Weird Music Episode 4 - Two Entirely Different Things
Performing versus Recording
Performing live and recording music are very different acts, and the skill sets don't necessarily cross over. Some musicians are prone to creating things in the studio and then face the challenge of making something live out of it. Others write and experiment in the live setting and then go into the studio to try and translate what they've been doing live. Both approaches come with unique challenges, and this episode asks the question: “What do you get psychologically out of each process, playing live and recording?”
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I mentioned before that I used advice from Stephen King’s On Writing in the drafting of Weird Music, and one piece that I focused on was something he got from his first editor: Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. When writing the first draft, just keep moving forward and get to the end, then put it down for a period and once it’s faded from your memory, pick it back up for a full read through and then start the editing process.
King suggests dedicating I believe four to six hours on reading and writing a day, and his first drafts can take around four months. When you set your rough draft down, you should wait at least six weeks before picking it up again.
Applied to Weird Music, working for about three to four hours a day, I wrote the first draft of the piece in MIDI over the course of fourteen months and didn’t play it for anyone while it was in progress. This is quite a bit longer than King’s four months. The final rough draft was two hours long and contained twenty-six songs.
After I finished sometime in 2012, I listened to it every night for a few nights, and then I put it down until it started to gnaw at me again, which was well over six weeks. To rewrite with the door open, I would learn sections of the piece live with instruments and then play them for a small audience. I performed the first section at my house in West Philadelphia in April 2013. At some point in 2014 or -15 I finished and recorded the first half of the rewrite and then took a break before venturing into the second half.
On August 9th, 2019, the ten-year anniversary of my first interviews, I played a show at PhilaMOCA in Philadelphia with the Extraordinaires and performed the entire second half for the first time. In March 2020 I embarked on making a recording of the final edit, which took the whole first year of the COVID lockdown.
Playing the piece live while still working on it and letting out pieces as I completed them was my way of rewriting with the door open. I allowed the reactions of the audience and my friends to figure out what was resonating and working, and what was failing to keep people’s attention. Once I felt confident that I had a succinct and sustained piece of art, now clocking in at 50 min and 12 songs, I entered the recording process to translate what I had been doing live.
Jamey Robinson: Personally, particularly in this band, I think a record’s like making a movie and you wrote the book. Sometimes it’s not the same. For me the live show’s really where it’s at. It’s the most fun.
[Life Fantastic] was a very long, painstaking process and then when you’re done it just seems to me like a photograph of you that people can hang up on their wall. It seems separate from what we’re doing. To me it seems like a calling card to try and get people to come out to the show and do something live. But I really love to play live, so I just think of a record as a medium that we can use to get people to come to the live show.
Chris Powell: I enjoy both for totally separate reasons. Specifically with Man Man I prefer performing live because the music can be so elastic. You can improvise and even within the songs there’s a lot of space to change things every night, be adventurous and experiment and all those good things that make a band like Man Man really fun for the audience as well as for us to play. It feels like two entirely different things but I’m pretty obsessed with getting better at making records and not necessarily feeling like they have to be the same thing. It’s similar to how you said, it feels like a picture.
And it is strange, it is an abstract thing. To set something in stone and then present it to people is a weird concept. But it’s really great that you can do that and present something that essentially people can hear and then go see you perform live. Because they do feel so different with this band entirely. Especially with this new record [since it has] strings and a lot of new elements that we don’t do live yet. We don’t have strings in the live situation, we only have a certain amount of horn players, and luckily you guys were able to help on the tour. We can add in these elements that can make it sound like the record, but it’s actually really fun to think of them as totally separate, because they’re both challenging in completely different ways.
Billy Dufala: I’d say playing live is 99 percent just a good time and fun, where making an album is incredibly laborious.
There’s a lot of compromising, there’s a lot of concessions made. There’s a lot of being okay with bringing an idea to the table, then having it shot down and brushed off the table. Or even having an idea you’re not sure you want to share with anybody, but then getting up whatever it is that will allow you to bring it to the table. I know in the past it’s been an issue for other people in the band, bringing things that are really close to them, but it would make for great material.
The making of an album is incredibly challenging. It can be a lot of fun, [but] it’s a huge amount of work, and [playing live] is a huge amount of fun. As corny as that sounds. Even on tour, you’re working throughout the entire day by just traveling and being around people, and you have this one great hour and fifteen minutes. People outside of bands, they’re like, “That’s the work,” but for me that’s the payoff, that’s the fun part. The work is having to be in the van and be away from your studio.
[Recording has] a lot of redeeming qualities, like the discoveries and the explorations that you go through. And [you] come out on the other end with something amazing that you never would have had for any other reason other than just following that road down, getting hit from all sides [by] other people in the band and turning it into something that you would’ve never expected otherwise.
The thing that is unfortunate about playing live is you’re doing the same thing over and over again, the amount of room for exploration and embellishment and cracking that open, it’s not really there unfortunately live, because you’re scripted. You have your set, you have the way that you run through it, and you’re relying on everybody knowing their parts and nailing those parts.
Ryan always loves to say, “You’re planned chaos.” There’s not really that much room for improvisation, so the studio is where I think you’d hope to actually be able to try new things and crack it open and actually play around more.
Matt Gibson: I’ve never been part of the writing process with any of these guys, maybe just a little bit with Jamey from playing certain parts or writing new parts for some of his songs that he’s had already for a while. So I only have my own experiences with past projects that were completely different dynamically. We created differently and we got to the end result differently.
All of us in this room would love to have the opportunity when you’re not on tour to be home, waking up, having a studio around the corner to write and demo stuff until you get to the point when you can record and go back out on the road. I would love to have that style, that’s the perfect world.
Billy Dufala: Utopia.
Matt Gibson: Yeah, three hundred sixty-five days of sunshine and a bottomless coffee well.
Billy Dufala: Hey, we got bottomless coffee here, dude. Don’t worry, I got a whole other bag that’s not ground.
Matt Gibson: So for the last couple years it’s just been learning parts for live performance or learning how to play new instruments, being able to absorb what’s happening quickly and then produce something else. So to me playing live, as much as the show is fun, for me it can be very exhausting trying to remember or learn how to do something as quickly as possible. I think of it as a physical puzzle, like it’s a game for me almost.
I have the workings of trying to have a home demoing or recording setup, but through my personal music life recording has always been the outcome of just playing live. First, write a song by yourself or with a friend, and then try to find a way to perform it in front of people. And once you’ve done so enough, you’re like, “I feel like we could record this.” You record it and that’s almost like a byproduct of something that you do every day. In the music business, playing live is to promote selling an album, where for me it’s almost like recording an album is a way to leave people with a piece of what they saw on that stage.
Billy Dufala: Talking about it like that, I think it’s funny being as Man Man really has gotten a lot of notoriety in the beginning for their live show being like, “You have to see this band. Oh my goodness.” And it’s weird because it’s the flip where you’re saying you’re leaving somebody with a little chunk of what they saw live.
I feel like the album and the live show are something very different with Man Man. They’re like two separate beasts. The different psychological back and forth and weird balances, like you were just saying, trying to figure out this weird game and knowing these parts.
For me, trying to figure out how to play vibes and the bass clarinet and some percussion at the same time is something that is so exciting for me, but really only applies to the live show, because you’re not going to be trying to do that in the studio. Why would you? You have tracks, you would be demoing it separately.
So there’s this weird thing like, “What goes where? What are you going to try to develop here and actually translate in the live show, and vice versa?” And there’s so many different possibilities it can be a little frustrating to try and figure out what you’re doing. Then there’s the whole idea like, we have so much shit onstage. Come on, it takes us two hours to break down at the end of the night or set up. It’s so annoying.
But at the same time, for me no matter what there’s a payoff there because you do have all these toys and all these instruments, all these things to keep you engaged. Okay, it’s very scripted and there’s not much room for improvisation, but at least you have yourself thoroughly entertained and you’re still challenging yourself to be able to accomplish these crazy musical feats of multi-instrumentalist whatever you want to call it.
Matt Gibson: Playing live is a lot of fun for people like Billy and myself who want to recreate, as much as possible, a large orchestra sound or feeling with a five piece band. I can only assume that musicians of yesteryear were just as excited about trying to play a saxophone and a drum or some kind of percussion at the same time. Or maybe they’re just like, “I’m gonna become the best saxophone player because we’re used to playing in a twenty piece orchestra and the percussion guy takes care of it.”
But now we live in an age where you can imagine something exists and it probably does. You have so much technology and so many tools at your disposal, yet you have people like Billy and myself and many others who want to see what they can do all at the same time. Be the drummer and the horn player or something.
Billy Dufala: That’s one of the things of why in the live context it works so well, because that’s part of the “Oh my God” aspect of it. Like, “Are you serious? Are you kidding me? No.” That’s part of the desired effect. And I think that’s why you can get away with some of the most ridiculous stuff with Ryan because he’s just like, “Bring it. Yeah, dude, you look at me. I’m jumping up on speakers and taking my pants off and running across the stage.”
Matt Gibson: That’s kind of what you need, though.
Billy Dufala: “I’m falling from the top of my keyboard onto my ass and stabbing myself in the face with a mic stand by accident just for the show.” So he’s like, “Bring it.” And that’s always an exciting aspect. It’s like there’s no boundaries.
What’s the payoff for you? Is it the listening back or the playing? Where is it you feel your endorphins are actually getting released?
Ches Smith: I’d say playing live mostly and just knowing that I finished a bunch of pieces of music for a whole record. Just having that in your back catalog. I learn a lot about music just by writing and then having to learn it. Then performing it is a separate thing.
Vice Cooler: There’s the obvious thing of when you play live it makes it physical. There’s the physical element of energy and visual, and on a record you can’t capture that at all. You can’t capture a mosh pit or a stage dive or a dance. It’s impossible. So I think with all of our bands we’ve approached the record [with] a completely separate mindset from the live show just for those simple obvious reasons.
When you play live you don’t have to worry about hitting the right notes or the right chords because it’s immediately lost. Whereas a record it’s repeated over and over and over again. So with a record it’s important to hit those notes whereas live it’s secondary to the emotional aspect of being in a room with people.
Steve Touchton: Yeah, I think a big difference psychologically with the recording and live shows is it’s this personal versus communal thing. When you’re making a record, it’s just us and we’re focusing on ourselves the entire time and what we want. But then in the live situation there’s an audience there and it becomes more about everyone that’s in the room at the time. I think that’s a big difference emotionally or psychologically between the two processes of presenting the music or using the music for something else.
Vice Cooler: Live I think we care about the music but we don’t think about it or analyze it. We analyze it after, but it’s more about the momentum of it. Like, “This was a bad opener.” It’s focused on how the music is a tool to flow the energy of the room, whereas a record you’re just thinking about, “When you sit and put this on, how does it flow with you sitting or being in a car?” It’s a more sterile setting usually for that.
I guess energy’s applied to both of them but definitely the focus is keeping the room worked up live whereas you don’t think about a mosh pit when you’re recording an album. You don’t think, “This will make them go wild when this song comes in!” You just think, “This ending sounds like the beginning of this song.”
Steve Touchton: There’s also the predictability and unpredictability factor. When we make a record, when it’s finished or when we turn it into the label to go get it pressed, we know exactly what is going to be presented to people. But when we go and step onto a stage it’s very unpredictable and we have no idea what their experience is going to be or what our own experience is going to be. We can guess, but it’s a lot more unpredictable.
Vice Cooler: And it changes night to night. When you make a record you can generalize a little bit more from the past records you’ve made, what will work and what won’t work. You learn from those mistakes and you can really generalize it into a broad thing. But when you play live, each night the crowd changes. You could be in a room watching the opening bands and things will become obvious. You’ll know, “This song won’t work tonight. This other band did this and it totally flopped.” And so it keeps you on your toes in that regard of looking at everybody that’s there and trying to guess mentally where they’re at, whereas with recordings you don’t look at it that way.
I know for us the set that we do, we do every night. Do you guys have a grab bag of songs that you can change and rearrange for the audience?
Steve Touchton: Not as much anymore. We used to do the sets totally on the fly and people could call out whatever they wanted to do or just say, “Okay, we’re cutting the next one and we’re adding this one instead.” But these days it’s more set. Most of the time we’ll have the order of the songs memorized, we’ll rehearse the set exactly as it’s going to be leading up to the show and we don’t even really think about it. We just go up there and do it and it just happens.
Vice Cooler: But we haven’t played that many shows in the past three years, either. I’m pretty sure when we do a tour tour, it’s going to change. Because we’ve pretty much only played LA in the past three years, and a few other shows in California. When we play the Smell we know who’s going to be there. We have an idea. But if we were playing like Cleveland, Ohio, we wouldn’t. And so we’ve had just a general set list. But we also only have right now twelve or fifteen live songs, so we’re limited at the moment with what we can do.
But we’ve done all kinds of things. On our first Europe tour we had hand signals for songs. So while we’re playing, if anybody in the band [wants to say], “This next song’s going to be this song,” you just throw up {hand signal} and then everybody would just go into it. That way we could keep the set going, have a really strong flow. Also that would avoid the really annoying thing that happens when someone in the band’s like, “We’re playing ‘buh buh’” over the mic. We wanted it to look rehearsed even though it wasn’t.
Then the stuff that came after that with Weasel [Walter], there were a lot of shows where we would just totally gut half of the set. There were some shows where we would have an eight or ten song set list and then it would end up being five that we’d play. Just because someone in the band would be looking at the crowd and be like, “Man, these next three songs are not going to fly. It’s not going to work and it would kill momentum.” So that’s the fun part about playing live is that it keeps you thinking on the fly, which applies to everything creatively. It just keeps you sharp.
Steve Touchton: One thing I’ve noticed with our past few shows is that it’s not necessarily which songs we’re playing but how we transition from song to song [that] becomes a really important part of the overall contour of the energy of the set. Because basically the three choices that end up happening is, “Are we going to go directly into the next song?” “Are we going to have a break between the songs?” or “Are we going to just improvise between the two?” And that really affects the energy and crowd response a lot.
Sometimes you know, “We need to just keep this going full force,” and we go directly into the next song. Other times maybe someone in the band needs a break or maybe it seems like the audience wants to have the experience of cheering or something. So how you transition between songs is really important for us and that’s something that we’ll change a lot just depending how we’re feeling and what the audience response seems to be.
Greg Jamie: With recordings I feel like it’s a really intimate thing for people. They’re getting the songs in a more unfiltered way, and in that sense it’s reaching people in this direct speaking way. Whereas if you’re at a show, it’s obviously more visceral and there could be an energy in the room that has nothing to do with the band. Also your mood can really come across, which is something beside the music, or the way you’re acting in general. Once you add a visual element it changes the music a little bit. So I feel like recordings are a more pure way of trying to speak to people or communicate telepathically with people.
When I write music it’s primarily a recording process and sometimes it feels like putting two inputs into my ears directly into my brain.
Greg Jamie: Yeah, I mean when it’s working it should be that direct. It’s one of the most amazing things you can do {laugh}. Then there’s this extension of your feelings and your brain that just comes out in this format and everyone can hear it and interpret it immediately. And there doesn’t need to be a conversation, it’s just these sounds that you’re making.