Today was a pretty much a perfect day in my life. I started out in the studio with a cup of coffee and a paintbrush, working on a portrait of a friend. In the afternoon I headed into Nashville to sing on a session for my good friend, Gene Cotton. He's producing a project for Danny Nicholson, a singer songwriter from South Carolina. As I understand it, this CD will be teamed with a benefit concert that will help raise funds for the Nicaragua Project. (The same project, started by Gene, that Christo and I have participated in down in Managua.)

Gene gave me a demo of the song to listen to and asked me to sing the scratch vocal during the session. (I'll sing the final vocal on another day.) While it's not absolutely necessary, it helps the session players create their magic if they have someone actually singing the song while they record their tracks. When he gave me the CD he told me he wanted to change it from the twangy country feel of the demo to something more akin to what James Taylor might produce.

So here's what I have to practice with... a demo that's in the wrong key, with the wrong feel, AND the wrong lyrics! (The demo was sung by a man and Gene gave me a rewrite more suitable for a woman to sing.) No big deal really. I listened to it until I had a grasp of the melody, then pulled out my guitar and found a key that worked for me. (Turns out it was G.) I headed to town today feeling like I at least had a handle on the song.

On this session were some of Nashville's finest musicians, including a couple of players who've graced my CDs (Shane Keister on keyboards and Michael Joyce on bass). For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of watching professional session players in action (I mean highly skilled, superb, professional session players), the first thing they do is listen to the song, either the recorded demo or played live, and they proceed to chart it as they listen. (Side note: Years ago, Nashville players  developed their own numbers charting system. Rather than write the actual chords, they use numbers. This way they can change keys without batting an eye or picking up a pencil. It's a very cool system.)

Before they began charting, one of the players who was familiar with the demo said the song was way too long and needed some drastic changes made to it. It had too many verses and too much repetition. So we cut chopped and rearranged it to create a better (briefer!) combination of verses and choruses. The players had a discussion about the final structure, intro, solo, outro, and general feel and then we all set to work making the music. After trying a couple different tempos and approaches we settled on one that sounded good and was comfortable for me to sing. It wasn't exactly James Taylor, but more in the style of the Eagles. The groove they found worked much better for the subject of the song.

Their high quality of music interpretation, made it easy for me to find my way with the vocal in spite of the fact that I had rehearsed with a track that was in a different key, with a different feel, different lyrics AND completely different structure than the version we were recording!

I'll tell you what, it was a nice reminder for me, just what a joy it is to sing in a studio with live musicians  gathered at the same time. There's a chemistry that happens that can't be duplicated recording one track at a time using Garage Band or Pro Tools in your home studio. We feed off of each other's energy and that's when the magic happens.

Yes, it was a perfect day... A lovely sandwich of art and music beginning with coffee and a paintbrush, filled with a lovely musical interlude, and ending with a glass of Cabernet and that same paintbrush putting the finishing touches on this week's painting. Lucky me...

Life is good.