Overdub session - Posted on 2013-12-19 by Nathan Baker

A few days ago we had another overdub session and it was just the singer coming in to do three songs. For this session there was almost nothing for me to do except observe. So i assumed my normal silent assistant mode. By now (7 sessions) we are on quite personal terms with this guy. He's a cool guy, very personable, happy and humble. Not the best singer and he knows it, so he asks our advice on what could be done differently. Normally I'm not supposed to speak up about anything or offer my opinion, which is frustrating sometimes because I most definitely have ideas, and a lot of the time creative and different ones. Anyhow, he was stumbling over to many syllables in his lyrics and it was obvious, and there were plenty of filler words he could omit. I write a lot of music and poetry, and i deal with this exact issue often, so I know simple solutions. Abel brought the issue up but didn't offer a solution, so Jeff (the singer) asked me directly what I thought. I spoke up and told him to not start the sentence with 'but' and take out a 'the' and it would flow way better, and it did. I figured Abel would get pissed and reprimand me later, but he didn't! So I realized that on issues that aren't engineering issues and in the right setting I can speak my mind a bit, which really feels like progress. I will always approach the sessions as the silent slave assistant, but it felt good to be a part of making something work better. The same syllable problem is constant in this guys lyrics and so I helped him fix a bunch of lines that were clumsy. He was very thankful for the input and said he was going to go home and look through all his lyrics and see what he can do to open them up a bit. It's always rad to be able to teach someone something that you know is so simple and important. And it was also cool to have my input work and be appreciated by Abel. I won't let it go to my head.