Studio day – Oberland

Instead of having a constant problem with tenses like last time, I’m writing this report/diary/meandering mess after the studio day. It makes it easier.

The second song of the year is in the bag. Recording wise. Release will be at some point in the next couple of weeks. This is probably the shortest write to release time I have ever been involved with. Although having said that, Cec had the idea for the song years ago and has been toying with it since. Do we count that? I don’t think we will.

We kicked off at Awesome Source at 9am on a Sunday morning. I’d been in earlier in the week to record a guitar scratch track. Due to a lack of Ally for this session, Paul had also built a synth bass backing track.

We’d decided on three different guitar tracks, and subsequently three different guitars. The first was the main strummed chords, which was easy enough and we got it done in around 30 minutes.

The second was a little trickier. I’d written (ish) a picked part, and Paul suggested we borrow a classical guitar – which we did, from a good friend, Pete. I actually first learnt to play on a classical guitar, but it’s been a while, so I was fairly rusty and it took a while. The part’s going to need some editing to get it into shape. In an ideal world we’d get it right, but unfortunately time and money are against us. Perhaps we’ll look at that in more detail another time.

Third guitar was mainly to add a little extra texture to the choruses. A nice little CAPO 5 part.

Then we were off on the vocals. Cec is singing the main vocal, and she got her part down beautifully before lunch. Claire and I followed suit after lunch, and we were all done by around half four, which felt really good. Almost feels as if we’re getting the hang of this recording nonsense.

Even without editing and mixing, the song is sounding great. I’m very keen to get this into your earholes. In the meantime, enjoy this video of seven and a half hours condensed into one minute: