This is a term that old english studio engineers used to say when they added an organ or other synth tracks to rock mix. And that's what I've been messing with the last several weeks of spare time (which there hasn't been much lately), an organ/synth track to the Super Bowl jam.

I've been experimenting with this vocoder-modulated organ sound for quite awhile now, and it always seems hit and miss as far as when it works and when it doesn't. I've also based arrangements on bits and pieces of parts found while noodling around with the sound (Here is an example of that sort of work). Generally, this sort of sound is so harmonically complex that it gets lost in a mix without making it the most prominent thing. But, of course, I always seem to try to use it to add "just a bit of colour" to a mix in a similar fashion as a lot of blues/rock mixes do with a Hammond organ using a Leslie. Basically though, it seems with this type of sound, that the busier the mix, the more difficult it is for the complexities of the sound to come through without making it too prominent.

This was the case with the Super Bowl Jam. The Scoop/Wah sound from the digitek pedal Simon was using was extremely broadband harmonically, and the wah pedal made it very rhythmically busy as well. And I didn't want to loose those qualities, I just wanted to add "just a bit of colour."

I wanted also to keep the performance in the spirit of the improvisational nature of the overall track. I didn't want to cherry-pick compose every part and do a ton of punch-ins and editing, etc. I just thought I would just play through the entire 10 minutes as if I were actually an active part of the moment. Realistically though, what I really thought would happen is what happens quite a bit in the studio, just get a decent enough performance and fix the one or two flubs with punch-ins. As it happened, I never got around to even bothering with the punch-ins. I would just rewind the ADAT back to the head of the song and try again. I think I kept the 5th recorded pass of it over the span of a week while doing quite a bit of listening to track between passes.

For the most part, the organ track follows and sometimes counterpoints Raf's Bass Line changes. Sometimes it provides more melodic content during times when Simon's guitar part is more repetitive, at other times it adds harmonic support during Simon's more melodic parts. The great part being, that none of these composition decisions were really preconceived at all, I just tried to focus on listening to what everyone else was playing to influence what I was going to do next, as with any improvisational style.

Well, that seems like a lot of work to add "just a bit of colour" to a jam track, but it really wasn't. And now the overall tune has a another harmonic dimension to it.

When they arrived, the gear was all set up and as Simon was checking the guitar tuning I noticed the old cry baby wah pedal sitting next to the faithful digitek RP300 and had put aside some extra patch cords earlier, just in case. I mentioned to Simon that he could patch the wah pedal in if he wanted to and he seemed almost annoyed with the idea. So he switched on the wah pedal on the digitek set on this super crazy transistor distortion setting (Don't know which program it was on) and started playing with it. And it sounded great! I immediately put the ADAT in record and started hitting the high hat until I stumbled upon the one of what Simon was doing (or I simply created the one, I never know), and then Raf joined in with the bass and off we went for about 10 minutes.