Performing Mantis Live
Performing new material from Mantis has been a blast. As you know, we waited until this year to perform almost everything from the album, which was something new for us. I think the two most difficult challenges have been recreating the vocals live and figuring out what sounds we could recreate live.
With the vocals, we first started by going through each song and discussing what each of us were playing on our instruments during vocal sections. There were a few instances where things just didn't quite sync up for one person or another, so we made adjustments with the parts.
For me personally, the most challenging spots are the 4-part harmony at the end of Made to Measure and the chorus of Spires. As some of you might know, both Jake and I played piano on the studio cut of Made to Measure. I decided to try to play as much of both parts as possible, and I ended up with a rather challenging LH/RH figure to perform (individually, the parts are not too difficult, but when you try to play them with both hands, there's a lot going on). After I worked out the kinks, I then focused on singing a part over the top. The harmonies I sing are during the verses, and then at the end of the final chorus with the word "try." Doing three different things at once took awhile to get down! And I apologize to anyone who had to sit there while I worked on that over and over and over.
(At the Vic Theater before trying Made to Measure for the second time ever. Sometimes it's easier said than done.)
With Spires, I recorded the LH and RH parts of the piano lines you hear at the top of song separately. I wanted to preserve the sustain of the low octaves that double the bass parts while keeping the higher "response" lines nice and clean. Live, of course, this isn't an option as I can't sustain one end of the piano while pedaling the other end, so the low octaves get the short end of the stick for the sake of cleanliness. The challenge comes with singing harmonies on both "If I fall, I'll end up...." And "We've been retreating, press rewind..." in their somewhat contrapuntal relationships with the music underneath. Again, the only real solution is endless repetition so that it becomes as close to second nature as possible. Try it at home and you'll see what I mean!
One option we are utilizing with this music that we haven't explored before is taking samples from the album and applying them to the live setting. Andy has the ability to cue these sounds with his MPC back in perc world. We've done this with the Preamble, Jeff Coffin's clarinet lines and the pizzicato strings in Made to Measure and the opening dark guitar swells from 1348, to mention a few. We felt that these elements were best served as they are on the album, and were crucial enough to the songs themselves that they deserved inclusion. A lot of the string parts on the album have been left untouched, as that element is a bit tougher to recreate live. Hopefully we can do that at some point and have a live string section accompany us with those parts.
Hope you enjoyed a little insight into the process of transforming Mantis from a studio creation to the live element. See you in Madison this weekend!