They ended the song after the second verse, just before what the sheet showed would be a guitar solo. She was grateful. She did not approve of the distorted electric fills that Kingsley had been laying down and she just knew that his guitar solo would start to edge into that heavy metal genre. Kingsley was undoubtedly capable of nothing else. In truth, she thought the song would be a lot cleaner without Kingsley’s guitar in it at all. Celia’s acoustic and the piano playing from Archer’s mother and her sax would carry the tune quite nicely. Perhaps she would suggest that after they started working together.
“All right,” Celia said. “That’s kind of what we’re after for the melody. How do you want to plug yourself in? Do you want to practice it up a few times solo, maybe at half tempo?”
“Uh ... yeah,” she said, surprised that Celia knew to suggest something like that. “I have found that is the best way to learn a new piece, to let my fingers get used to the sequence.”
“That’s how we usually do it,” Jake said.
“Interesting,” she said. “Anyway, it is a very simple melody. It shouldn’t take me long to build up a little muscle memory.”
“It’s a good thing I wrote it simple, I guess,” Celia said.
“Yes,” said Laura, completely missing the sarcasm.
She put her mouth to her horn and positioned her fingers for the key of B major. She began to play the notes of the melody, starting at sixty beats per minute—half of the piece’s tempo. She ran through it once and then again, her fingers pressing the keys, raising and lowering the pads over the holes, varying the pitch coming out of the instrument in the exact fashion written on the sheet she was reading from. It was child’s play, almost literally, and within a few minutes she had the melody down. She brought the tempo up to the full 120, running through it a few more times. When she finally paused to take few deep breaths, she saw that Celia and Kingsley were both frowning at her.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“No,” Celia said carefully, “probably not. You’re just getting used to the piece so your phrasing isn’t quite there yet.”
“Yeah,” Kingsley agreed. “It’s a little flat sounding at the moment. I’m sure it’ll get better after we run through the opening verses a few times.”
“Flat sounding?” she asked incredulously. “Are you kidding?”
“I wouldn’t kid about something like that,” Kingsley told her. “Like I said though, you’re just starting out with it. The phrasing will come.”
She had to grit her teeth against an angry reply. This perverted drug addict with tattoos on his arms was questioning her phrasing? Where did he get off? What did he know about the saxophone? Still, they were going to be paying her that twelve hundred a week. No sense getting herself fired before she was even hired. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll see if I can juice it up a bit.”
Kingsley nodded, an amicable enough gesture, but she wanted to slap that arrogant expression off his face. Flat? What did he know about flat?
“You ready to try it with the other instruments chiming in?” Celia asked her.
“Yes,” she said. “Let’s give it a go.”
“Full tempo or half?” Kingsley asked her.
“I’m ready for full,” she said confidently.
“Let’s do it then,” Kingsley said, picking up his guitar. “Ted, give us a four count when everyone is ready.”
“You got it, boss,” Ted said.
They started the song. She played the melody while the piano and Celia’s acoustic accompanied her and the bass and drums set the rhythm. It was rough and a bit hesitant, but she thought she was putting down decent phrasing and she did not miss a single note. Celia sang out the lyrics through the first verse and the chorus and then they ran through the second. Again, they stopped before they arrived at Kingsley’s guitar solo.
“How was that?” she asked when the last feedback whine and stray string strike faded out.
“Not bad for a beginning, I suppose,” Celia said. “Your technical skill is good. I’m sure the phrasing will improve as we work.”
Again, with the phrasing? Laura thought angrily. Seriously? “So ... do I get the gig?” she asked.
Kingsley was looking doubtfully at her—how dare he? she thought—but he kept quiet. Celia had no particular expression on her face, but she was the one to answer. “You get the gig,” she told her. “We’re actually going to be working on Jake’s tunes today, but if you’re up to starting tomorrow, we’ll put in a full day.”
She nodded, already thinking of how she was going to spend that first paycheck. Do they pay every week? she wondered. “That sounds good,” she said.
“All right then,” Kingsley said. “Thanks for coming in and welcome to the band. Pauline and Jill will take you to the office and go over the paperwork with you. We’ll see you at nine in the morning.”
“Nine o’clock,” she said. She did not thank them for giving her the job. After all, it was she that was doing them a favor, right?
As soon as the studio door closed, they had an impromptu meeting about their new saxophonist.
“I don’t like her,” Jake said.
“She is going to take some getting used to,” Celia allowed, “but she plays beautifully and she’s technically competent. She is exactly what I need.”
“She played beautifully when she was putting out the music she liked,” Jake said. “Her output took a serious turn to the shitty as soon as she started playing Struggle.”
“There was a marked difference in phrasing when she was playing the melody,” Mary said, “but don’t you think that it’s just unfamiliarity with the piece, like Celia suggested?”
“I don’t,” Jake said. “I can give a bit of a pass on the unfamiliarity aspect, but that’s not what I was hearing. When she was playing that alto sax thing, that was a technically complex piece of music and she played it perfectly and managed to put soul into it. When she was playing Someone To Watch Over Me, she almost brought a tear to my eye. When she was playing Struggle, however, which, as she so delicately pointed out, is very simplistic in comparison, her notes were listless and flat. She wasn’t even trying. She doesn’t like our music and because of that, I don’t think she is going to be able to impart any soul to it. We might as well use Nerdly’s synthesizer to make artificial sax notes.”
“That would not be the optimum solution to the dilemma,” Nerdly said.
“I wasn’t really suggesting that, Bill,” Jake told him. “Just making a point.”
“Oh ... I see,” Bill said.
“I think she’ll fall into line,” Ben said. “I used to play with her, remember? She may not be taking this seriously right now, but she’ll warm up to what we’re doing here. She is a professional level horn blower, I promise. The rest of us in the jazz band used to tell her all the time that she had a good shot at making it as a studio musician at the very least. She’s that good.”
“I could hear that when she did her audition pieces,” Jake said. “We’re just going to need her to put that expertise and talent to use on Celia’s stuff. I’m not sure she’s capable of that. She seems to hold our music in contempt and she is not going to give her all to something she’s contemptuous of.”