Cadence Elizabeth Kingsley—who was four weeks and one day old on this day and was now routinely called Caydee by her parents and almost everyone else who knew her—lay contentedly in her father’s arms as he sat before a mixing board in the main room of Blake Studios Studio A. She was dressed in a warm, fuzzy green onesie and had a red pull-down cap covering the top of her head and her ears to combat the perpetual chill of the studio. Her gray-green eyes looked up at his face and she enjoyed the gentle, almost subconscious rocking he was imparting to her as he listened to the tracks playing through his headset. Jake had turned the external speaker on the board up a bit, allowing her to hear what was playing in the headsets. They had found that she tended not to cry or fuss much if there was music—any kind of music, even Matt’s heavy metal sound—playing.
Matt sat to Jake’s right, a pair of cans on his own head. Rory, one of the studio techs assigned to Project Tisdale, sat on Jake’s left, his hands hovering over the switches and dials. Inside one of the isolation rooms, on the other side of a thick pane of soundproof glass, Corban Slate, Matt’s rhythm guitarist, sat on a stool, his Brogan Troposphere electric guitar in his hands. He was strumming out an overdub of the chorus for Matt’s title cut,
Jake took his left hand off Caydee for a moment and made a throat cutting gesture to Rory. Rory reached down and pushed the master stop button on the board, instantly halting all the prerecorded tracks of the piece, leaving only the sound of Corban’s guitar. Once Corban heard this, he stopped his playing as well. He looked at them through the glass, a questioning look on his face.
Jake pushed the intercom button before him and spoke into the microphone. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Corban,” he told him. “I’m just not liking the way this is playing out. Hang for a few while we talk it over.”
Corban nodded his understanding.
“What did he fuck up?” Matt asked. “It sounded okay to me.”
“No fuck up,” Jake said, making no effort to watch his language or police the language of others in front of his daughter. He and Laura had pretty much decided that Caydee might as well get used to the world she lived in and the family she was being brought up in from the outset. And the word “fuck” was an integral part of that world and that family.
“Then what’s the deal?” Matt asked.
“Like I said, I just don’t like the way it’s playing out. The notes are too subtle. The listener won’t even be able to hear a difference unless Corban goes a little stronger on them. But if he does that, it will become too obvious that there are two instruments playing in unison.”
“Then what’s the point of doing it at all?” Matt asked. Though he had come a long way since the last
“The chorus melodies will sound a little flat if we don’t get those string strikes in there,” Jake explained. “The tune would work without them, but not as well as with them.”
“What’s the fuckin’ answer then?” Matt asked, a hint of impatience in his voice, but controlled impatience.
Jake looked over at Corban for a moment and then back at Matt. “I think the problem is that he is using the same instrument he used on the basic track. It doesn’t sound any different, so it just blends in over the top.”
“He needs to use a different guitar then?” Matt asked.
“That’s right,” Jake said. “Preferably an acoustic electric or even a miked standard acoustic. Remember when we did
Matt nodded thoughtfully. At the time, he had been vehemently opposed to that particular overdub, but these days he was on record as agreeing that it had worked well. “Yeah,” he said. “That did work there. You did the same thing on a few of your solo tunes too.”
“I did,” Jake agreed. “I used the technique on
“All right,” Matt said. “I guess we can try this shit.”
“Cool,” Jake said. “Does Corban have an acoustic?”
“I don’t know,” Matt said. “I’ve never seen him with one. He sure as shit doesn’t have one here. He just has the Brogan and the Telecaster.”