So, it's Sunday 12th July and I'm at Dulles International Airport. Can't help but think there's a missing t there. Today's my eleventh day in America and the last time I had a shave was in June. I look like Robinson Crusoe.
Enough of this small talk. Music. It's been a brilliant intense week or so. I came expecting to focus on piano and acoustic guitar and maybe get a few lead vocals done if we were lucky. But we've done 8 out of 10 lead vocals, all the pianos, most of the Hammonds and one acoustic guitar part. As the week's progressed, we've got faster and faster and more productive.
After the first day's sausage-fingered crisis of confidence, the pianos by and large went down like a dream. All that rehearsal really told. No major reinvention of the parts I'd written at Grove with Sam and Mark, just fine tuning.
Some brief technical talk. We're recording with ProTools HD and we're using piano samples rather than the big wooden live mothers themselves. What you lose in sound (very little), you gain in flexibility. We don't have to bed anything down right up until it's mixed. However, this does make all kinds of nefarious digital trickery possible – which is not necessarily a good thing. The temptation everyone faces with working with MIDI (the brilliant 1908s invention that enables computers to boss keyboards and software instruments) is to make everything perfect. The magic button is the one marked 'Quantize'. This generally takes a dim view of what you've played, assumes you didn't mean any of it and squeezes what you’ve done remorselessly into a ‘grid. The result is a kind of characterless, mathematical take on the original. But in music as in life, character comes from flaws not perfection. So on most of the tracks, we've kept whole straight takes and only tinkered by hand when we thought it was absolutely necessary. The result is something much more groovy and happening (I'm aware of how old this kind of lingo is making me sound).
The vocals, contrary to my fears, were also a bit of a breeze. Last time, Thomas made me a) do hundreds of takes – sometimes spending whole days on one vocal b) carry heavy items whilst singing to engage the right muscles in my stomach c) sing like a small child d) open my mouth like a letterbox, even if that meant changing the syllable in a word and e) sing in front of a candle so I directed the air in the right way. This time, again it’s felt lots more easy and natural. I think being out of a vocal booth helped too. We made a makeshift little shack out of screens but I was still out in the open with access to fresh air and daylight. The vocal booth is great for concentration and getting in the zone but it can also be a Cave Of Uncertainty for those people vulnerable to assault from their inner critic. All in all, I sang (in this order) Red, Diamond Tears, Downhill, Hurricane Jane, Masquerade, The Top, Cressida Road and Tame Lions. That leaves Homes For Heroes and The One That Stayed Behind to do in London.
I think my favourite vocal is Cressida Road. We did whole takes, rather than going section by section, and they seemed to get better and better as we went. Most of what ends up on the record will come from the very last take.
The only other thing we did (in a fearful rush before going out for dinner in Old Town Alexandria) was the acoustic guitar on The One That Stayed Behind. I insisted on doing at least one acoustic guitar part to justify all the grief I’d gone through insuring it for the flight and making sure I could take it on board the plane rather than checking it in and spending the whole flight worrying if I’d get a box full of firewood back at the other side.
So that’s it for now. Back to see my family who I’ve missed terribly, but feeling great that we’ve done some really good work.
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