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| Jerry Jennings "Signs Of Humanity": Track-By-Track
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This was a much longer tune originally. I got to where I only liked the last
third of it, so I decided to cut off a good portion of the front. This made
it more like three sections that were all of more of an equal importance,
rather that relief sections to a prominant A section. I came close to
scrapping the whole thing, because for some reason there was no groove,
depending on when I'd listen to it. It started reminding me of a loping
donkey. Then I made some eq discovery with the drums, and came to the
conclusion that it's a strange tempo, and if the drums are not eq'd just
right it really sucks, then with one small change, it sounds real cool. I
went back and forth in amazement a few times between the settings and seeing
how much of a difference it made. There are probably several engineers that
could have told me right off, "oh man you just need to do this!". So then I
was thinking I may not have scrapped the first 2/3 if I'd known what I know
now. No, that would have been a drag, because I'm really into the new
shorter version now.
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It started with a 7/4 riff that I came up with in Germany, 20 years ago. I
didn't know what to do with it then. Now that the tune's done, the riff that
started it is not in there. It's the donut effect I always seem to
experience, where the core of something is no longer useful once the frame
is in place. We recorded it in my studio, like most of the others. I drew up
a chart and brought in Jake Chapman on drums and Geno Lopes on bass. In the
end, Jake got kind of perturbed because I was so anal about every little
thing, and actually had them both back for a second session trying to get
that magical take. It was at the end if that session he said "whatever we
do, I don't want to do *this* again." For the record, I should say that Jake
is a superb drummer, and I what we ended up with worked beautifully.
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Of the tunes on the disc this one came about more organically, in the
studio, that is. I had gone through all the rewrites and resequencing, and
wrote up a good chart for it. Then I had Erik Kleven (bass) and Daryl Van
Druff (drums) in the studio doing some songs for a studio client of mine.
When that job was finished I asked them if they felt like playing through a
chart of mine. They said ok, so I had a friend take over the board, and got
my guitar hooked up. We did one practice take, then recorded. It was a very
natural feeling performance on their parts, so I just ended up redoing my
part, just because I had the luxury of being able to do so. Then after they
were gone I came to realize that the kick drum mic had been off. I liked the
take too much to let it go, so I took two kick drum samples from the song
they had recorded before mine. A loud hit and a softer one. I must have
spent 15 or 20 hours going through the tune and looking at the overhead
tracks graphics, identifying where the kick drum hits were, writing down the
sample position number for each one, and then pasting it in to all those
locations. At first it sounded fake, but then I massaged them into place,
sometimes having to make them a little earlier or later than the number I
had written. And sometimes I had to switch from the louder sample to the
softer one. Then I put a bunch of reverb on it, which I never do, but just
trying anything to make those kick hits blend in. Finally, I was satisfied,
but I don't remember what the deciding move was. It could have been a
compression plug in.
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I will never record this song again! It's that song in my repertoir that all
my friends think of first. That's probably because they've all played on at
least one take of it. There was I time when I got so obsessed with getting
it to be what it was supposed to be, that everything else took a back seat.
I remember Bruce Spencer, who's actually a co writer of the final version
(and the drummer) was laughing and said that in another five years, I'd just
be grayer, but I'd still be working on Air Camels. I don't remember the
context, but it pissed me off. I think of Steely Dan's "Babylon Sisters" and
I want it to be that. I don't know if I ever hit the mark, but I had to move
on. Now that I have a band together, we do it. I wasn't going to, but it's
actually turning out to be a real fun tune, in spite of my history with it.
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The first guitar riff is one my brother Gene happened on while we were both
stationed in Germany 20 years ago. He has a knack for really twisted motifs.
I eventually wrote a complete tune around it. The form of this tune is one
that I hope defies the basic ABA format. There's a melody over an F# funk
groove. Then it goes into 5/8 for two bars on a DMa7 and takes an
unexpected detour and lands back on F#. I try to palm that off as a simple
ABA form and it really seems to work, in my mind. You be the judge. I
studied Sonata Allegro form, and Rondo and a few others in college, but none
of those really appealed to me as something to be taken seriously. It just
seems that anything you want to do, form-wise could be given a name - or
not. What do you call it when a tune goes ABA ABA ABA CDEFG?
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My other brother Mike (bassist) was playing this bass riff when I came back
from Germany. He wasn't playing at all when I left, so this was really cool.
He had the basic groove, then I came up with the odd time B section. We
jammed it from time to time through the years, then I decided to use it on
this disc. We got together with (drummer) Paul Kreis, I had drawn up some
charts and we knocked out the basic tracks in one take. In overdubbing,
first I came up with a bunch of stuff I hated. One day I was feeling
experimental and scrapped all my lead parts and kept the distorted rock
rhythm. Then over the top of that, I went to a total clean sound and used a
wah. For some reason I just liked the way this real tame sound was supported
by all the rock framework. Anyway, that's the way I left it.
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A keyboard friend of mine, Dave Forget is the co writer on this. He brought
me a slow piano groove in 6/8, and we started jamming to it. We did a
scratch recording of it then later I wrote the bridge and the guitar melody.
I did up some charts and we brought Jake Chapman (drums) and Scott Fegette
(bass) into the studio. We probably ran through it 4 times, then had a
keeper.
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I used to call this "The Few" until my wife Jane said that was too much like
a Marines commercial. It's a sequencer based tune in 5/8. It kind of has a
certain violence to it. I was listening to it and heard the words "Tiananman
Square" hidden in the music. A lot of times I hear words in music, although
not like lyrics. It's more like a picture puzzle with monkeys hidden in it
and you have to find all the monkeys. It's not that I'm looking for the
monkeys, they just appear. (I know, I've wanted to talk to somebody about
this). Anyway the title seemed to give meaning to the violent nature of the
music. Now it's like it has substance.
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Bruce Spencer (drums, not this tune) and I were working on a
smooth-jazz-meets-weather-report type of project. Bruce got a call from a
high profile friend of his that was looking for some tunes for a new disc.
He was signed to a major label, so we were kind of excited about it. I went
to sleep that night saying "ok, give me some tunes..." and I woke up the
next morning with this melody in my head (not the current melody - donut
effect again). I got up just long enough to write down the melody and go
back to sleep, because I know that no matter how memorable a hook seems,
I'll surely not remember it when I wake up later. So then I'm trying to go
back to sleep, and there's a sprinkler outside, the kind that does a slow
sweep, then rewinds in a percussive manner. Anyway that sprinkler in now a
part of the tune. It's the angular ascending unison line at the end of the A
section. I do it in unison with the bass (Nick Willow). So as the story
goes, Bruce played the tune for this friend of his, and he really liked it.
Whether he's going to use it or not, who knows. But I decided to do a more
live version of it, since I've kind of had my fill of sequencer music. Bruce
had a bunch of other projects going so I called Claude Mack to come in and play drums on it. He's always been one of my favorite drummers.
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