Week Thirty-Four: Jesse Sample’s Freak of the Week “Brackish”

Jesse Sample’s Freak of the Week airs EVERY WEDNESDAY at 6pm Eastern ONLY on RadioRadioX.com

This is Jesse Sample. What do you think of when you think of “Post production?” In movies, its everything from editing to color correction. In music, it’s mixing and mastering. Last night, I wrote and recorded some tracks with a longtime friend and we walk out of the studio at half past midnight pleased with our work. Not overjoyed, not ecstatic and not hanging off the rafters. We were pleased to have created something new and we were a bit tired.

Let’s back up a min. If you’ve been keeping up, you’ll know that I collaborated last week with Roseanna Grimaldi. It went well. I thought, “Why not do it again?” I called her up toward the end of the week and asked if she wanted to, and she said yes. And we met again yesterday, a Monday, and we started by working on some of the material she is developing for her upcoming album. And then we turned to the weekly project.

Well, let’s back up again. I was out on the Dutch Apple with a group of friends, and I was drinking a Stella and talking to a friend of mine, Victor. And somehow, we were talking about “Brackish.” Naturally, being three beers in, I texted Rosa “Think of the ‘word Brackish’”  and she replied, “Done!”

It’s a weird word. Google it.

Fast forward to yesterday, a Monday, she had some ideas and a few lines written. And we started in. I played an intro on guitar. She tried some lyrics against it and I noodled around why she working through her rhythm. This time around the process was a bit different. We found our groove in real time. The intro section wasn’t the best to sing complex rhythms over but the main groove what we organically generated was just fine.

We hammered out a few more verses in the parking lot downstairs while had a cigarette and went back up. I learned that Rosa is very serious about shakers. I didn’t know that. I got mired in an acoustic guitar track and spent a lot of steam landing on what I wanted to do. When I think of it now, that space is where I might have sucked a lot of energy out of the process. We redid some handclaps. And we packed up and left…pleased.

This morning, I receive a text from Rosa. She’s hovering over her DAW’s (Digital Audio Workshops) mixing board and sending me new mixes and identifying sections in our composition that are a bit inconsistent. For a guy who often does this project himself, this touched me on a very deep level. It’s nice having a partner. There was a rhythmic issue with one of the guitar tracks. I came home to my office and laid down a new guitar track and sent it over via email.

A couple hours later, she mentioned that she might has a bass player who can lay down his tracks in time for the Tuesday night submission. Guthrie Lord is a multi-instrumentalist, composer and sound designer and a Berklee Grad. He’s worked in film and performs all around with countless world class artists. He’s on bass for this track.

I just received the Master track from Rosa. I’m sitting at my kitchen table and typing this out and I’m far more than pleased. I feel ecstatic about having worked with people who are excited about the scramble and enjoy the challenge of invention on the fly. I’m overjoyed with the process that we embarked on and the character of the mix that Rosa really poured herself into. And I’m hanging off the rafters because I know that my partners really had a nice time and expressed themselves in unique ways. That’s what this weekly project is all about.

Thanks to all you tuned into RadioRadioX. This is the Freak of the Week, “Brackish.”