Offbeat Feelings from 2020 by ZeCoop

ZeCoop:
So... funny story about this one, lol 😉
This was the fourth song I recorded for FAWM, way back on Feb 5, on my Hammond organ. I liked it but I was getting pretty down for a lot of reasons. I also wrote a piano song that may see the light of day, but I'm not sure yet. Anyway, right after I wrote and recorded the organ, I went down to Rob's for the weekend and we got busy doing a million other things. But I left it with him because I knew it had a beat and could use drums to get it started.

Fast forward to Feb 25, and Rob e-mails me the song with some electric guitar on it, including SLIDE guitar (neither of us play that very much), but it was perfect!! It gave it that on the edge raw-ness that it needed (and I didn't even know it needed). So Rob and I talk on the phone about possibly adding drums to it and what was I thinking... We both had similar ideas about beats, etc, so he goes ahead and adds drums. I get the file a little later, while i am still at work.

This is where it got 'interesting'. The song starts and, while the guitars are in the same place, the drums start a half beat earlier than I thought they would. It turns out that the file I had sent him, which should line right up in the DAW, didn't have a long enough intro, since Rob has to start recording and then walk across the room to get to the drum set. So, he had moved the file over to get more lead time and placed the first note on beat one.

I had forgotten to tell him that pretty much all the notes I played on the organ were on the offbeat, so he had heard the song differently than I did. When I listened I tried very hard to shift my thinking and hear the song how he was hearing it, but I have a funny brain that gets locked into certain rhythms, and I was unable to adjust how I was hearing it. To me, it was all off (even though it was not, from his perspective). The funny thing was, that the guitars he recorded from his timing perspective, also worked from my perspective, just on the offbeats.

Music is funny. Without any reference, people can interpret/hear music very differently. Rob is so incredibly talented and giving. I appreciate all he does for me and was bummed the drums he sent me wouldn't work with my crazy music brain. I just simply could not move my interpretation of the song over to the way he was hearing it. I recorded drums how I had heard them, because my musical brain needs to get things out or they will drive me crazy.

Gear List:
1960 Hammond M-100 organ
1973 Ludwig Hollywood drum kit
1980 Gibson SG into a Traynor YBA-1 amp

Tracklist

15.	Offbeat Feelings	3:34

Credits

from 2020, released June 19, 2020
ZeCoop: Hammond organ, electric and acoustic 12 string guitar, drums
Rob: electric guitar

License