PROFESSOR POE'S ALMANAC

POE SENIOR sat back in his chair and watched the sun glint on the airplane wing. The clear blue skies brought a new sense of optimism and enthusiasm to his jaded bones. The flight lasted four hours but to Poe, with his favourite book I Claudius by Robert Graves and a cold cup of coffee, it was real quality time.

Poe thought back to the previous day. He had been sitting in his local Galway coffee shop, browsing through his latest batch of book purchases when his mobile rang. Through the crackling line he heard his old friend King Kingsley inviting him to play and engineer some tracks for a new album being recorded in Cairo. Now Poe, who was not one for a long considered thought process before jumping to any major decisions, replied, “I’ll be there tomorrow.” Kingsley laughed and hung up.

The plane door opened and Poe got his first whiff of 10pm Egypt; he walked down the steps and felt the great afterglow of heat. Heat and a rather dry unusual smell, not unpleasant though. On the other side of the airport Poe could hear the beeping of a thousand cars. ‘I made the right choice,’ Poe thought, as he cast off his winter woollies and headed for immigration.

Poe arrived at the motel in Gizza around 11pm and checked in, walked past the swimming pool, past the well-tended lawns and shrubs and went into his cabin. Switching on the TV, an overdubbed Warren Beatty in a re-run of Heaven Can Wait filled the room. By 12 midnight, freshly showered and clothes changed, Poe was cabbing back to the centre of town looking for the studio.

At 12.30 the cab pulled up outside a large white building near Cairo’s Zoo. Poe walked up to the studio and rang the bell. The door swung open and a friendly face invited him in. They walked through the long corridor to the main studio area and there sitting behind his drums and surrounded by a veritable host of other musicians was his old friend King Kingsley.

Over a black coffee they discussed the plan. Learn the songs, mike everybody up, record everything, allow for solos, and then if necessary re-record the vocals, but if possible try to get it in one take. Mix in Jamaica.

Poe checked out the desk, a sweet old Soundcraft. He went to the mike box and started miking up the instruments. A nice old D25 for the bass drum , Beta 57 for the Snare, Beta 57 for the Toms, BPM CR73 for the Hihatts, BPM CR73s for the overheads. A Sennheiser 421 for the Bass guitar, plus a direct injection box, two SM57s for the Hammond organ, a Beta 57 for Poe’s guitar and a DI box, a PAM (Pressure Zone Mic) for the ud, daff, tunbur, bug and rabab. Poe knew what he was at. The PZM allows for a very natural response without close miking, and is also very nice for recording ambience.

Poe liked to take his time, get the right sounds onto tape. He didn’t believe in too much Eq. Just get a nice fat sound down and then do the rest in the mix. Maybe just a little compression on the bass guitar, lead guitar and vocal. A touch of Reverb to give the track a bit of life and a few ambience mics to give the music a little coloration.

On this project he decided to use 24 tracks of the three ADATs for backing instruments and then get in a couple more for vocals and extra overdubs.

Once Poe was happy with the sound he went back in and slipped on his headphones and worked out his parts in the song. Poe knew that although Kingsley was a drummer he had a good feel for the melody and lyrics. Also the rhythmic feel wasn’t spread just over four bars; Kingsley knew how to give a song a more interesting feel than mere repetitions of short loop-type patterns.

Arabic musicians also tend to see a rhythmic cycle as being longer than one cycle, where we are familiar with an intro of four to eight bars, a verse of eight bars, chorus eight to 16, verse, chorus, middle eight, verse, chorus, chorus, chorus, fade. We are talking popular music here. And it’s true that ambient has slightly changed the form. In some regards, though, Eastern music is more akin to a classical structure.

After a number of times through the song Poe could see that the track was taking on a life of its own. The beautiful percussion and string lines with the hint of quarter notes gave the music a timeless world groove. Poe always used the hidden-remote-in-the-palm-of-his-hand approach and secretly turned on the record buttons if it was possible. In this case as he was well away from the control room, he used a sign that he had worked out with the engineer; he said let’s do another run-through and gave a sly wink, without anybody knowing that the tape was running as the ensemble went into the song.

Poe had been recording long enough to know that as soon as everybody knows the record button is hit, the tension goes up by about 500 percent. Some artists do like the feel of giving a performance and putting it onto tape. You gotta play these things by ear. Poe was good at that too.

By 3am, with the first track recorded, they all went outside and sat in the cool night air. Cairo is busy all night but to sit on the steps of a nice studio having done some creative work with people you like, soaking up the strange new atmosphere, sipping a delicious sugar cane drink is one of life’s high points.

Next issue: whatever happened to Poe Jnr?