Question for session-players

P Gleespen · From: Toledo, OH USA

All this road v session talk has me wondering about something, so here's a question (that will hopefully not start any grumblings or fights!) for session-players:

Do you guys come up with your parts "on the fly" in general, or do you have charts/recordings of tunes ahead of time? I imagine it's probably a combination of the two, but I'm curious as to how much time you get (as a session player) to come up with your parts.

Are any steel parts ever "written out"? (By that I mean are you asked to play a specific part, or just given general ideas as to what to play)

I find myself thinking of the steel part in the intro to Tim Mcgraw's "You get used to somebody" (the intro that caused a whole bunch of discussion here )
It's absolutely beautiful and deceptively simple, and pretty much "makes" the intro of that tune.

Would a tune like that one come into the studio without the intro planned out? Was the producer sitting there saying "Man that's a fine tune there, but it needs a good intro. I think I'll just let that Paul Franklin guy wing it. He seems to know his way around that steel guitar."

I don't know much about much, but I'm just curious about how much is "dictated" and how much is improv in the studio, and about how much prep time you are given for a session.

I don't even know if this post makes any sense, but if it does, I appreciate whatever input you give.

chas smith · From: Encino, CA, USA

Most of what I do is film stuff and depending on who I'm working for, I typically get 2 takes. I may or may not get a chart, and that will have some combination of chords, notes or steel plays here. If it's just me, then I get a play/listen through before recording, if I'm in a sequence of players, I've been practising along while they're recording. I've been in sessions where I have a chart, I'm watching the playback on the monitor, I'm listening to the clicks, the bar counts, the dialog and what's already been recorded. I then have to play something that justifies my being there, especially since there may be a wind player who really wants my spot on the team and is actively campaigning to push me out, which I personally think is justifiable homicide, but I'm not willing to take the chance that the judge and jury would agree with me..

I played on a cue for 'American Beauty' that was 8 minutes long and I was 2nd up after the piano. I had the pitches G A C# D to work with and the C# is to act like a b5, not a #4. The entire cue had to 'hover', not interfere with the dialog and still be interesting and hold the tension. I'm playing into a bank of DDLs for 'long tones'and usually after I've played a note, I pick its harmonic and lay that in on top of it. I was watching and listening to the dialog on the monitor and whenever it got tense I would feed in the C#. If I blow a take and it has to be done over, that will use at least a half hour of studio time and given how many thousands of dollars per hour that room is costing....

Sometimes I'm used to 'knock down the bar lines', if everyone is playing on time, it can sound too verticle and stiff, so I'll 'long tone' through things, which means I have to play something that will be neutral enough to get from here to there without calling attention to itself.

[This message was edited by chas smith on 12 July 2001 at 02:34 PM.]

P Gleespen · From: Toledo, OH USA

Oh cool Chas, that film had a really nice score, very effective. It really played a big part in making that a good movie (I thought, anyway).

I like Thomas Newman's work. He's always very supportive and properly "transparent", but still memorable.

It's very interesting to hear that you're given that sort of freedom on a cue. I guess I always assume that most scores are written out very precisely, but it does make sense that a score like that one would be more "free".
He must really respect your ear/musical sensiblity to have left it that open for you.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

chas smith · From: Encino, CA, USA

Tom writes out the orchestra scores and all of the main stuff, but for the ambient cues, he may have a general framework for the players, so really he's scoring with the players he's chosen. The instructions might be verbal like "get in when you see the....keep it around G# and get out when the....comes up." On the cues with piano, he just sits down and plays 'off the top of his head', then we fill it out and it gets composed in the mix.

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