“Fuckin’ newlyweds in the house, homies!” G cried out as they made their way into the room. He and Neesh got up to greet them. “How’s it feel to be all official and shit?”
“It’s cool,” Jake said. “We finally get to have sex now.”
That generated a good laugh from everyone but the two sound guys. They did not seem to get it.
Jake put the box and the guitar case down and then did some of those elaborate handshakes with G and all the other guys. He then got a hug and a kiss on the cheek from Neesh. Laura hugged G and Neesh both, shook hands with everyone else—a normal, tighty whitey handshake consisting of a grasp and two pumps.
“All right then,” G said once the greeting ritual was complete. “How about we get Jake here plugged in and sound checked and try to accomplish something?”
“Sounds good,” Jake said. “You said you had an amp for me to plug into?”
“Right over here,” said Stinky, pointing at a Marshall that sat on the floor next to a chair and one of the microphone stands.
While Jake opened his guitar case and pulled out his black Les Paul, Neesh spoke up. “I think this is the cue for me and Teach to ease on down the road for a bit.”
“Yeah yeah,” G said. “You two go out and have yourselves a good time.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Neesh said, casting a smile in Laura’s direction.
Jake noted that Laura looked a little uncomfortable with this statement and only gave a weak smile. “You okay, hon?” he asked her.
“Yeah, of course,” she said, her smile getting bigger now. “Let’s do this thing, Neesh. Shall we take Jake’s car?”
“Let’s take G’s,” she suggested. “I’ll drive. I’m more familiar with the hood.”
“Okay,” Laura said, and then, nervously. “Are we going to be doing our shopping and lunch ... you know ... around here?”
Ricky the DJ chuckled. “Girl, I would not recommend that shit.”
“No way, girlfriend,” Neesh said. “This neighborhood scares the shit out of me too. Let’s go do our thing in Redondo Beach. It’s not too far a drive from here. They have some bitchin’ shops and restaurants there. And after we eat, we can maybe take a walk out to the end of the pier.”
“Sounds like fun,” Laura said.
Neesh kissed G and Laura kissed Jake.
“Have fun,” Jake told her.
“I will,” she said. “The trick will be not to have too much fun.”
“How’s that?” Jake asked her.
She giggled a little. “It’s nothing,” she told him. “I have my cell phone on me. We’ll see you later.”
And with that, the two ladies headed out the door. It latched solidly shut behind them.
“All right,” Jake said. “Let’s get it on.”
“Let’s get it on,” G agreed.
Jake plugged in his pedals and pre-amp and then plugged that into the amplifier, which was, in turn, plugged into the speakers. He started out clean, with just the acoustic sound coming out of the speakers, making sure the guitar was still in tune (it was, he had tuned it the night before) and then followed the instructions of Stinky and High Top while they dialed in the volume to match the other instruments. From there, Jake began to play with the distortion levels, as the plan was to play his part of the tune with classic rock guitar sound. Even though the sound guys and the band itself were not familiar with distorted guitar, it still did not take as long to get dialed in as it would have had the Nerdlys been in charge.
“That sounds sweet, homey,” Ricky commented after Jake ground out a complex riff and solo once the check was deemed complete.
“Fuckin’ A,” said Fro. “I can kinda understand why you people like that shit.”
“My man Jake here can shred,” G said. “Have no doubt about that shit.” He walked over to his piano and picked up a pipe and a bag of buds. “All right now. Let’s get in the proper frame of mind for a jam session.”
They passed the pipe around, getting into that proper frame of mind. Everyone but the sound team took three or four hits apiece. It was pretty good shit.
“Let me and Jake show y’all what we got going here,” G told the band. “After that, we’ll start working on how to make it a full-on tune.”
Everyone nodded their understanding and settled in.
“The tricky thing about this tune,” Jake explained as he stomped on pedals and flipped switches to get his guitar back to the clean output, “is that we’ll be modulating keys throughout it.”
“Modulating keys?” asked Ricky, who, as the DJ, would have the hardest time with this. “I ain’t never done no shit like that before.”
“That’s why we rehearsin’ the shit, homey,” G told him.
“G’s going to be singing the verses,” Jake said. “His part will be in E major. I’m going to be singing the choruses, the bridge, and the outro. Those will all be in G major.”
“They’ll be at different tempos too,” G said. “My part will be at a hundred, Jake’s probably at around one-twenty.”
“This is some pretty complex shit you’re talkin’,” said Lucky, who would be the one to set those tempos.
“Don’t think you can handle it, homey?” G asked him with a grin.
“I didn’t say that, G,” Lucky said.
“Let’s do this shit, Jake,” G said. He turned back to the band. “We’ll probably come up with some kind of intro later, but for now, I’m just going to play and the sing the verse. Jake will then play the choruses clean. Watch how we integrate the modulations. It took us a while to work that shit out.”
With that, G began to play out the melody on his piano. He ran through it twice, getting the feel of it and letting everyone hear what he had. He then sang out the first verse. It would, of course, be converted into hip-hop later, but the underlying melody would remain the same. As he finished up the last line, he drew the final syllable out, modulating his own voice up into the higher range that mixed well with G major. That was Jake’s cue. He began to strum out his own melody, one markedly different than Gordon’s, at a faster tempo, and in the key of G major. He belted out the chorus flawlessly, his foot tapping the floor to keep time, his fingers pushing and releasing on the fret board. Once the last line of the chorus was complete, Jake did the opposite of what G had done. He drew out the last syllable while modulating his own voice into the low end of his range, bringing them neatly back into the key of E major.
“Nice,” Ricky said, nodding his head in approval.
They ran through the entire thing without making a mistake. This was unremarkable as they had worked on it, both separately and together, multiple times now.
“Well ... what do you think?” G asked when they were done.
“It’s tight, homey,” Fro said. “Complex, but fuckin’ tight.”
“Agreed,” said Lucky. “The way y’all modulated the key was smooth.”
“I’ll tell you something that’s gonna need to happen though,” said Ricky.
“What’s that?” G asked.
“I assuming you’re gonna want me to set the primary melody for the verses, right?”
“Fuckin’ A,” said G. “That’s what makes it hip-hop. I ain’t gonna be playing the goddamn piano on the recording.”
“That’s what I figured,” Ricky said. “I’m gonna need another turntable in front of me for the modulation.”
“You’ll need four turntables?” Jake asked. Even though he was a professional musician with working knowledge of how most standard instruments worked, he actually had no idea how Ricky and other DJs managed to do what they did, which was to produce actual musical notes by manually moving records back and forth beneath an analog needle.
“One-two-three-four,” Ricky confirmed. “It takes a minimum of two of the motherfuckers for me to produce the notes for a tune and both of them need to have some vinyl on them with tunes in the same key as the tune I’m producing for. Does that make sense?”