Here is the final version of Dire, Dire Docks:
Final enough, anyway. Definitely will be keeping this one in the repertoire. Maybe one day I’ll be ready for the hard mode. (How fitting is that? A video game song has a hard mode! At least I know I’m nearly on tempo.)
I did a marathon cram session trying to polish it up, which…sort of helped. The weakest section was by far the second verse (the one with the C chord in the bass, you know, “do DOO doo do-do doo, doo,” yeah that one). I no longer think I have wooden fingers (for now). The stiff sound is phasing: sort of fluctuating around the individual beats, but staying in time on average. Hitting “OK” spots in DDR. “Put all the notes on the right shelves,” my band director would say. I spent a lot of time repeating that second verse, trying to find the fluidity, and I’m happy to say I almost got there.
Phasing and little inconsistencies aside, I think my timekeeping is improving. Before cutting the final version, I recorded a playthrough both with and without the click track to see what the time difference would be. The free time version ended just 4 seconds sooner, and it sounded a great deal less robotic. As a solo player, I just don’t see the use in recording with a metronome. Rehearsing with one, of course, is a different story, and if I’d been more diligent in doing so with this song, I think the result would’ve been better.
After recording it, I realized I’d never gotten around to writing an ending. D’oh! These video game books are nice, but in most cases they’re arrangements of endless songs. Seeing “F.O.”* and a repeat sign/da capo is just lazy, guys. Do you really expect me to decrescendo with the perfect gradient of a machine?
Or play at the tempo of a machine?
Or have the perfect pitch of a machine?
Or play and record music…with a machine………
Stay tuned, chums, I’ve already got the next song cooking.
*hint: it doesn’t stand for “Fudge Off”