The ConstruKction of FraKctured - from the diaries of Trey Gunn

October 21, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee
Flew to Nashville tonight. The King is calling.

October 22, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee
I set-up the majority of my gear today. We are recording in Adrian's home studio. Not "home studio" like a rinky-dink place to work, but "home studio" like a really great place to record that just happens to be in Adrian's house.

I only had a few hours to set-up before I had to leave for my flight to New York. I'll be heading into Sterling Sound for the mastering of "The Joy of Molybdenum", my fourth solo record.

October 23, 1999 Sterling Sound, New York City
We had a great day of mastering. For more details see the "Molybdenum" recording diaries.

October 24, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee
I flew back to Nashville this morning and began setting up the rest of my gear. There is so much to deal with because I am rebuilding my entire set-up from scratch. I have decided to go through everything in my electronic chain and test it to see how it really sounds under the microscope. Ken, our engineer, is going through this with me. I'll vary everything in the signal path, like a compressor, and then we'll listen to it through the mixer board. This way I hear exactly what each device is doing to the sound and eliminate all the things that aren't working.

October 25, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee
More of the same. I am nearly all set-up, but we are continuing to try new things to see if I can improve what I'm sending to the tape machines. I can tell that the other guys are itching to get on with our playing, but I'm still in the middle of this process. I don't feel entirely here yet. In fact I'm not: I'm still waiting for another bass amp to arrive. Then I will have all my gear and be ready and confident.

We did do a fair bit of playing today despite the technical aspects. We worked on at least four different pieces, including a new spazzy blues riff. It's going be a cool one.

October 26, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

Pat, Bill Munyon (our pro-tools wizard) and myself stopped by the Kroger this morning to get some food. As we were leaving we found, just outside the main entrance, a vending machine for live bait. It looked just like a Pepsi machine except it dispensed "Premium Nightcrawlers, Wigglers, Crappie Minnows, and Catfish Dough Bait made from chicken blood."

We had a good working day. We dove into a chunk of the ConstruKCtion pieces. These are going to be amazing, but they require a ton of arranging. We find that the more time we spend with them the clearer the arrangements become. Pat, Robert and myself hurdled into a few musical ideas that have been gurgling away for a while. One particular piece (I can't remember what we are calling it, now!) is one of the tightest arrangements I've ever worked with. There are a lot of starts and stop and texture adjustments. Robert had a very cool descending chord sequence that we tried me working out a second motif (from our unending collection of wonderful motifs) to pass going against him. It worked fantastic. It is ending up be a very orchestral piece.

Adrian, Pat and myself floated into jam that we are referring to as "Belew Jay Jam". It is very slow and dreamy and I ended up playing some mysteriouso tremolo guitar parts in addition to the bass part. Adrian thinks he can get some nice vocals to float within this one.

October 27, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

Today was even better than yesterday. We are really hitting a stride. We now have so many ideas developing that we need to categorize them so that we can take each one further. It would be really easy to lose track of one of the pieces, if you could believe that. We are so involved in the process of writing that we often get lost in the big picture. I think on Friday we'll go through all the ideas and dump good versions of them to a single tape, for reference.

October 28, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

Too wasted to write tonight. The knotty/naughty brain-frying musical modules that we have been wrestling with have finally won, and I am kaput. Getting ready to doze off to the new Chris Cornell CD. I can't get enough of this record.

October 29, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

OK. Now I am here. Finally present.

I have just put the new Euphonics Audio pre-amp into my rig and my sound is getting better. I've been wrestling with numerous things this week. One of them is my sound, the other is being a bass player again. What, a bass player again? Haven't I been playing bass (on various instruments) for 25 years now? Why the struggle?

The struggle is coming from having just spent the majority of the last three years working towards being not-the-bass-player. With the ProjeKCts, there was either Tony to hold down the bottom end or Adrian (with the V-drum bass parts) or even Robert (with his wicked fret-less bass synth.) My role has been to explore the upper reaches -- the thinner air. I feel that I've made some tremendous discoveries, especially with P4 and P3. But, most notably on the new Trey Gunn Band CD, "The Joy of Molybdenum."

What I think a lot of people don't realize is that 'playing a bass part' takes an entirely different kind of thinking, as compared to 'playing a lead part.' It is not simply a matter of being supportive as opposed to being directive. It has something more to do with being foundational. There is also something very physically different as well. I have sat very comfortably is both chairs, and even straddled the divide. For this, I am very grateful.

While I expect to be doing my share of soloing in this King Crimson, my concern right now is with being a monster low-ender. Ironically, it is where I began (as a rock musician) and where I feel the least comfortable right now. Ah, but isn't that what Crimson is all about?

So I am searching: for a new sound for the bottom end, for a new way of approaching the bottom end, for something.......

We barreled into some heavy Crimson territory today. When "Light ContruKCtion" begins, there is no question that you are hearing the one and only band in the world who could play this music. It gets developed it a little further each day. We then moved into "Larks IV." This one has been fairly elusive to us over the last two years, but now it is coming into our sights. We played it a lot today and it is still ringing around my head six hours later! We finally sorted out the first two minutes and laid a version down to DAT. When Robert and I heard the play back I got really excited. I am beginning to actually feel the piece now.

Tomorrow will largely be a tech day and I will spend much of it searching the town of Nashville for the proper strings for my 10-string Warr Guitar.

October 31, 1999 Halloween -- Nashville, Tennessee

I did a fair chunk of personal practice today. Worked out new fingerings for Light ConstruKCtion and the 15/8 running lines.

November 1, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

Brutally hard day today. Not much of anything came from this morning's work except for a mangling of Larks' IV. Very challenging to keep the bad spirits from descending. We did manage to get some good Light ConstruKCtion work done in the afternoon; even with our brains utterly fried out. Some how our fingers kept working long after 'we' had checked out.

November 2, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

A great improvement over yesterday's work. Robert, Pat and myself began with Light ConstruKCtion and worked in some new sections. We were jamming so hard that Adrian came down from his lyric cell to play with us. We pieced everything together with fantastic results.

Then we dug into Flight, which involves a lot of tricky chord movement. We spent most of the rest of the day on this and then recapped with some more Lite ConstuKt. After Robert and Adrian left, Pat and I pushed further into some ideas for "Flight" and then we called it a day.

We headed off into the bleak no-mans land of suburban Nashville cuisine. Since we've already tried most of the places out here (avoiding Mrs. Wienner's, McDonalds and Steak and Shake) we felt bold and hit the fast food Italian place. Well the food was....hmmm... fast, I guess. Would I ever go back there again? Well, I wouldn't want to; but we are going to be here for two months...

November 3, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

Oh, very good day, today, it was! Larks' IV is entirely different to where we left it off last time. Very slow and menacing, now it is. Extremely heavy and thundering. There are still so many sections to fit together, but we are making good progress.

Adrian showed up with some new chord changes that he was excited about singing over. There were a bit nasty, these chords, yes they were. But we pounded around on them for about 45 minutes and now we have another song in the works.

It was a Mexican night tonight and the hot sauce was firing. Arreeeba!

Stayed up fairly late tonight practicing and watching TV. Well, not late according to Bill and Pat's schedule. They usually head back into the studio after dinner and go until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning editing our jams in Pro-tools. But, late for me. While I was watching TV and working on new fingerings for the 15/8 running line section of Larks', I saw Matt Chamberlain drumming with Fionna Apple on VH-1. In a world with many excellent drummers, Matt is one of the most excellent. I met him in Woodstock when we were recording "The First Day" with David Sylvian. I tried to get him the live gig with this band, but David turned him down. Matt has been working with Tori Amos for the last few years, but the best place to see him is with his band Critters Buggin'. These guys are truly out there. Wild, out of control, and over the top. I first saw them in Taos, New Mexico on a total lunar eclipse night. I thought aliens had landed and taken over the town.

November 4, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

Oh, it was a long day today! We began with Larks' IV and made some amazing headway in the arrangement. We sorted out several transitions and pieced together a good chunk of the power section. Then we hooked in the 15/8 running lines and fleshed out the form for this section. We had a good run through with Robert calling out the form as went played along. This is always a great way of getting a feel for how the form should work. What generally happens is that the "caller" ends up calling out something very unexpected and generally very right. Because the players are so "in the moment" we, often, can't tell what the form was that we had just played. We need to listen back through the tape and decipher what we had played. This seems to make for a good way of working.

Since we were so fried from all of this work we took a short break and reconvened with Adrian around 4:00pm. We tried a few things but came up with nothing, at least in my mind. Robert left for the day and Pat and Adrian and myself jammed for a good two hours. We got into some very strange grooves with Adrian playing backwards guitar and me triggering some Turkish drum samples while playing bass at the same time. Because the drums samples had such laid back feel (and I mean REALLY laid back. like, a westerner would say they were out of time), Pat was working overtime to hold us together. He, of course, did great and I can't wait to hear what we did. I'll have to wait until tomorrow for my ears a totally shot for today.

November 5, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

Good solid work day. We decided to begin working with Adrian first thing today. Over the last few days Robert, Pat and myself would take the first shift and while Adrian worked on lyrics upstairs. Then he would join us later in the afternoon, Unfortunately by the time he would come down to work with us, our brains were often already plucked, dried and pickled. So, for today we began as a four piece machine.

We started with Light ContruKCtion. Although we have the overall form worked out for the first 3 minutes of the tune, there are still a lot of small (though, not minor) details to work out. Like: should I drop this note here? should we shift this one beat over there so that we are all in synch, or should it stay out of synch? should I add an extra bass part to go along with Pat's skittering during the triple offset section, or it is there enough going on with the three of us circulating in 5? should we modulate to another key center here? should I change the fingering in the beginning to make the line smoother or does it work better slightly jagged with my current fingering? All this and more is considered each time we run through it.

I have this feeling that a more experienced player would see exactly what needs to be done at each moment and simply do it the first time and be done with all the chores of arranging. This would make the whole process quicker and more efficient, and probably a lot more fun, too. I, however follow a much slower process. Well, OK slower is a relative term. We did record VROOOM in 4 days and THRAK in 3 weeks. I gain a lot from repeated work on an idea. Actually, I think we all do. In terms of this particular "group" working together, we have only just begun playing in the configuration. This four piece has never worked together before October 25th. You might say that we have been playing together for years, but not as this particular group. And the difference is huge. The dynamic of this four piece is still finding it's voice, and these particular arranging tasks seem to be a large part of the process.

So, we dive deeper into the details. After our work with the beginning of Lite ConstruK we moved into the middle section. The jury is still out on whether the middle section will be entirely instrumental or not. So, we worked on two different arrangements in consideration of both options. Pat and I are still pinning down our rhythmic parsings: when we hit the G chord, should we stay in 6+4/4 or go ahead and move to the 11/8 and meet the front-line off at the pass when they saddle up to the B minor chord? and what about the C# section? is the 5/8 still working? So many things to work out. We will have to wait for many of these things until the lengths of the sections are determined. And if there are going to be vocals, chances are all the section lengths will change to follow the voice anyway. Well, we had enough of this one and decided to move on.

Next was the Heavy Rock Song. This tune began as a mutation of ProjeKCtion, but quickly shifted off into a world of it's own. We played this a few times and then laid down a version to tape for Adrian to work to for the vocal part. When we went in to listen to the playback I was floored with how exciting it was. It is the most open feeling and welcoming of any of the pieces we have so far. It just barrels you over with energy and invites you in. This will be a monster live.

Then we headed into the Red Blue tune. This one has a relatively straight blues riff (OK, "straight" in KC terms reads: not that straight) that is played over Pat's mayhem. Pat can toy with the rhythm of it in so many ways that each time the riff comes back around you feel it entirely differently. We spent a good deal of work with the solo section. Robert and I are playing a 5+7/8 figure over the bar lines while Adrian goes slide guitar crazy. I had to spend some time working out how I was going to play a bass part at the same time as keeping the interlocking "guitar" part going with Robert. Once I sorted it out we laid down a version DAT.

With the group work done for the day, Pat, Bill and I headed off for dinner. Then practice time for me and more digital editing for those two. Tomorrow: a real day off. Hoo-ha! Music City here we come.

November 8, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

A very long day today. Very, very long. Pat and I went in at about 10:45 and started working with our eleven's. Eleven seem to be one of the strongest emerging rhythms for this record. (Funny enough, nine played a huge role in "The Joy of Molybdenum.") Pat has been working out some extremely sick and twisted ways of playing across a bar of eleven. We did this for over an hour before Adrian and Robert joined us.

Then we dove right into Light ConstruKCtion. We made some pretty strong decisions about the overall form. Then we started laying down versions and working on making it through all the changes. We had some fantastic laughs at some the stinky brown disasters. To be fair, this piece is a monster: on one of the sections Robert and Adrian are in 5, Pat is in 12 and I'm in 11. In another, Robert and Adrian and myself are circulating the melodies in 5. Even still, some of the sonic crashes are stupendous. We finally found our way to a good overall version and decided to move on. Meanwhile it was already quite late in the afternoon and I was utterly brain dead.

But, we did move on. We started working on some chord changes that Adrian had come with on Friday during one of our jams. It started to go somewhere so Ken, our multi-track engineer (Bill is here just to do Pro-tools work), started recording us on the multi-tracks. By then everyone was totally fried. So Robert and Adrian left while Pat re-tracked the drums to what Adrian had played. He ended up building up a whole new drum part. Then he sent me out to come up with some new stuff on the bass. In the end we scrapped the chords that Adrian had begun with and we were off into a whole new area.

I was completely beat, and kept falling asleep on the couch between takes. But, Pat was fired up and wanted to keep working. So, he kept sending me out to do new things. We did a few takes together and then I finally got him to let off me the hook. We took a quick break by going out to the garage and listening to Bill's edits of one of our last jams (which was great, and will be available for download on the internet) and then headed back into the control room for another listen to what we had been working on. Adrian came in with us. It sounded so great! Really heavy and industrial. I suspect I will be doing some more tracking on this tomorrow.

November 9, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

Excellent day today. We got Larks' IV into nearly a whole completed form. We spent most of the day just learning how to play what we had already arranged. Then we added in some of the new bits that Robert had worked out. It's turning into a very evolved piece. We've crossed the dreaded 6 minute range and are leaning heavily towards an 11 minute composition.

Both Pat and I have a lot of things still left to work out for this piece. Several of the sections are hovering chord changes waiting for the rhythm section to made a strong stew out of. After days and days of taunting Adrian with his solo section (but never quite getting there), we finally made it today. Boy, was he happy to finally cut loose! And he sounded great! How does he do it? And so effortlessly.

Tomorrow we have a plan for a re-cap of Lite ConstruKt and Larks' IV. Then we shall delve into Larks' V.

November 10, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

Well did some major work on the ConstruK of Liet and Larks' IV. With Liet, we made some small yet significant changes: moving one transition to another key center and adding a newer transition in another part.

Larks' took up the biggest chunk of the day. Two significant things happened here. The first was that we are beginning to finally see the whole picture as we are running down the piece. Instead of coming to the end of a section and knowing that something new is coming, but not sure what and then CRASH!; what is beginning to happen is that we are actually seeing where we are going as we are driving this beast.

The second significant thing is that Pat and I made some major headway in defining this rhythm section, and in actually redefining what a rhythm section does. This came about during work on one of the Larks' sections, where the rhythm section becomes the feature. We came up with some exciting ways to accent across the bar lines that Adrian and Robert are holding down. It was an extreme struggle for me to keep up with Pat's metric modulations, because I still had to follow the key center changes -- and they rarely fall in line with him! We are still uncertain how much to pin down a part and how much to leave up to improvising. We may end up with a few pre-determined bars and few un-determined bars.

I can feel myself becoming a bass player again. Is this a good thing? Well it is for King Crimson. I must say I feel a little fear that I may lose my sense of being a soloist. And seeing that I will be going out on the road with my solo band starting at the end of January (mostly NOT as the bass player), I feel a bit of a twitch. However the current work in front of me is as a bottom ender, so I will deliver this first. Then I can begin branching out again.

We took a break for dinner and then came back and I did some work on the second album that we are recording. There are actually two records being done simultaneously here. One is the composed official King Crimson Virgin Records release, and the other seems to be turning out to be ProjeKt X. ProjeKt X is being culled from improvs that we have done while either warming up for the day or winding down for the day. Bill Munyon takes these recordings into the garage and dumps them into Pro-tools and then begins editing together the best bits. But, last night I began doing some overdubs on these and they are coming out great. Mostly, I working on recording bass parts, but I did do some backwards soloing as well. Ya!
Since this was the first real multi-tracking that I've done for this record, I took some special care with my sound. One of the things that intrigues me as a musician/producer, lately, is the concept of 'transparency' in the sound. Transparency, as I see it, is the ability of a sound to be loud in the mix without obscuring the other sounds around it. In other words, you can 'hear through' the sound. We had some great success with getting this quality at Bob's studio (Dangerous Music) during the recording of 'The Joy of Molybdenum.' Bob has an old Neve recording desk and a lot of vintage microphones and tube compressors. Now, I'm a huge fan of modern digital sound processing, but I had to admit their lack of transparency when compared to the result that the kind of tweaking that Bob was getting with a few old mic pre-amps.

So, anyway, I was searching for some of this with the bass overdubs that Bill and I were doing on the ProjeKCt X improvs. I have two different bass amps that I am experimenting with and two different compressors as well. In addition Bill has several choices of mic-preamps. We tried all the different combinations and we were quite satisfied with our final choice. THEN, I layed down the track. I realize that this is a very laborious (and even luxurious!) way of working, but the results are really worth it. With transparency you can have the effect of 'loud and powerful' combined with extreme clarity.

November 11, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

We had a good day today. In addition to more and more work on our greatest hits, we made some more tweaks on the improvs that Bill has been editing. Adrian also did some overdubs on the piece that I overdubbed last night.

I caught a bit of the Sting story on 'Behind the Music' on VH-1 the other night. It has been ringing through me for the last few days and I can't seem to shake something about it. That 'something' seems to be in regards to what a musician gets rewarded for. For some reason, some musicians get rewarded for being controlling, whereas other musicians get rewarded for not being controlling.

Let me see if I can delve into this. Sting has had a phenomenal musical life, no one can deny that. The Police were both revolutionary on a purely musical level as well as hugely popular. Then, after their break-up, Sting went on to even greater successes. In this documentary it is quite clear that Sting chose to become more and more in control of the musical parameters that he was working with. This meant leaving Copeland and Summers and eventually hiring the best of the best as side players. That way he could direct the players and get them to realize his ideas exactly as he saw fit. In all of this he was rewarded with huge successful records.

At the other end, there are musicians who are rewarded for exactly the opposite approach: NOT controlling the musical situation. The guys who I am working with right now fall into this category. So, does Miles Davis. Miles was legendary for putting together a band of amazing players, and just letting them go. It is an approach where, by not dictating every aspect, you allow a space where something new can happen. And by something new, I don't just mean a new rhythm or chord change, but something new within the musical experience.

The interesting part is that depending on how someone gets rewarded, then that is the direction they tend to continue to go. With Sting, his course seems set. I found it quite amazing to see it presented so straight forward.

Of course you can't always trust the artist to present a true perspective on their musical process: many will pretend, after the fact, that they were in control of all the parameters when in reality they weren't. Many a side man has been the real initiator and developer of the music. And I don't mean with just disposable pop music, but with great records that we all love made by supposedly established "solo" artists.

November 12, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

More and more Light Construction and more and more Larks'.

November 15, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

We began the day with a proper Light Construktion. We gave it a good shot and then began honing in on details. Details, details, details.

Then we moved to the section of Lark's IV where Robert is cruising like a wild ferret while Pat and I hole down a solid groove in 5. Adrian has decided to join us on this groove. That means that I have to pin down my part now. No more fiddling about as the spirit moves, this is the time to decide, decide, decide. So, I do decide on every note and relay them all to Adrian. He nails it down after about three tries and off we go.

We've decided to do a re-cap of our greatest hits at the end of each work day. Sometimes I am so brain-dead that my playing is dreadful. Other times I am so brain-dead that my playing is fantastic. Today I was so brain-dead that I have no idea how my playing was.

I've been thinking more about the musician and his control on the musical process. There seems to be something that we call "invention" and there is something that we call "creation." Many music lovers think that are synonymous, but I don't believe real creating can be "thought up." On this point I came across an interview with Tom Dowd, the legendary producer of Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Eric Clapton, The Allman Brothers and Coltrane. He said, "If I had my druthers I would record as many musicians simultaneously as possible. Because I want the breathing. I want the interaction. Even if the vocal I'm taking is never going to be the final vocal, I want the vocalist to sing while the band is playing. So if there's an inflection, if there's an ad-lib, the band responds to it. Because I can't build that response in; I can't invent it."

November 16, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

We began the day with some intensive work on Construction of Light. Both teams were working simultaneously: Adrian and Robert were fine tuning their interlocking parts, while Pat and I developed some new ways of playing through our 11's. I've been trying to extend some of the melodic lines in the bottom end while holding onto the rhythmic patterns that Pat and I are stretching out on. First we're alternating bars of 5+7/8 and 5/8, then we move to 11/4, and finally back to 5+7/8. I can, with fair ease, play the block outlines of the rhythms. However, I am searching for enough comfort within them that I can pull away and back again. I did discover some fantastic lines during this work. Ahh.. more practice ahead.

We had a quick run-through the speeding guitar section of Larks' IV, but without the guitarist. That meant that Adrian, Pat and myself could really focus in on where we were pulling the hits. This was some great sectional work. Then Adrian left us, Robert joined and we dove deeper into Larks' IV. There's plenty of work here and we put Robert through it while Pat and I made some tweaks to the Rising Bulge section. (That reminds of the original working title for Sex, Sleep, Eat, Drink, Dream. But, that's not for me to disclose.)

Then it was time for Larks' V. This one is still mostly a large sketch with Robert's part as the focus. Pat and I can now follow along the outline, but we still have many, many colors to add to the picture. So, the more we play it the closer we get. We have the beginning and we have the ending. It's just everything else in between that has to get sorted out.

November 17, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

We began today with a slightly different strategy. I brought up the point that my brain is so full of notes that it would do me better if we didn't do a lot of group work today. There are so many small details that I need to address with each piece -- some alone and some with Pat -- that banging away at the arrangements as a four piece won't get me closer to resolving. My hope was, also, that Pat and I could do a lot of sectional work. We have so many things to pin down within our parts as a rhythm section. Everyone agreed that each of us could make good use of our time in this way.

So, our plan is to do a quick run-through of our greatest hits and then break up into smaller groups. We began with Lt. ConstrKt. Then we moved into Larks' IV. Before we were able to begin Larks' a very heavy jam took over the room. It was a kind of variation on the Larks' IV groove. Ken was sharp enough to start the multi-track, so some of it may make it into the ProjeKCt X material.

Then Pat and I set ourselves to delve into Larks' V. This piece calls for a lot of compositional elements from the rhythm section. So far we have been running through it with Robert just simply to arrange and assimilate the form. Now, it was time for us to really work out our parts. In the process of this we have discovered a whole new way of working with King Crimson. And I think the results are going to be revolutionary!

This new way of working is essentially an old way of working. That is: we made a demo of the material. We coerced Robert into laying down his whole part to the multi-track. He did this alone to a click track. You can't imagine hard this is to do. It is as cold and sterile a way of playing music as anything in the world. But, he was a trooper and gave us what we needed. Now, we had a template to work to.

Pat and I dug into it section by section, bar by bar. We would go out into the studio, talk through an approach for a few bars, and then lay it down. Then we would go back into the control and discuss the result. Then we would make a few changes and lay that down. Then we would move to the next section and do the same. Then we would listen from the top and go back through and make a few more changes. Sometimes Pat or myself would record a change alone. Although, usually we would dub in our parts together. We spent the rest of the day doing this until the whole piece had been worked on. We got such a good result from this that we decided that we need to do this to each piece before we do the actual tracking in the upcoming weeks.

1:00 a.m. I just finished up a few hours of personal practice work with the Larks' IV running lines in 15/8. This is the one of the biggest bitches of a section I have yet to encounter in a piece of music. Robert is wailing, Pat is failing and I've yet to find my niche. Although, I think I may have struck some gold here tonight. I have been deciphering some of the accented passing tones in Robert's flurry of notes, and where they fall in relation to what Pat is playing. I think I have found a way to bridge the gap between them and add some very wicked accents.

November 18, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

7:30a.m. I'm up and running and ready to work on Larks' V. Or, really I should say "continue" to work on it, because I've been dreaming the piece all night long. Two great ideas came to me in my sleep while this piece was perpetually playing in my inner ear. Now, I know how to approach the falling fairy fingers section. Yes, I do! ...back to work.

11:00p.m. I'm back to the apartment for the night. We had an amazing day. We actaully began recording the record today. I have the insight this morning that we should be utilizing the studio more. We are here making a studio record I suddenly realized that we haven't been using the studio to help us work out our ideas. So, after some discussions we agreed to go ahead and make up a template for Light ConstruKCtion. This meant that we would play it down to multi-track and began to work with the given arrangement.

We did one complete pass as a four piece and then we went in to listen to it. In the process we changed a few things about the arrangement. Then we laid down another pass. We deemed it worthy to be worked on. Robert and Adrian did some overdubs on it, and then Pat and I dove in. Actually Pat dove in deeper than myself. I was so tired from last night's work that I took a rest on the couch while he was working on his drum sounds. Then I joined him later. We both agreed that things wounded great but we were sagging from an energy point of view. I dediced to go ahead and wait until the morning to work on my parts. In addition to some overdubs, Pat and I were going to try some new ideas in a few of the sections. So, we called it a day.

But before we left, Bill played us his edits of the Heavy Larks' Jam from yesterday. It was amazing! So very wild and out of control. We discussed upgrading this one from the ProjeKCt X material to the full blown KC album.

November 19, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

Excellent day! I ended up take over the studio today. I played all of my parts for The ConstruKCtion of Light, and the piece is very nearly complete. Ken got a slurpy fat bass sound out of the Warr Guitar and we set to work. Pat was my producer and we tried out many new ideas for each of the different sections. Sometimes things went very quickly (like the whole first half of the tune) where I pretty much just delivered the part in one or two takes; other times (like the ending interlocking guitar sections) we dug deep into the arangement and altered many of my orignal ideas. I found that I gained the freedom to play a lot more off the wall with Pat there cheering me on. On several section, at the end, I entirely deviated from my orignal rhythmic structure. Pat would make a suggestion like "hear this off-beat I played there? can you do something with that?" And then I would, but because of that shift I would move the whole next phrase around rhythmically. It was an amazing amount of fun!

This is defintely the best way for me to make a record. We have all the power and mystery of a group playing together: a real performance. And then we have the space to built up the sculptural aspect of the music. Adding to the architecture here, taking away from the structure there, throwing a wrench into the works over here, pulling out the rug over there, throw a little paint on that side, remodel with astroturf in the back.....

While I am a big fan of live music, I am not a huge fan of "performance" recordings. It's not that I dislike them; I just don't find myself listening to them. What does intrigue me about records is the sculpture of how the compositions fit together. With classical music, the sculpture is written into the composition. With classical music records, the variations in the different recordings have more to do with the players interpretation of the music then with the way it is recorded. The exception to this may be if a symphony is recorded with only two mics as opposed to the common method of close miking many of the individual instruments. (A way of recording that I personally feel is really stupid. Considering how brilliantly orchestrated most classical pieces are, the last thing you need is an engineer telling you that you should hear the flute louder. The composer has aleady balanced the instruments and the conductor is ensuring this balance.)

With non-classical music (and also excluding vintage jazz and most world music) the sculptural aspect of the music is in how the studio is used in the process of the music making. With this King Crimson record we have begun the recording with well written and well arranged pieces. Then we can dig into the sounds and how to fit them together: take the guitar in this section and use a different amp, take the bass drum from this section and run it through a fuzz box, double the bass part at the octave with a different sound, take just one word from the vocal line and sing it through a fender twin... All of these elements make the record a richer listening experience. For me, this is what making a great record is all about.

Anyway, after I finished up working on The ConstruKCtion of Light, since I was in such a groove, Pat suggested that we go back to Larks' V and dub in a new idea I had for the section where Robert is tearing it up in 15/8. I came up with a very crazy way of playing in five across this. It involves catching about every third note of Robert's. Well, not every single third note, but many of them. I built up a bass line that dances around his part and acknowledges some of his notes. The crazy part is that because of this, I end up playing in a four against three polyrhythm to where Pat is. So we laid down this idea and got really inspired from it. We played it to Robert and he jumped up and down. Now the plan is to get Pat to add some of the accents that I have with some bigger drum hits. This is going to smoke!

November 20, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

We got the basic track for Lark's IV today. Pat was pretty much driving the ship on this one. We did it in one pass. Then upon listening back we thought that the Coda should be just slightly faster then the rest of the tune. Also, Adrian wanted to make a few changes in the chord cycle of the Coda as well. Let me just note here that these chords that Adrian brought in are brilliant and flow like magic, but, boy, are they a challenge to play through. I mean a real challenge!

So, we punched the whole band in for the Coda and then took turns fine tuning some of the parts and sounds. Robert went first, with Pat in the "Mr. Big Ears" chair. I was in the other room writing my parts for Larks' V, so I don't know what they were doing; however when I came back in for a listen the track sounded ultra-fantastically hot.

The plan was for Pat and I to go next. Basically our parts were quite good, but we wanted to try out some new ideas for two of the sections. However it was getting late and we were going to be working all day tomorrow on it. Plus Adrian wouldn't be around to tomorrow to add his magic to the track. So, we let Adrian take the evening shift and do his thing. That way we would have tomorrow all to ourselves. Adrian is so unbelievably fast that he'll probably do all of his overdubs in about an hour.

November 21, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

Well, I made a tactical error today that cost us a few hours. The plan was for Pat and I to basically nail all the changes we wanted to make to the arrangement of Larks' IV. We spent a few hours tweaking our sounds and ended up with such amazing tones that we thought we would just re-cut the whole track. What I am playing on the main parts of the first half of the tune is a pounding bass groove with chordal stabs in eleven on the top side of the Warr Guitar. I discovered that I could articulate the bass sound with far better clarity if, instead of playing the chord stabs simultaneously, I just used my right hand to mute the bass strings below my land hand. Because of this, I chose to play down the track as a bass player first and then overdub the chord stabs later.

So, Pat and I went out into the studio together and worked our way through the piece. Some things were working quite good and some things need some extra attention. We were also writing some new parts as we went. Pat got most of his stuff quite quickly, but I was having a hard time locking in with him. There something bugging us about the performance. Eventually I began to have a funny feeling in my stomach (long after we had gotten through most of the track.) That feeling was telling me that I never should have altered my way of playing this piece. I mentioned it to Pat and he immediately said "Yes, that's it! Go right out there and re-do the whole piece, but playing both the bass and chord stabs at the same time."

I did, and it was like magic. Instantly there was a greasy groove all over the track. We had recovered the original vibe. I felt bad that I had put everybody through this unnecessary process. I had learned my lesson: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." I suppose that I had to try anyway, but it did cost us.

So, now we were cruising again. Pat and I wrote some new parts into the arrangement and we called it a night. Robert came in for a play through of our work and began jumping up and down again. Actually, he's been doing a lot of that lately. Coming in at over 13 minutes, this track is going to be a major Crimson piece.

Tomorrow Pat and I will finish up our work on this one, and then we'll move on. At least I think so right now.

November 22, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

Well, we didn't make it all the way through this one. But, we got very close. We tried some new arrangement ideas and nearly all of them flew. But, one section is still up in the air about our approach. We did make it through Adrian's solo section, so we have the Coda left to do. Pat had some great ideas for the Coda, so we'll probably start with that tomorrow. For a change of energy we're going to invite Adrian in to work with us on it.

It has been a very long day. 12 hours, straight through. And I am fried.

November 23, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

8:00a.m. That was the most rest-less night I have had since I began this record. I heard "kick, snare, kick, snare" all night long in my head. Then there were these crashes and bangs coming from the apartment upstairs which woke me up because they sounded like even more kick and snares. I woke up for about an hour at 4:00a.m. So, I lulled myself back to sleep with a few Chopin Nocturnes on the headphones.

I feel that I must finish Larks' IV as soon as possible, because I'm entering into a crisis of faith with it. I know it sounds great, but I'm beginning to let the evil of doubt enter into my process. This is the killer of all musical work, in my mind. When you doubt, you falter.

11:30p.m. Well, we finished up the majority of the work for Larks' IV. Pat and I got all of our stuff done, minus the Coda. Then Adrian came down and joined us for the final section. It was great to have some fresh energy to play off of. The Coda didn't take that long to do, so had some fun trying out some wilder ideas for it. And let me say, there are some wild things that made it into the final cut.

Once we were finished with that, Robert came in and did some amazing string sounds for the second Rising Bulge section. This was the section where Pat and I were having the greatest struggle finding a feel that worked. But, when Robert added his fairy dust, our parts really began to gel. Then he set to work on adding strings to the Coda. And, there again, a fine glue was laid down that connected all the dots.

We had a complete listen through with "mood lighting" and we were mesmerized. Ya!

November 24, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

Today, I finally got out of the "hot-seat" for a while and into the producer's chair. That is, I didn't do much recording, but I did do a large chunk of facilitating. What was on the plate for today was Robert's speeding 15/8 lines for the middle of Larks' IV. Ken patched him up to three tracks: two for his stereo processed guitar line, and one straight off the guitar. The idea was that he would use the crunch from the VG-8 for the distortion for the stereo pair and we would have the direct guitar of the same performance to run out to a miked cabinet later if we needed it. Adrian has an amazing Matchless amp that I was hoping to use for this.

This is a real bitch of a guitar passage and Robert new it. Hell, he wrote it! So, there was a bit of thin-ness in the air. Eventually, we got going (there were many interruptions during the process) and he cruised right through it. I guess we must have gotten the sound right, because for the first time this part sailed up over the top of the track in a way that it has never done before. Because the rhythm section (including Adrian) is so unbelievably heavy, Robert's lines have generally gotten lost in the mix no matter how loud we turn him up. But, today we solved that.

Pat did a few quick overdubs on this piece before Ken amde a rough mix, in all it's 13 minutes of glory.

Then I got Adrian to drop in his fairy fingers guitar for Larks' V so that I could begin writing a part for those sections. It looks as if we are going to be using the demo template for this one, that Pat and I started last week. We'll simply build up the rest of the parts around this take. I suppose using the word "simply" might be a bit of a stretch, for this piece is full of knots as well. Land mines, we call them. Places, where one false step can mean sudden death. Anyway, it's good that we can use the work that Pat and I have already begun. That gives me a great sense of relief.

Then we began work on a new idea for a vocal piece. We spent about an hour tracking the rough ideas to multi-track for Adrian to work out ideas to. Then we called it a day.

November 26, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

I had the studio to myself today. That is, just Ken and little old me. I began with Seizure. Pat has already built up a wild drum track for this one, so I laid down the bassline. Talk about minimalism. This one-note wonder of a bassline is a purring menace. It was penned mostly by Tony Levin, with a bit of an assist by yours truly, when he stopped by my place in New Mexico a few years back. He said "I have this idea, and Robert's going to love it!" And, of course, he did love it. We tried modulating to a few other keys, but gave up and let it just ride on C. We played this piece with ProjeKCt Four, and it smoked.

I put down two tracks of bass. Each one of them with a clean track and a distorted track. That gave us four tracks of bass. Ken panned the distortions hard left and right for the widest possible groove. Recording this piece was a cross between a Chinese water torture and being hypnotized by a cobra. 12 minutes of pounding C notes. One false step and you're dead. It would be total drag to go back and drop in if you lost the pulse. Fortunately I did the two passes, each, in one go. For the first pass I played the normally available C on my instrument. Then for the second pass I de-tuned the Warr Guitar so I could get a good clean extra low C note.

Something strange happened inside my little head while I was doing the second pass. I began to become transfixed by the pattern of Pat's snare drum. After a few minutes, words began to attach themselves to the snare. And after a few more minutes, all I could hear was the pounding bass and the words "Surrender Dog! Surrender!" over and over and over again. When I mentioned this to Ken, he heard exactly what I was talking about. Then neither of us could get away from it.

Next, I moved over to Larks' V and did the middle 15/8 section. This is a wicked part where I am playing a 4 against 3 rhythm and catching the odd notes of our devilish guitar player. I have been wood shedding this for about a week and decided to go ahead and get on with it. It went surprisingly quick, so we moved on.

Then, I wanted to try a few sounds out for the Fairy Fingers sections of Larks' V. So far, all we have in these sections is Robert's and Adrian's beautiful chime-like guitar parts. My plan is to write something to go over this. Originally I thought I would just write a bassline that would glide through the chord changes, but lately I've been thinking of working out a two part counterpoint with the bass and a high melody line. So, I needed to hear if the high melody sound I had in mind would work. I laid down a quick pass and found that it did. Hurrah! Now, I just have to write the part.

Lastly, we put on the tape with a groove that Pat had built up last week, and was keen for us to work to. I gave that a few shots on the bass but I can't say much came from it. However, the drums are pounding and I hope we can get a good track out of it.

So, I was done for the day and headed back to our apartment. With Pat and Bill gone (they went back to Austin for Thanksgiving) I had the place to myself. So, I had a bowl of soup, set-up my little practice amp and set to work on the Fairy Fingers sections of Larks' V. I spent about two hours on this. Mostly working on the first section. There are so many ways to play through this, especially with two melodic parts happening. I wrote a pretty good one and then began to improvise around the ideas in it. Then I took those same ideas and improvised them over the other two Fairy Fingers section. I think I will continue with this for a few more days. I'm still uncertain about two things with this: 1. how "sweet" to go, and 2. how to resolve the phrases. I can actually alter the harmony a fair bit with the bassline, and I would like to find a way to only "suggest" the tonic of the chords on one of the times that this section happens. Anyway, more work on this one.

November 29, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

It was a tedious day, today. All of us were very tired. Pat and Bill woke up at 5:00am to catch their flight in from Austin. I couldn't get to sleep last night until about 3:00am and had to get up early to pick them up from the airport. It was clearly a beginning day again after a few days break. Plus it was a Monday. Yep, even musicians suffer from the downer of a Monday.

But, we cranked up and blasted into work on the intro/outro for Larks' V. We worked out several variations on the main idea and then began putting them together. Some of them went with the intro and then some of them went with the outro. We couldn't have a picked a more brain-pickling musical idea to begin this tough day with. With Adrian and Robert exchanging interlocking notes, and the me jumping in for a triple note exchange, we were certainly pushing our capacity to keep it together.

Once we had worked these ideas out, we stopped for a quick break only to realize that it was already 4:00pm! We shifted gears for a bit and put up Seizure for Robert to overdubs some ideas on. This piece is still struggling to find it's large scale shape. So, we thought if Robert could go ahead and add some of his parts on, then Pat and I could do some arranging and find the best form for the piece.

We were so tired after this that we called it a Mexican Night, and rode off in the hot sauce sunset. Although after dinner we decided to go back to the studio and listen down through everything that we had already recorded. It was a good listen, but I was so tired that I can't say I caught too much of a vibe from it.

November 30, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

Strong day. We recorded Prozakc Blues from scratch. We had the basic idea for the tune from two weeks ago, but this morning we made the final arrangement decisions. Finding the form was quite a laborious process; there was a lot of "hemming and hawing and harumphing" until we were all in agreement. Of course, with all the famous "Crimson land mines" laid out all over the place (read: booby traps laid out in the music in order to lure the dozy musician into blowing himself into smithereens) we had a bit of chore in front of us to actually get through the form. But, on the third take we had it.

Pat nailed his part from the get-go. Adrian wanted to make a few changes so he re-did a few things. Then I was up. Pat and I decided that my sound was utterly pathetic and far too polite for the tune. So, I threw on the envelope filter and some fuzz. I asked Pat to wave to me from the control room as I adjusted the overdrive knob from 0 to 100. I figured he would stop me around 50 and say that that was enough distortion. Well, he didn't. He didn't even stop me when I got to 100. But, that was as far as the knob went so that was what we went with. It sounded great. The envelope filter added real rumble to the bottom end and gave us a huge, fat, angry-duck wah sound on some of attacks. I was turned on to this filter by Brad Houser, the most awesome bass player and member of Seattle's finest, Critters Buggin'. Due to this new and improved sound, I re-cut the whole track. I was very tired, because it was around 4:30 and my low time of the day, but I actually played quite well.

Next up was Robert, and I sat in the producer's chair for him. We loved all of the strings that he had laid down with the original band track. Aside from that, Robert laid out for most of the rest of the tune. So, he needed to hone his ideas for playing some of the sections. This is where the recording process can be a huge asset to composition. He could lay down an idea, come into the control, adjust the mix accordingly and hear exactly how everything was linking together. It is just impossible to do this in the studio through the headphones. This is why I always prefer to record in the control room. Sitting at the board I can immediately hear how I can make the smallest changes in my sound to fit better with the music.

So, Robert worked through some ideas and we found the cream of the crop and printed them. He had a great challenge to play one of interlocking lines along with us. The challenge wasn't really in the playing of the line, but in the fact that he had to play it with the feel that Pat and I were in. Our feel was in absolute contradiction with his line. Plus, we were accentuating all of the laziness of a slow blues. So, he was a trooper by blending his feel with ours. At about 9:00pm, Ken and I started getting tired and began making some errors. Fortunately Robert nailed the ending chord and we were done.

So, one more basic track done.

December 1, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

Very productive day, although I only played one note. We decided to work on Larks' V, instead of Seizure. Robert was pumped up to nail his parts on this one. But, first Ken discovered a bad punch-in on my part for Prozakc Blues. And, it turned out it was right on one of my finest moments. There was a huge 12 beat gap after one of the verses that I did a wonderful slide in. Bummer! Oh well, life goes... I must do it again. I cued up the same sound and Ken punched me in. Sounded good to us. My work as a player is done for the day, let's move on.

Up next was the great Roberto for some of the most difficult guitar playing the world has even seen. No joke here. I mean, you can't feel sorry for the guy because he wrote these parts. Plus, he's been practicing for this style of playing for nearly as long as I have known him (over 14 years!) But still, this is the most difficult articulation on a guitar that is in any repertoire, period. Of course, it won't come off like that because of all the chaos that Pat and I are laying along side of it. But, trust me, it is. And, I should know.

Anyway, with Ken at the helm of the board and myself in the "Big Ears" seat, we were ready to roll. The actual "playing" part went very quickly. Robert played through the entire piece three times. Then Ken and I sent him away and our real work began. Our task was to make the most awesome, "biting-est", guitar part out of the three passes. Because we were working on only three ADAT machines, where we would normally have four (one of them went our of commission while I was tracking yesterday) we had to deal with an extra level of technical interference. We had to keep popping different combinations of three out of four tapes in and out of the machines to be able to compare the different takes. In the end we used nearly all of Robert's third pass and a few small bits from the second pass.

I think his playing really smokes on this track. He is, in no small way, driving this piece. So we really had to focus in and get an amazing guitar sound before we began, and then be extremely critical with the playing. Once we had comped the whole track there was still something bugging us about the entrance of the guitar each time. It had nothing to do with Robert's performance, but something about the attack of the first note didn't work. We finally sussed out that it was the attack on the compression that he had on the guitar. Once he had gotten going in the motor perpetuo it was fine. But, the first note was being adversely effected. So, we brought him back in and demanded (Yes!) more. He indulged us by pulling back on the compressor and giving us just the first few notes of each section. And, now we were happy. Hurrah, Larks' V is getting close!

One might criticize this approach to the making of a King Crimson record. I mean by that, that this is clearly a "performance" band with a high degree of technical excellence. And therefore, there should be no reason to go punching in a few notes here or there. Especially, only because the sound isn't quite right. I strongly disagree. What we are making is a record, not a performance, and I want to hear everything at it's best. There will be plenty of opportunity for people to hear live versions of these pieces, with the "performance" aspect stretched to the absolute edge. My hope for this record that we can get amazing sounds AND great performances. So far, I know we have.

Next up was Pat for the middle 15/16 section of this track. The idea was for Pat to double my part. However I played with an extremely free feel during this section. So, we had our work cut out for us: how loose should Pat play? should I re-cut some of my parts to follow him? how will all of this line with Robert? and more. It was nearly the end of my capacity to stay focused for the day, but Pat was up and cruising so I feed off of his energy. We tried all sorts of approaches with this part. In the end we came up with a fantastic solution: Pat would only double just the most convincing of my hits. For the rest of his tom overdubs he would either play around my part, or play something totally different. The end result, (of course!) was fantastic. Sometimes he reinforced what I was doing and sometimes he was playing off of it. All of this, we hoped, would drive Robert's guitar to further heights.

I suppose I didn't mention that Robert tracked his guitar parts for the whole piece, minus this section. He will do that tomorrow. At that point he has two options: play with Pat and I in our feel, or play to the click. If we go for option two, because admittedly our feel is in distinct contradiction to the feel of the guitar part, then we need to see if our parts still work or if the rhythm section needs to re-track to the new guitar part. I said that our feel is in contradiction with the guitar feel. This doesn't mean that one is wrong and one is right. What I mean is that the guitar playing is a continuo part (constant 16th notes) driving with a consistent small scale pulse: every note is measured evenly. My part is far from that: each part of the phrase is stretched and pulled depending on the larger shape of the sections. So, our discovery with this lies in how well they work together. Perhaps, they will co-exist beautifully. Or perhaps, one world may have to bend slightly to the other. All this and more, we will discover tomorrow. Personally, as tedious as this can be, this part of making records really fascinates me.

December 2, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

8:00am. Well it's not customary for me to be having performance anxiety dreams while I'm making a record, but last night I did. Actually there wasn't much anxiety, but there were piles of confusion heaped everywhere.

This four piece Crimson was playing a concert somewhere in France. It was a large wooden hall with a very small opening between the stage and the audience. Basically only a few of the thousand present could actually see us playing. It was our debut gig, as this group, and we went on stage and began to play. Immediately we got lost in the material and began improvising and tried to regain the form of the piece. This was the coolest part of the dream, because what we played was fantastic.

Due to the fact that no one could see us, people started coming out onto the stage. They were meandering about between us as we played. One particular dope was leaning over and looking very closely at Adrian's pedal board. When I turned towards him, all I could see was his butt pointing right at me. So, naturally I gave it a firm kick right on the down beat.

By now there were about fifty people wandering all over the stage and between each of the musicians. Fortunately the power went out and we all left the stage.

10:30pm. Another very productive day, and I didn't play one single note. We began where we left off yesterday: the middle 15/16 section of Larks' V. But, now it was time for Robert to follow Pat and myself. Good luck buddy!

Actually it went quite quickly. We tweaked the guitar sound a lot before he really went for it. First we tried a clean sound. That sounded good and clearly articulated when Robert was in the low register, but in the higher registers it sounded like small rodents being killed. So, then we tried a power overdrive sound. This was almost just right, but it was missing some of the necessary attack. Fortunately we were also recording the dry sound right off the guitar, and that would give us the edge. My plan is to send the dry sound out to Adrian's Matchless amp(the most awesome amp known to mankind) and mic it up. Then we'll mix that in with the overdrive guitar tracks. We'll get to that part in another day or two. But, for now we had some fun with the dry sound. Namely, we would turn it up real loud in the mix purely for the utter humiliation of the guitarist. This was because it sounded as if some very sick Hee-Haw banjo player was jamming along with Robert's part.

Anyway, aside from Banjo Fun, Robert got a great take. He played it down four times, and we used take number three. He had a real challenge playing along with Pat and I, for we were marking out a four against three polyrhythm across his line. He said that every time he began to listen to my line it would trick him and throw him off. The irony is that every single one of my notes is just picking off of one of the notes out of his fast lines. So all I am doing is just articulating part of his part. Admittedly, it is a rather obscure approach AND I am feeling the time very differently to him. However, it all worked. Robert slid into our feel and everything gelled. Then he put down the intro and outro for the piece and we were pretty much done with this for the time being.

Adrian came down to play on Larks' IV and Prozakc Blue. I needed some fresh air, so I headed out to work with Bill in the garage while Pat and went in to cheer him on.

Bill was working on Larks' IV. He had transferred all of the current parts from the ADAT master tapes into the Pro-tools set-up. He and Pat have been going through the drum tracks to sweeten up the sound and do a few more overdubs. Now was my chance to do some tweaking on the bass sound. First we ran my direct sound out to my bass amp, turned it up enormously loud and miked it with the biggest mic in the studio. My approach to miking is: the bigger the mic, the better. We recorded a pass of this and then re-fuzzed the fuzz bass track. Ahhh... now things are really starting to sound fat.

Once we had done that we were fried. So, we headed out to Nashville's finest for dinner: The Cracker Barrel. Even Ken had to come with us. I mean who can pass up the chance to order a side of vegetables with these choices: macaroni and cheese, dumplin's and fried apples?

December 3, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee / My Father's birthday

Wow! Intense day. I was in the control for seven and a half hours straight. Normally I can do 10, 12 or more hours a day in the studio. But, this work is completely draining. By about hour 5, Ken and I were completely bug-eyed and drooling.

We were mainly working on The Construkction of Light. Robert was dubbing in some new ideas on the falling lines. He did several passes adding up to three different harmonies on each. Then he dubbed in some "mysteriouso glue" chords in the triple off-set section. All this took only about an hour to record. But, then it would take Ken and I about two hours to bounce together down to two tracks.

Ken is a lot more methodical an engineer then I could ever be. He's very detailed about keeping the tape clean of unused material. As an engineer, I am a mess. I put guitar parts all over the place and then comp the parts together and not erase the originals. Then I end up with confusion dribbling all over the track. My solution to a messy multi-track is to bolding start erasing things. If you lose something you really needed, well then tough! Record it again.

Ken, on the other hand, cleans up as he goes along. So, we would copy over Robert's tracks to another ADAT tape. Then bounce together as many as six tracks to a single pair, while adjusting the pan position of each track as we go along. Then we would go back and erase all the original tracks. Next we would bounce the comped pair to it's final destination tracks, if they weren't already there. Then we would wipe the tracks from where the comp had come from. Whew! But, now the track sheet would be all clean, organized and ready for mixing.

Once we had worked through The Construkction of Light, then we moved on to Larks' V. Now Larks' V has it's own quirks. Mainly because we added an intro and an outro to the piece after Pat and I had already built up the original template. But, the intro was on the tape after the end of the outro. So, at some point we will move the intro back around to the front of the track and then sew up the seam. Today, the work was finishing up the playing on the intro and the outro.

We had some hilarious moments with this one. This section required that Robert, Adrian and myself record simultaneously. One part of it involves some very obscure offset playing. "Offsets" is one of our terms for playing in circulation. Where, for example, Adrian plays a note, then I play a note and then Robert plays a note. We can go round and round in this way, working through a melody in a circle. However, for the end of Larks' V we are doing this, but playing in five. So, instead of going in a full circle we are circulating like this: Adrian, Robert, Trey, Adrian, Robert, and then we begin again. Since this goes pretty fast, we were having a real struggle to keep it going. It was getting near the end of the day and I was feeling particularly loopy. We kept cracking up whenever it would break down. Until we finally said, screw it, and just let Adrian go ahead and do his part first. (He was the only reliable circulator at this point.) Then Robert and I would track to his part.

What followed was one of those wonderfully absurd experiences that can only happen in a recording studio near the end of the day. Adrian would lay down his part. Then Robert would lay down his to Adrian's. Then Adrian would go back in and re-do his part to synch up with a particular aspect of what Robert had just done. Then Robert would go back in and re-do his part to catch something that Adrian had added. And on we went. Hey, who can complain? Each time we went through another round the track would get better. I opted out of this procedure for now. After they had their parts done then I went in and played to them. I must say being last does have it's advantages: I only had to do two passes.

And this was only for the intro. We still had to do the outro to do! Eventually Robert made the call that we needed to stop for the day and begin fresh tomorrow. We had gotten some really good stuff to tape today and needed to stop.

Bill and Pat and I headed into town for the best meal of the session at a place called The Tin Angel. Yes!

Dozed off to a recording of the Schnittke string quartets 2 and 3 by The Lark Quartet. I picked this recording up the other day at a used store in town. I've been looking forward to hearing these quartets for a while. There is new recording by The Kronos Quarter of these works, but I haven't felt strong enough about them to hand over the $30.00 for the set. So, when I found this version I went for it. I have to say I am pretty disappointed. Not by the works themselves, but the recordings. The instruments are miked so close, it's irritating. I don't want to sit with my head wedged right in the middle of the four instruments. I want to hear the sound of the strings blending together in the room. Oh well, I suppose that means I must finally give in and get The Kronos versions.

December 4, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

Today was mostly a technical day. We did begin by doing some playing. Robert, Adrian and myself finished up all the playing on the outro for Larks' IV. This was fairly painless, although I became a bit edgy when it became clear that, in addition to my regular part, I needed to double Robert's part. The reason for my apprehension was that Robert's part was extremely oblique. First of all, the reason that it became clear that I should double him was because I was functioning as the glue in this section. But, to be a real effective glue I had to double both him and Adrian. What Robert was doing was playing the same phrase as Adrian but just a sixteenth note later -- a sort of real time echo part. Fortunately it was a lot easier to play than I had thought. I got it in two passes, thank you!

Once that was done, Ken moved the intro to the beginning of the track. We were actually building up the intro after the end of the track. So, now with it put in the proper place (the beginning, where most intro's belong!) we could really start putting the piece together. Robert added some wonderfully mysterious glue chords to the intro and the outro. While we were comping together the outro mysteriouso chords, Ken pointed out that the first chord was the exact same chord that you hear from the transporter room on Star Trek. Right-o! Well, if it works.....

The next step for the day was for Bill to bring the Pro-tools set-up into the control and dump over all the fine tuning he's been doing to Larks' IV, back over to the original mutli-tracks. Bill has been out in the garage tweaking the drum, bass and guitar sounds. Now we would synch all his work up and dump it back. This went a lot quicker than I thought it would. We called it a day about 8:30pm and headed out into the night for good company and good eats.

Tonight, Beck is on Saturday Night Live. A show that I can't bear to watch, but for the musical guests. Can't wait see what he does. Last night we saw Fiona Apple on the tube de la boob. I like Fionna fine, but I love her drummer! Yep, Matt Chamberlain again. Matt is the guy!

December 5, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

9:00am. Well, Beck was OK last night. Good, but not great. Fantastic band, but far fewer "bubbles" then on the new record.

I could have been wrong about the Schnittke record. The final piece on it is a piano quintet. That is, a string quartet and one piano, not five pianos as you might rightly guess. Generally I can't bear the wonderful sound of string quartet trampled upon by a piano (even though I love playing the piano), but this piece smokes. It is very austere and the strings have subdued their vibrato to nearly nothing. (I nearly wrote vibrator! hmmm, that brings up some interesting possibilities.) The writing is brilliant and the extreme separation of the strings somehow works. It's still slightly disturbing hearing the intimate details of each string part surrounding the piano, but.... well what I can I say, it works.

Pat, Bill and myself are going into the studio today to work on something new from scratch. We have the Pro-tools set-up patched into the control from yesterday, so we will be recording directly onto the hard drive for a change. We're looking for something fast and cruising.

10:15pm. Excellent day, though it's not over yet. Pat, Bill and myself built up a new track from scratch. Our working title is Spy Kritter, but I'm sure it will change. It came from one of my riffs blended with a vibe from Pat. We came up with a few different arrangements, before finally whittling it down to the final one we recorded. Actually, Bill was recording everything we did while we were arranging. This proved quite useful once it came time to put everything together.

Pat and I played down two takes. Satisfied that we had what we needed, we moved into edit mode. This seems to be the modern musician's mode of making a record: for every ten minutes of playing music there are four to six hours of editing and production. (Not to mention 24 to 48 hours of dealing with the business of selling it.) After an hour of sifting through everything we had, we found a new arrangement. Because we were recording in Pro-tools (a computer based recording system) we could change the order of each section. So, we put together a final arrangement. Then Pat went out a did an quick overdub. When he was finished, the plan was for me to do some overdubbing to build up a mysterious vibe around the track.

But, when we turned around, Robert was standing there. He was going to have a day off today. At least he thought so! Hey, if he's here, I'm not going to go out and add mystery to the track. Plus, I already had an awesome bass part. So, Robert powered up his rig and we started recording. He did one short pass across the beginning, playing some very strange moodiness that was just what I thought we needed. But, he wasn't quite settled with it, so we did another take. This time we started recording about a minute before Pat and myself came in. Instead of the previous moodiness, Robert caught us off guard with an absolutely beautiful soundscape. He kept it going through the entire piece and even went on for another two minutes after Pat and I finished. Wow, this was getting really good!

We cued him up again, because we really wanted a blistering solo at the end. I was a little nervous about starting him at the top of the track, because he might use himself up before we got to the end where we definitely needed the soloing. But, Robert is always full of surprises, so we put him in right at the top. Sure enough, he was smoking. I could feel that he was pacing himself, even through the section where we were hoping for him to really cut loose. When Pat and I stopped playing, I had Bill stop the recording so we could back up just before the final groove and drop Robert in again so he would really blister all over the track. Oops, I heard a terrible yelp from the other room. "What happened?" Yikes, now I understood! He wanted to play over the soundscape after Pat and I dropped out. That what he was pacing himself for. Well, I killed that one flat. I knew better then to try to re-capture the moment, it was gone for good. We did back up the tape for another blow, but it was over.

What we did get was amazing. The track has taken a real turn to the left. Now we needed to reassess our arrangement. The amazing thing about soundscapes is that you can never estimate your experience of time with them. No matter how much space we would have left for a soundscape in the arrangement, it never would have been long enough. They blossom so slow and deliberately that you really need to fit the groove to them, instead of vice versa.

Pat went out to get us some sandwiches while Bill and I re-worked the piece against what Robert had given us. Now, this was getting good. There is a such an emotional impact, in a way that we haven't gotten from any of the other material yet. What is needed next is to get Adrian to come in and add something. All three of Pat, Bill and myself have tons of ideas of what Adrian could offer that no other musician could. But, I think it would be best if we let him surprise all of us, too.

By about 8:30pm we were ready for a break, but we weren't ready to stop working on this one. So, we decided to break down the computer gear and take it back to the apartment where we were staying. That way we could keep editing and trying out some new ideas.

1:30am. Well we spent the evening editing. We found some great material from the rough play-through of these ideas from an earlier night. Bill edited them into our current version while Pat and I cheered from the sidelines. Throwing out odd the odd comment or two.

None of us are tired but we must stop and go to bed because we are going to cut the Demolition song tomorrow.

December 6, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

Today was the perfect recording day. We tracked a new piece, The World is My Oyster..., from scratch to near completion. This track came from an early jam track that we had done called Demolition. We put together the arrangement and laid down a version. The Nays had it that we should do another take. We did, and the Ayes had it that we had it. Pat did one small punch-in. Then I did one small punch-in. Then Adrian jumped forward with a rough vocal. For fun I suggested he sing the vocal through one of my Smokey Amps and hold that up to the mic. This gave his voice a very raw and raunchy quality.

Now that we had the rough vocal, we could get a picture of the track as a whole. The big picture was taking shape and the real needs of the track were coming into clear view. Firstly, Adrian thought that he could improve his guitar sound. He put together a far strong sound and he re-tracked the whole piece. Then the rhythm section made a few minor changes in our parts to help the vocal out. I probably should mention here that this piece is a sort of "controlled mayhem and madness" piece due to the fact that Adrian and Robert are playing together in a certain time signature (I think 4/4, but I'm not entirely sure) and Pat and I are in a totally different universe. OK, not totally different, but we are doing our best to tear everything apart. We are playing in 11/8, with myself on pumping bass and chords stabs, and Pat on crashing smashing drum bits. Plus, I am generally disregarding Adrian's chord changes. Tremendous fun!

Next up was Robert. Actually Adrian was ready to go for his solo, but I could feel Robert winding himself up in the other room. He was itching to burn. So, I suggested we get him in quickly while he was hot and firing. What I wanted to hear was Robert's spidery piano solo sound. He was in an obliging mood, so he let us have it. Oh my lord, this was the perfect thing for this track! It was as if a wild and disturbed ferret had gotten loose inside an old tack piano during a barroom brawl. Fantastic chaos! Spidey delivers.

Adrian was right on Robert's tail, although his solo took over the track first. Great winding up out of the guitar riff break that he plays at the end of each section. But, instead of heading back into the song, the guitar storms out into a blistering screech. I haven't the faintest idea how Adrian was getting these sounds out of his guitar. He calls it his pixelated sound, but I just call it plain hot!

I said earlier that Pat and I were the chaos factor, but now was the time for us to make a small nod in the direction of the singer. We found two short little spots (two quick bars each) where we could re-do our parts and "go with the voice" for a change of pace. Pat's idea for this was to give it a little "Dear Prudence" vibe for a quick cut and then back into the smash zone. Often we will punch-in together for maximum vibe, but this time he went first and then I followed. Good call on this one, Pat. For the second "nod to the singer" I went in first. It worked so well that Pat decided not to change his part.

And that was it for the day. Tomorrow Adrian will begin with vocals for Prosakc Blues. Then I'm hoping we can do a little diving into Spy Kritters. Ya!

December 7, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

A completely dud day for me. Neither a work day or a day off. What a pisser! Since Adrian was going to be vocalizing for the early shift, I thought I could take that time off, do some X-mas shopping and then return later in the afternoon. I haven't had a day off since Thanksgiving and was looking forward to a break.

I still needed to drop Bill off at the studio and we had to run some errands on the way. By the time I left the studio it was about 12:30. It took about 45 minutes to get into Nashville and I didn't have much luck with the shopping. It was ridiculously crowded everywhere. Another 45 minutes back out to Adrian's and it's about 3:00pm. I should have know that he would still be working and I wasn't needed. I did a little practice, but gave up on that. I went out to the garage where Bill was working. It was about 38 degrees in there. We looked at each other and said "Let's get out of here!" So we loaded up the computer, so he could still work back at the apartment and left.

December 8, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

9:00am. I had an apocalyptic dream early this morning. This is very odd to me because I haven't really given the turning of the millennium much thought at all.

I was in a urban neighborhood somewhere. It was sunny so it couldn't have been my home of Seattle. I looked off toward the horizon one morning (interestingly enough, it wasn't New Years' Eve but a few weeks prior) and I saw giant rockets shooting up into the sky. At first I saw five taking off together. They were a cross between a missile and a space rocket, and each one looked different. Then about 30 minutes later, more and more missiles began taking off and shooting out into all directions of the horizon.

It was at this point that pandemonium began to break out. Everyone around me "knew" that the end(or at least some kind of end) was near. For the next two days there was terror in the streets. Pat and I were living together in some sort of an apartment that had been cyclone-fenced off for protection. We didn't build it ourselves, but somehow just moved into it. Both his family and mine were socked away in another area of town. (Boy, this is really beginning to sound like a touring musician's nightmare!)

Anyway, for these first two days people were driving around the town stockpiling goods: whether bought, found or stolen. The were gangs of thugs running around breaking things and harassing people. And, people everywhere were moving in fear. Pat and I were building up our reserves (another musician's metaphor?), and we occasionally saw our families during the process (OK, this is all starting to make some sense now.) Somehow we knew that they were setting themselves up OK, even though we didn't know exactly where they were and what they were doing. (Yikes, I think I better finish up this record and get home!)

By the end of these two days, not much was happening and the general ambiance of fear began to fade. Pat and I had found an old piano that we had wheeled into the entrance way of our apartment. We still had a little bit of running water and do a sort-of a mini-shower each day. We began to talk to our neighbors and they began to talk to us. There was actually a good feeling emerging as the days went on.

Eventually we hitched a ride from some people in a passing car and set off to find our families.

10:00pm. Well, Prozakc Blues is done, cooked and ready. The vocals were begun yesterday and finished today. This has some fun surprises

Next we dove into the Heavy Rock Tune, also know as Sgt.. Heavy Dude, and Sgt.. Hard Rock. We wrote a bridge for it, but this piece is still finding itself. We are going to begin tomorrow with it.

Bill has been out in the garage all day fine tuning the sounds on The Construkction of Light. He has been pumping the drums and bass parts out to various amplifiers and miking them. What an improvement this has been.

Also, we have finally taking a real group decision. We have agreed that all members of the band and crew must come supplied, for the next tour, with their own personal Stadium Pals (www.stadiumpal.com). We're all getting sized up right now. There is no end to the improvement of our future lives on the road with this new addition.

December 9, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

Hmmmmmm... Well, this was one of THOSE days. One of those days where nothing sounded very good to me. Not myself, not the ideas we were working with, not the sound in the control, nothing.

One of the tough parts of making a record is when you are nearing the end. This is because you've already tackled the material that is obvious in it's developmental needs. At the end, you're left with either the material that is the weakest or the material that needs the most help.

So, here we were today trying to revitalize the Heavy Rock Tune. It was a real challenge. It seemed to have lost something of it's original excitement. So, we were trying to resuscitate it. Or were we trying to resuscitate ourselves? I forget which. In the end we made some great headway with it. At Robert's suggestion we have altered the form with instrumental sections that frame the vocal bits. We have also reduced the amount of the vocal material to the bare essence. So far, the piece is only three and a half minutes long. Well, we can't have that. We must stretch it to follow suit with the ongoing epic proportions we are accustomed to. Or can we? Well, maybe we can.

We decided to let it go for now, event though we are anxious to get working towards a real take.

Next up was to get Adrian to play something over the Spy Kritter piece that Pat and I started. We made a few suggestions and he went out and wailed. It seems that the best way to work this one out is to get everyone to do a few passes and then do further editing in Pro-tools. That is the plan with what Adrian gave us. Now that he has made a contribution we can see where we need to alter the arrangement. And on it goes, round and round.

Everyone was pretty wasted by now. Pat went out into the garage to work with Bill on his drum sounds for The Construkction of Light. I took this as my time to try a few ideas on the fairy fingers section of Larks' IV. This is a tricky little ditty. In a certain way it calls out for a bass solo. But, I am resisting that approach. I am keen on finding a really unique way of developing this section. My idea was to use by oboe-ish sound to weave a melody through these extremely difficult chord changes. They aren't difficult because they are hard to play, but because of the relationship between. They are a moving sequence that descends in a way that gives no common tones between any of the changes. This means that I can't sustain any notes over the chord changes. I have to move to a different key for each one and yet give the feeling of a continuous line.

Or at least this has been my aim. I tried a few things and discovered several approaches that would not work. Firstly I can not play in the same register as Robert and Adrian. For some reason (I suppose because of the extremely strong amount of high harmonic information) I just can't fit in, in the sound up high. Secondly, many of the notes that I thought would work, don't. What I did find that would work is to play in a low range below the guitars. This isn't playing as a bass player, but really more as a bassoon would do.

This was fairly convincing, so I brought Robert in to hear my work in progress. He agreed with all the difficulty I am having. He also agreed that the bassoon approach would work. But, possible I wouldn't want to use that for every Fairy Finger section of the piece. One of his suggestions was to play as a third chiming instrument along with the guitar textures. Since, by now, I was totally fried, I told Ken to go ahead and shut down the recording process on this one. But, I did go out into the studio and work on this idea.

And, lo and behold, I remembered something. This was exactly the approach I had taken when we first began to work on these chord sequences with Projekct Two over two years ago. Of course, I had worked out a ringing chime text with my instrument by simultaneously tapping and pulling off chords with the right hand while my left hand held another chord. Hurrah! Now I will this out for another go on Larks' V in a day or two.

1:00am. Just finished up some editing work on the Spy Kritter piece. It has been a good night, although we still have more work to do on this one. We'll play our work for Adrian and Robert tomorrow and see how it plays to their ears.

December 10, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

And, a very excellent day! We began with the heavy rock tune. Robert came in with a new arrangement for the ending and he, Pat and myself put it in place. Then Adrian came downstairs with a new vocal bridge idea. We worked on that and then put it in place. Next, we put down a version of what we had to the multi-track tapes and went in for listen through.

Mostly it was good, but there were a few problems. There was only one problem in form that we noticed. This was the chromatic lines at the end of the piece. Currently we were playing three chromatic sections. This was one too many, so we pulled the first of the three. The other problems were purely ones of tonal center. A few of the earlier chromatic lines were beginning, or ending, on the wrong pitches. So, we went back into the studio and dug into this question.

We tried out a few different solutions. The first was for us to change the key of Adrian's new bridge. He came up with a few new possibilities before we settled on moving it from F# to B. Then worked our way outwards towards the chromatic sections, modifying the key centers as we went. We came up with a new arrangement and played that down. But, no, something was still wrong. So, we pulled things around a little and then it became clear that the bridge was already correct in the first key of F#. We just needed to restructure a little by adding another singing verse after the bridge.

Ah.... now we had our arrangement. What had originally begun as a strong (but repetitive) vocal chord piece had now evolved into a real King Crimson arrangement. A full blown Crimson Classic with lot's of intriguing instrumental changes around a wonderfully strange vocal line.

So, we tracked it to tape. Adrian made a few quick changes in his part and then it was up to Pat. Because he was triggering a lot of extra sounds to keep the overall vibe going for us as we laid down the track, he really needed to hone in on his part. I suspected that he might just go ahead and re-do the whole drum track. But, he didn't need to. He made some small changes here and there, and then we tried some different textures here and there. Most of the work was done on finding the best way for the drums to drop out of the various one bar breaks in the tune. By 7:00pm Pat was done.

I'm up next for a few changes, but we decided to begin fresh tomorrow. Most of my track is fine (I have a fantastic fuzz sound, which is becoming my signature sound for this record), but there are a few new ideas I'd like to try.

December 11, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

I was up first this morning. Well, actually Pat made a few changes before me and then I dug in. I only ended up altering a one verse before we had the idea of trying something wilder on the Chromatic Run sections at the end. What I had on tape was pretty good, but I wanted to give a good shot at a few throw-aways.

Throw -aways are what we call it when you already have a good enough part on tape. A part that you could easily leave because it is perfectly good and fine. Now that you have your safety-net take, laying there, then you take your throw-away. This is your chance to go off the deep end with the freedom of knowing that you can always fall back on your original take. So, I did a few throw-aways on the final two Chromatic Run sections. One of them was fantastic. Because Robert and Adrian are playing these lines that pull against any sense of tonality I have the freedom to either lay down a solid groove or move even further away from a tonal center. For these takes I chose the "going further" approach. And it paid off. I can't wait to do this live, because I suspect we will pull the listeners ears even further by stretching these lines longer and longer.

Now that I was done with this piece, Adrian and Robert went in to work on their parts. So, Pat and I dove into Larks' V in the garage with Bill. While this piece has come out quite amazing, we still have a lot of work to do on it. Essentially we are producing from the bottom up again, now that it is in Pro-tools.

Pat and I began with working on the outro. Pat came up with some wild metal gong-ish type sounds that we slowed down and stretched to pull across the whole final section. Then I recorded some sustaining delayed bass line over the same part. Then Bill began cleaning up the whole piece. This involves taking out any extraneous noise on any instruments track. If someone isn't playing for a split second, then Bill goes in and erases that small bit. If some particular sound can benefit from any minor equalizing or compressing or tweaking, then he goes in and does that. This whole process gives the piece a new fresh and clear feeling to it.

What Pro-tools, itself, is allowing us to do is produce this music to a level that just isn't possible with conventional recording. The music is just far too complicated to do this kind of thing in the analogue domain. As much as I miss the purely analogue process, it just wouldn't work for this record. I am still hoping that we can mix the record to analogue tape, for I think it would sound better. But, we'll have to wait and see when the time comes for that.

As far as Spy Kritter goes (which has now been renamed Heaven and Earth), Robert absolutely loves it. It's still uncertain whether is remain a Projekct X track, as it seemed as of two days ago, or whether is will upgrade itself to the KC record. Robert made a suggestion for a replacement for the current coda that we had. Pat and I are going to work on that, first thing, tomorrow.

December 12, 1999 Nashville, Tennessee

Today was a Heaven and Earth day. We found the new coda groove, and it is so sa-weeeet! Instead of working in the studio we decided to go ahead and record directly into Bill's Pro-tools set-up in the garage. And sin