”
“Great.” Jake shuffled back toward the bedroom, “Oughtta get yourself on to bed, my man. Gonna be a big day tomorrow.”
The song for that day was “Powerline,” a heavy rock-funk song with no holds barred. I played my tracks well, but with the detachment I had known in the Italian studios. It sounded polished, and the finished work was well done. But I needed to be elsewhere. As soon as I was through, I pulled Jake from what had become his regular station against the control room’s back wall.
I led him into an empty corner of the front office. “I need to rework ‘If Only You Could Know.’ The song’s just not right.”
He seemed to have been waiting for me to say it. “Song lacks something, that’s for sure. What you got in mind?”
“I don’t know yet.” The music was polished, all the lines fit well, but the song as a whole was weak. “The melody’s okay. It just doesn’t carry the power it should.”
“I like that song a lot,” Jake agreed. “Singin’ it in four languages, man, it gives me shivers every time I hear it. But—”
“Something’s missing,” I finished. “I think it’d be better if I could go off by myself for a while. Maybe I’ll head over to Mario’s.”
The ebony mask stayed in place. “You do what you need to do. We’ll cover for you here.”
“You think André could make me a cassette of the song?”
“No problem,” Jake said, and patted me on the shoulder. “Been hopin’ you’d want to do something with that song. Really feel like we’re diggin’ for gold here.”
It was not until late afternoon that I realized what I was looking for. I felt a thrill run through me as I caught that first glimpse. All day I had been looking for a flaw in the song. That had been incorrect. The song was not flawed. It simply did not take advantage of the potential. It had a text in four languages, showing that the message of salvation applied to all people, of all the world. The music, however, was strictly western-style pop-rock.
When Amy had decided to sing it in the different languages, I had simply extended the same music I had fashioned for Jake’s original English words, changing the tempo where necessary to fit the new words. That had been wrong.
If she was going to sing in different languages, there had to be some special twist to the music that accented the foreignness. I needed to alter the melody, transform it into something that would balance with the new verses, make them sparkle.
I had to take my excitement outside, walk off the edge. Something told me that the end result was going to be really special. When I left Mario’s apartment and stepped out into the crisp air of early evening, I felt that I could not walk fast enough. I smiled at passers-by, wished there were some way I could share the joy of my discovery.
It came to me as I was walking across the park, the faintest hint of unheard sound that stopped me in my tracks. The inner voice sang its tuneless melody, drifting through the fullness of my heart with a crystal clarity. I held my breath and tried to still the pounding of my heart, afraid that the slightest motion would cause it to fade away. It was the first time I had heard that lilting music since before my grandmother died.
The melody in my mind and heart clarified, and I realized that I was hearing the finished piece. I stood in the cool night air, mesmerized by the sound of that song which I had thought was lost and gone forever. Faith healed the wound, sealed this cracked and broken vessel, and filled it with unending light; and now it gave form to the song of my heart. The gift of service and the gift of talent combined within me to create something drawn from a world far beyond my earthly senses.
I do not know how long I stood there. A long time. Long enough for my legs to grow so tired that I sat on the cold, wet ground. I did not need my guitar. I was not the least bit afraid of forgetting what I was hearing. Over and over the song played itself through, filling out and strengthening. The other instruments chimed in, clearly marked in my heart’s passages. I knew exactly what was to be.
I took time to answer the gift with a prayer of thanks, then I stood up and ran.
I was out of the taxi before it stopped. I pushed the studio’s buzzer, danced a frantic shuffle until the door sounded, raced up the stairs and through the front office and into the control room. Amy was in the recording chamber, resting between takes and listening to André through the headphones. Mario sat beside him and chewed on his mangled pen. Jake and Pipo were sitting against the back wall. The perfection of those four being there to share the moment made me laugh out loud.
To Jake I said, “I figured it out.”
“Been prayin’ you would,” he said.
“Figured what?” Pipo asked.
“Can you get Amy out of there? This can’t wait.”
“Man looks a little fired up, don’t he?” A hidden smile put a glint in Jake’s eyes. “What you think, André? We got time to hear what he’s got in mind?”
“Would somebody mind telling me what’s going on?” Pipo asked.
“I need my acoustic guitar,” I said to André. It was hard to slow down enough to put the thoughts into words. “And three mikes. The third out farther than the second, with a mirror wall behind it to bounce the sound. And a Lexicon hooked up to both the second and third, to bounce the sound even more.”
André looked at me for a moment, then leaned toward the console mike and asked Amy, “Would you mind taking a little break?”
“Doesn’t sound like I’ve got much of a choice, does it?” She smiled at me. “We’ve been
praying for you, Gianni.”
“Yeah, well, it worked.”
“Look at that little two-step the man’s doing,” Pipo said. “What you on, Gianni?”
“He don’t need drugs,” Jake said, his voice like distant thunder in the small control room. “Too full of the Spirit to have room for anything else.”
“I want to play two runs on the acoustic, both the backup and the lead parts,” I said. “When we do concerts Lothar can play on the keyboards, but I want to put down both tracks with the hollow-body.”
André asked, “You want to use the sampler for the rhythm sections?” That would be standard practice. A sampler took a bit of sound, then through computerized reproduction would make a loop so that the sound became continuous. This would be like a single run, or a drum sequence, played over and over and over, right through the song.
I shook my head. “I want to do the whole thing straight.”
He looked at the wall clock. “You don’t think it’d be better to start this tomorrow morning?”
“It won’t take that long,” I replied.
The five of them shared a glance, then broke out laughing. “It’s okay, Maestro,” Mario said, rising to his feet. “C’mon, let’s get you strapped in before you explode.”
As soon as the mikes were in place and the stool set up and the guitar tuned and the sound levels set, I told them, “This is the rhythm section. I’ll need two more tracks for the lead.”
“I understand,” André said, the clipped words his only indication of being touched by the excitement. “What do you want to hear as you play?”
“Drums, percussion, bass, and Amy’s voice.” I did not even have to think about it.
They all stared at me. “That’s it?”
“That’s all I need.”
He inspected me again, nodded, made his adjustments, said, “Say when.”
I poised over the guitar, took a breath, told them, “Now.”
The rhythm would be a straight rendition of a flamenco-style strumming, thumb and three fingers flying over the strings in a constant blur. The notes fell like raindrops, pouring from the guitar in a soft summer storm.
The Maestro Page 38
