Cubango to the rescue

Brief report on the second Pink Martini recording session. Just to recap, Pink Martini's recording a Christmas album, and they want to add a samba bateria to one or two of their Christmas songs, so they've recruited various local Portland sambistas to put together a small bateria for a recording session. We'd had one recording session last week, but our little ad-hoc bateria had found it difficult to swing normally while playing to a click track [a metronome]. So we were back tonight for a second try. I'd been carefully drilling myself on caixa with a metronome all week, just in case we had to record with a click again; but it turns out Pink had decided that tonight we'd try playing live as a whole ensemble this time, just letting the tempo flow naturally, with no click.

The goal tonight was just to get a couple of decent takes of Joy To The World. With our little bateria fronted by cavaquinho player Claudio Sorriso (a brilliant player who used to play for Salgueiro and now lives in the US); Thomas Lauderdale (the King of Pink), on piano; and of course, Brian Davis and Derek Rieth, who are Pink Martini's percussionists in addition to being brilliant all-around sambistas. Truly world-class musicians, and such an honor to play with them.

Still though, there's that awful weird tension of recording. The Pink guys are old pros and are pretty much flawless in a recording setting, but most of the rest of us have not recorded a lot before. In that sort of situation, where you have a fair number of samba drummers with limited recording experience who all need to drum perfectly, a natural paranoia sort of creeps up on you (or least it creeps up on me): Please god, let me not be the one who messes up and ruins the whole take!

So there's a certain tension to the whole thing. You're standing there, all tense and nervous, in Pink Martini's vast, gorgeous recording studio, with three other caixa players all clustered tightly around some microphones, trying to get comfortable with some unfamiliar headphones on your head, tripping over your headphone cord, muttering to yourself "For god's sake, don't drop a stick". Surdos are behind you; a clump of tamborims (Derek directing) and the chocalho (Pauline) are off to your right, with Brian up in front leading the whole thing. You can just glimpse Thomas and Claudio nestled away in private little cavaquinho and piano rooms, and you can hear Thomas still calling out last-minute ideas for the song arrangement right up to the last split second before recording starts. ("What if we do a 8-measure intro instead of 16? Or what if we do sort of a bridge after the first verse and take little solos? Or how about if...")

Then the engineer calls "Silence on the set!" and there's a tight, still tension as everybody waits. Then a set of strange noises through the headphones as the tape starts rolling: a weird spacious background hiss, a mysterious outer-space series of clicks that sounded EXACTLY like the smoke monster from "Lost" (I kept expecting it to come leaping through the studio door) - and then the engineer says "Rolling", suddenly sounding so close that he seems to be standing right over your shoulder. The hiss and clicks vanish abruptly into a sudden dead, empty silence, as if you all have suddenly fallen into outer space.

There is an absolute and total lack of sound. You are holding your breath.

Then Brian counts in the cavaquinho and piano. Jeremy behind you comes in sweet and clean on surdo. (I personally would have keeled over dead from the pressure, had I been sole surdo for the whole intro, on each and every take, for a PINK MARTINI RECORDING like Jeremy was doing. But it was Jeremy, so, no problem.) The tambs start up - now you look up for Brian's silent cue - you feel the tamb phrase rounding out to its natural conclusion, knowing Brian's count will come, THERE IT IS, he's starting to count you in, GET READY, now don't panic and for god's sake DON'T SPEED UP, just do a clean pure start right into the Mocidade caixa pattern, DON'T PANIC - your eyes are glued to Brian - ok, NOW! - and off the caixas go on Mocidade. Feeling awwfulllyyyy exposed though because it's just caixas and surdos. Through one whole verse. Joy to the world.... finally, thank god, the tambs and Pauline enter, and as soon as Pauline enters you can relax. (A good chocalho always helps ground my caixa playing.) But don't relax too much; don't move relative to the microphone; stay frozen in place - stand unnaturally still, don't dance, don't bounce, don't step, just keep playing while you slowly getting stiff and cramped up - just keep on playing - keep it together - don't panic -

Through the second verse, the third, the fourth... Thomas throwing in random, brilliant chord changes (Claudio nimbly following these unplanned chord changes somehow. While constantly salting every measure with a few dozen cool little zinging cavaquinho riffs) - wait for the ending - watch Brian again - here it comes, okay NOW!

Hit the last beat - BE SILENT - don't say anything, don't crack a joke, don't make a comment, and for god's sake don't knock your stick on your rim accidentally! DON'T DROP YOUR STICKS. DON'T EVEN BREATHE. DON'T MOVE.

Okay, now it's over. Breathe. Shake out your stiff leg and cramped hands.

Get ready for the next take.

Then repeat. And repeat and repeat and repeat.

At first I was pretty pleased with how it was going. I thought we were all playing quite well. But I was standing so stiffly, and feeling so paranoid about not dropping my sticks or banging them on the rim accidentally, that I was gripping them way too tightly and my hands started to get tired. I started having to shift my right hand from Standard Grip to Gorilla Grip halfway through the song. On the fifth take I started to play a cut in the wrong place, realized my mistake just barely in time and just barely managed to scramble back into the groove. No one seemed to notice but I felt rattled. In the next take I stalled totally and missed an entire measure. In the next take after that, I found I was having to concentrate EXTRA hard just to keep playing at all. Damn! I was starting to choke! From there it just got weirder and weirder. For a second I was sure that my left hand was attached upsidedown to my left arm. Then my right hand seemed to rotate around, and a moment later, both hands felt like they were as big as basketballs. Then my left leg started going to sleep. I managed to force myself to keep drumming, but now I sounded like a robot - no swing at all. OK, definitely losing it. Shit.

This was all happening because I was so tense. Gotta relax somehow, but how? I started scanning around mentally for images that would make me relax and help me feel the swing of the samba again. I tried listening to just the surdos; tried homing in mentally on John J beside me (who was drumming along as silky and swinging as a river, apparently without a care in the world); tried singing the song; but nothing helped.

"This isn't remotely like playing with Cubango," I thought, and an image flashed into my mind: drumming down the great avenue in Niteroi with Cubango, and Mestre Jonas coming bounding through the bateria. BOUNDING. With that great big crazy open-mouthed grin, with that joy of the samba. Daniel next to me drumming every break perfectly; Humberto on caixa next to him, shooting me that shy grin; both of them swinging like hell; and the wonderful funny guy who had done the Michael Jackson impression (damn, what was his name??); and the Germans; all those fantastic caixa players clustered tight around me. Little Hand on surdo behind me, thundering away. Nana up in the tamborim section. The chocalhos flashing in the distance. I saw it all, saw them all, all around me. Jonas leaping. The thundering samba. The porta-bandeira's flag whirling around, the rainha dancing like crazy in her sequinned minidress, her hips going a mile a minute. Over and over I saw them... Jonas leaping, Daniel and my other friends playing, the surdos thundering all around me, the rainha dancing.... Jonas leaping, the caixas playing, the surdos thundering, the rainha dancing....The Samba. The Swing.

I suddenly started to swing again - my hands loosened up and started feeling normal - my foot woke back up - I felt myself start to smile - and the song came alive. I kept those images in my mind, all those Cubango memories; repeating them over and over in my mind, that magnificent parade with Cubango..... swinging, swinging, swinging.

Next thing I knew the engineer was calling out "That's it! We're out of tape! My god, I can't believe we had enough tape for that last take, it was coming off the reel right when you finished!" After my Cubango breakthrough, we'd gotten two solid takes of Joy To The World, and it had been sounding so good that we'd blasted on and sailed through several wonderful takes of Auld Lang Syne, just for luck. It had all just flown by in a Cubango-soaked blur. We were done! We did it! We all piled outside, all went out for dinner together, laughing and chatting and joking; and I headed home, wistfully full of Cubango memories and wishing I could be back there right now. (Auld Lang Syne indeed - that whole song is about memories of old friends.)

***

PS also have to report our cut was as clean as a whistle this time. Maybe people sharpened up after last week's trauma of trying to play to the click track! And in the tempo department, Brian counted us in at 108 for every take tonight, and each and every time we would gradually ramp up to 110 by the end of the tune. Very consistently. Not too bad a shift, really, and it had a nice natural feel.

PPS An update in October 2010 - I just noticed that some cd tracks are available for preview on Amazon, and it looks like Pink decided to use the take of Auld Lang Syne! the take that we did right at the very end! It's the last track on the cd. The bit that you can preview on Amazon includes the very moment that we caixas enter. Which of course is the most important moment in the entire cd, right?