Six-month goal

By some freak of fortune, the practice studio K and I use is named after a source of nourishment cherished by the creature who lends its name to our recording studio. Banana / Chimpanzee: the two businesses are entirely separate from one another. In hindsight, the jungle metaphor probably should have worked itself into our group name so that we'd feel at home while swinging from one to the other.

K and I returned to Banana last week. I have relearned the bass parts for the songs D and LB and thereby re-acquired calluses on my fingertips (which are slightly different than the ones I already had for guitar). I'm itching for some quality recordings, the key to which is first setting down strong bass and drum tracks at Chimpanzee. The rest can be done at home. We have six completed songs for the album that have not yet been satisfactorily recorded, and it feels now as if they are standing in the way of our completing new material. Getting these songs recorded should be the goal of the next six months.

The song LB, I realized, was first recorded at too high a pitch for me or K to sing comfortably. So, I cranked my guitar down one whole step this afternoon and, playing it, wondered why I hadn't thought to lower the key earlier; say, before we performed the song last July. Rather than reconfigure the bass and guitar parts, I think I'll just tune the instruments down to the low-tension setting. If this results in less psychological tension in the song itself, which is required by the subject-matter, then it will have to be created by some other means. (It turned out that playing one half step down did the trick.)