Album Blog Part 6

Ok where was I...

Thursday 20th August
The day started well working on acoustic guitar parts for Into The Blue. All pretty painless. But after lunch we started working on the vocal for Falling Next To You. I'm not sure what was going on but it was a lousy day. My vocals were not sitting right and I sang it a whole load of times but it just didn't feel right. I was starting to get grumpy, so was Cesar (I think) and we both ended up pretty miserable. After a while we just wrote it off as a bad day and went home!

Friday 21st August
Maybe I just needed a good sleep, cos the vibe was back today! We got stuck into the parts for Into The Blue, doing the electric guitar bits and experimenting with vocal ideas and stuff. Went out and had sushi for lunch in Chiswick.

When we came back we got into doing the vocal for I Know. We wanted a pretty crunchy sound for this one so we went for a dynamic mic, a SM7, a posh version of a SM57, into the 1073 mic pre and the 1176 compressor. Dynamic mics have a very different sound to condensers (that we used on all other vocal tracks) and it really worked in the track.

Once we had done the main vocal line, we then tracked it. This means that I sang exactly the same thing again, as close as possible.

Hints on tracking a vocal
I used to find tracking quite difficult but I have been experimenting and think I have come up with some good tips for you. Pan the original vocal (LV, Lead Vocal) to one ear (I use left) and then pan the live mic to the other ear. This way you can hear the new and old clearly and make sure that you end the notes right and when they are perfectly in tune and time, they really blend in your head. The panning separates them and for me makes it a lot easier to hear if I'm getting it right.

It is also important that you know what you have to sing, and trying to do a whole song is usually too hard. So we did one of two approaches. Sometimes we would record a whole section (either a verse of chorus) in one go and then go back in a overdub any bits that were not right. For harder bits we would do it one line at a time. Listen to the line and then track it. If it wasn't right we'd listen again, then record, until we got it right. So make sure you know what you have to track to or it won't happen!!

That went really well and we left with a good vibe!

Saturday 22nd August
Day off.

Sunday 23rd August
Today I was in the studio to record a vocal for I Pity The Rose, with Pete Cunnah (my great mate and co-writer of this song) at the desk. Pete is a great singer and really helped me get my vocals together. He's also a very experienced producer and we really wanted to get a great vocal on this track. So we spent most of the day working on the vocal parts. It was all pretty smooth sailing really, good fun day. After the LV was done we tracked it in the choruses and then we got to work on the BV (Backing Vocal). Pete did a lot of the BV's and I did some too.

We worked on it until my voice gave up. Great day.

Monday 24th August
I had to get into the studio early to get my LV comped in Forevergreen. Really happy with the way it came out. I stayed late in the studio and just sang it until I got right into the zone and was really feeling it, and I think I got inside it in the end. So doing the comp was pretty painless.

When Cesar got in we started working on Into The Blue, we recorded some very cool parts on the Wurlitzer, I just played some simple notes and we put them into the Space Echo to get them sounding all strange. Love the sound we got especially at the end of the track.

Then we got into doing the harmonies which was came pretty quick and easy!

Tuesday 25th August
Lots of tidying up to do, this was supposed to be the last day recording, but we had not got it all done, nearly but not quite.

Emily Phillips came in to do some backing vocals on this one for me. She co-wrote the lyric with me and we had worked out some rough harmonies when we wrote it. We experimented a bit and we came up with some very interesting harmonies for the track, sounds very cool. She's great at finding interesting harmonies and it was lots of fun.

Once all that was done we made rough mixes of the tracks to take with us on our respective holidays. Cesar was off to NYC for a week, and I was off to Croatia. Not much to go now...

26th - 31st August
Holiday in Trogir, Croatia. Awesome.

Tuesday 1st September
This was a planning and tidy up day. Listening to all the tracks and working out what needed doing and when it was going to get done. I finished off the LV comp for Forevergreen. But I must admit I was struggling to get into gear after the holiday and didn't get as much done as I would have liked...

Wednesday 2nd September
Had to take a day off to get admin stuff done, emails, bills, accounting all that boring stuff...

Thursday 3rd September
Started off the day trying to get the solo sorted for Levity, but well... it didn't go well. We spent ages experimenting with sounds and vibes and styles and well it just wasn't happening. I started to get grumpy and we decided to leave it and get into other stuff that needed doing.

We tracked he LV in the chorus of Cutting Out and Pity The Rose and found a very cool harmony for I Know, which stays on the same note for the whole song!! It's not very loud in the mix, but you can hear it if you listen closely, makes the vocal sound a little odd, but it's hard to tell why. Like it :)

That was the whole day.

Friday 4th September
More tidy ups today. Trimming parts checking everything was in the right place. I don't seem to have written down exactly what we did that day to be honest, not sure why! But it was all good!

Saturday 5th September
Day off.

Sunday 6th September
Had Pete Cunnah back in today to help me record the vocal for Love and Levity, the other track on the album that we co-wrote. It was a bit of a slog, Pete had a flu and I was feeling a little rough too, but we dug deep and got and 2/3 of the track done. Early night though...

Monday 7th - Friday 11th September
Mixing in Sofa Sound... more on all that in next post, I have to get to the studio...