Paul West

The plans we make

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Well well..

This month a day’s recording became a weekend’s recording. Not a solid weekend, mind. But a very enjoyable weekend.

In order to accommodate the people I’d asked to contribute to Somewhere in between, I had to shift things around, and we decided we needed to record the drums before Sunday. It also worked to throw the bass into this session as well. The original plan was to start early evening on Friday, get a scratch track done, then set up and record the drums, and then record the bass.

Traffic on the M25 threw this plan out of the window, so the new plan became to record the scratch track Friday evening, which we duly did, then do drums and bass on Saturday evening. By this point we’d also determined it would make sense to get the lead vocals done after the bass, which we could then comp and edit on Sunday morning ready for Han Goslett to come in and do her vocals.

And so it was that I trooped to Awesome Source studios with Paul and Si on Saturday evening. A good time was had by all. Pizza was consumed, sick beats and phat bass were laid down. It was, once again, a wonderful experience to see something I’d written come alive with other people’s creativity. The night was wearing on by the time we got to the vocals. But, minor disaster! My sinuses thought it better to flood with mucus. Singing “Subwhere id betweed” wasn’t really cutting the mustard for Paul and a fresh plan was settled upon.

An early start on Sunday was conceived, and, fresh from a very hot shower and hopped up on vocalzone, I recorded an 8am Sunday vocal rather than an 11pm Saturday vocal. Potentially less rock and roll, but definitely less congested. The wonderful Han came by mid morning to record her harmonies and a lead part for the end of the song. Then we had the multi-talented Tom from Beer Pressure coming to play both a keyboard AND lead guitar part.

The benefit to “front-loading” the recording process was that, following a late, relaxed lunch, we only had the acoustic guitar and a guitar/vocal intro to record before calling it a day nice and early.

There might be a slightly longer wait for this one as mixing won’t happen ’til next week, but it’s turned out well so far.

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Studio day – Mind your PMQs

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Tracking Mind your PMQs

I won’t take you on a magical mystery tour of the day this time, as it’s not proved to be my favourite format for reporting studio days. Instead, I’ll just throw out thoughts in random fashion. That’s proved popular so far. In as much as I haven’t had any comments posted saying that you don’t like it.

One of the amazing things about recording every month is the fantastic improvised bands we end up with. This month’s offering will feature splendmazing (getting bored with my superlatives) contributions from Paul, Ant and Matt O all of whom it was a pleasure hanging out with during the day in addition to adding their musicosity (almost definitely a word) to the song.

I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned, but Mind Your PMQs was only written in the last couple of weeks, so it hasn’t had time to embed too much. There was a little more writing on the spot than we’ve previously experienced, which did lead to a slightly longer day and we’ll need an extra evening session this week to get the backing vocals done.

It’s an obvious thing to say, but doing this regularly really does increase confidence. Particularly with vocals and acoustic guitar. I’m still a bit ‘fish out of water’ with the electric guitar (borrowed from Aj of strangeday fame this month) but I do have enormous fun playing the parts. Once we’d worked out what the parts should be.

The vocals were pretty good fun to do. We were really trying to get some passion in there and I attempted my best Dave Grohl impression (I’m rocking the Discount Dave Grohl look at the moment) for the final verse. I’m interested to see how it comes out. Hopefully Paul will be able to work his majicks.

I will say this. This recording/releasing lark is getting addictive. I’m already trying to work out how I might be able to step up the pace to twice a month. Stay tuned chizzlers.