Backstreet Love - An Audio Transcription

Wherein I take a close up look at a recording to see if I can learn more about what makes it compelling. Here's my final take on the song - I can't post a Soundcloud version of the original recording due to copyright restrictions, but you can search "Back Street Love Trapeze" on youtube to hear it. You'd want the version from the "Hotwire" (studio) album, not the live version.

I miss playing in rock bands. Not all of it you understand...just the good parts. I miss the energy of the performance, the aggressive excitement of the music, and when you and your friends pull off a well crafted arrangement or set and the audience responds there’s a great feeling of satisfaction. There are parts I don’t miss as well. We won’t talk about that right now but suffice it to say for any number of reasons chances are good that I’ll never play in a rock band again. But still, I miss it sometimes.

One of the fun parts of having a home recording setup is that I can explore music and styles without the need of a band. So when I’m feeling the urge to swing, bossa nova, funk out or rock like a champion I give it a go in the studio. It’s probably the closest I’ll come to playing in bands again.  

Feeling Sentimental 

I recently started using the music streaming service Spotify and finding bunches of older music there was putting me in a sentimental mood of when I first started playing guitar and forming bands. I was never much on popular music in the 70’s but I really liked the rock scene - more of an underground sort of movement where bands may not have ever broken big, but wrote and played music that spoke to me. One of those groups was a band called Trapeze. The band changed personnel a few times but through it all was a guitarist named Mel Galley. Mr. Galley’s style spoke to me. It was simple, it was rockin’, but most importantly it had a tremendous feel. How did I learn about Trapeze? Not from the radio. Back in olden times there were these things called “record stores”. My home town was blessed to have one run by a real honest-to-goodness music lover. More on that some other time... 

Hotwire 

There is a Trapeze album called “Hotwire”. It was released after a personnel change in the group where they went from power trio to a quartet. They had to replace a really strong bassist/vocalist original member (Glenn Hughes) and they did it with an additional guitarist and a new bassist that played with a funk feel like Hughes, but in a different way. Galley took over the vocal chores. I loved this album. I memorized every nuance of each element. I never got to play any of those songs in a band, but I really would have loved to. The album makes an opening statement with “Back Street Love” about a likeable prostitute from the wrong side of the tracks and segues right into “Take It On Down The Road”. The two songs are melded together with consistent rhythmic theme. When you’re listening to it, it almost sounds like they started playing and were having such a great time they didn’t want to stop, and just rocked their way into the next track. Now bear in mind these songs probably don’t have the quality most in the pop world would call good lyric writing. I just like them that’s all - can’t really explain it, they're just fun to listen to. Lyrically, it’s a real challenge to understand what Mel Galley is saying much less put together a summation of the meaning of the song. Yes, it’s just that bad. Unintelligible vocals. No matter. My quest is to learn more about what makes these songs "tick".

To the Studio!

Mix in one part missing playing in rock bands, add a tinge of sentimental feelings from listening to Trapeze songs I’ve never performed in a band before and a studio project was born. The project? An audio transcription of “Back Street Love”. The idea is to copy all the parts from the track, drums, guitars, bass, and vocals and reassemble. Maybe I could find out more about what made this so compelling for me. I would have loved to continue right into “Take It On Down The Road” just like on the album but I wasn’t ready for that kind of time commitment. I figured I’d start with “Back Street Love” and see what happens from there.

Finding What’s What

The first step was to analyze the song, naming each musical theme as it appears. Transcribing the lyrics is necessary of course and relegating each bit as verse or chorus, bridge, etc. then noting which parts and lyrics were doubled and where they were in the stereo spectrum.

Finding Tempo(s)

The next task was to get the original recording onto a track and use it as a template, then to transcribe the drums into my drum program (EZ Drummer). Well the first thing I discovered was that this was not the steady rockin’ track I had always thought it was! These guys were all over the tempo map. No click track for these blokes. It seemed apparent that they all got together in a room and just let it rip like they were on stage. It had all of the tempo “sins” one might expect plus more I didn’t expect. We might typically expect the tempo to start out at one spot and they gradually pick up as it goes along, plus we would also expect the drummer to pick up speed during fills (the part drummers play to set up the next change in song form - verse to chorus, etc.).

Guitar Solos/Tempo Surprise

As a surprise I noted a big jump in tempo right at the first guitar solo (there are two eight bar solos with Mel Galley and his new guitar cohort Robbie Kendricks taking turns) and then a corrective slow down afterwards. These rhythm section was cranked to get to the guitar solo! Both guitarists cut strong, melodic, well crafted statements that really built. Each had a different accompanying part. The first is unique in the song - it doesn’t borrow from any other song elements and it really leans to the funk side of things with a bass line that’s on the off beats. This is probably what the rhythm section was anticipating so heavily as to get worked up into a tempo increase. The second solo background borrows the the form from a chorus. Very nice arranging. The entire solo section is a quick sixteen bars (eight and eight) made of two different themes to keep interest and two different soloists to go with them.

Tracking

Here’s how it went down.

Drums: I transcribed the drum parts into EZ Drummer, marking tempo changes for every couple of bars or so, and extra beats. Every now and again musicians throw in an extra bar of two instead four, not necessarily on purpose, but just because it feels right, and Trapeze was no exception.

Vocals: I knew the next biggest challenge for me would be the vocals. Besides the fact that I’ve never been a gifted singer, add to the fact that I haven’t done any “real singing” in about fifteen years or more and you can imagine the challenge. I transcribed the lyrics as best I could (impossible to understand some of these and they were not to be found on web) and got after matching the original track as best as possible. I sucked. Let me just apologize right up front here for the singing.

Guitars:  Yes! Something I can do! I learned the rhythm parts, mic’d up an amp and recording a direct injection line from the guitar too, to use amp models later on in the mix. This went pretty quickly and learning the brief, melodic guitar solos was kind of a snap as well. Hurray! Something went well!

Bass: Oh brother - what the heck is going on there? Trying to hear what Pete Wright was doing here was a struggle so I did my best guesstimate and hoped it would work.

Fixing In The Mix

Yes, here is where we fix everything we tracked (widely known as “fixing it in the mix”). This is generally something we all want to avoid but in the case of poor performances, there’s no getting it around it so the first thing on the list was to fix my shitty timing with the bass playing. Going in there and getting bass parts to line up right with the kick drum can be pretty tedious but the payoff is big, big, big. I’ve got a real tendency to anticipate the beat so this was a very necessary job. Rhythm guitars were a little better, but there were a lot of tracks (I did five rhythm guitar tracks) so it took some time. The singing was a total catastrophe. I really had to go back and tune almost every note, a task made easier with a program called Melodyne, but nonetheless, once you do this, your oh so meticulously recorded vocal takes take on new, not so wonderful sound but at least it’s closer to being in tune. This is also the time to replace any artefacts or other anomalies that may have been introduced when recording along with extra clicks and slides you might hear in the guitar playing and breaths in the singing, etc.

I mixed and mixed and mixed, and when I felt like it was starting to come together I compared it with the original. Nope, not even close on the guitar sounds or the bass sound. I might could have done a better job of copping the sound if I’d paid more attention during recording but, really, there was only so much time I wanted to devote to this. I made some adjustments and mixed some more. After about 6 final mixes and a couple of different mastering techniques, I was about burned out. At some point you’ve just got to let something like this go and move on before it totally consumes you. The result? Pretty good mix if not identical sounding to the original. The original guitars have a real narrow honking midrangey sound to them that I didn’t realize was so prominent. I could actually go back and fix this if I wanted to take the time. Other than that I think I nailed the parts except the last note on the second solo should have been a “double stop” or two notes played simultaneously, and I missed that. The bass playing doesn’t really have a semblance of the original as far as the sound goes. The playing has the general feel I believe but is not an accurate transcription. The singing...well, not that great but I got that parts and doubles and they’re for the most part in tune thanks to Melodyne.

What I Learned

What I thought would be a rock solid tempo turned out to have many twists and turns which is definitely something I’ll have to consider on future original projects. Attempts at artfully produced tempo changes may be in my future.

My singing still sucks (no surprise there) and I have a real tendency to anticipate the beat in my guitar and bass playing, only occasionally actually playing rhythmically accurate. I could have taken a little more care in developing the guitar sound and micing the amp up differently with the final mix in mind. I don’t know if I even have the right instrument to get the bass sound Pete Wright did on the original.

Anyway - that’s the way it was. Now on to something completely different...