Blog
I Am a Scholar
Written by Louise
As it mentions in the little biog on my artist’s page, I did gig a bit in Bristol. When I say ‘gig’, I mean I coerced my flatmate to accompany me on the guitar while I tentatively sang to a crowd of- actually once there were about 60 people! Which is quite good. But I was ‘supporting’ James Blunt who, at the time, people liked (I still do but let’s not go there – I think it’s a memory thing. I saw him play at an amazing record shop on Park Street called Replay (shut now, I believe). Just him and a guitar over his shoulder. He stood on a crate. He was good.).
And then, for my 21st birthday, my dad gave me a semi-acoustic guitar and a very cool amp (which I took to be used in the only professional play I’ve done by the way (and James Blunt used it at afore mentioned gig = claim to fame)). And my mum gave me a day in a studio (it was so sweet, because she obviously had nothing to actually hand over on this oh-so-important day, so she typed all the details out in a fancy font onto thick, parchment-esque paper, rolled it up, tied a ribbon round it and presented that to me. Where would I be without my mum? Well, I wouldn’t be actually, if you think about it. Ahem.).
I hopped on the Bristol to London bus (National Express 040, not Mega Bus, ugh), and got myself to Tottenham Court Road and spent the day with a lovely man who helped me to record the original versions of Let Love Shine and Off the Track – staples in my 3 song repetoire back then. I remember eating a banana… Energy levels and all that. I also remember (I have a bad memory) that this nice man made his living writing and recording advert jingles and he was writing one for Jammy Dodgers – he showed me the film he had to write to and everything and what he’d done was really very good! (But don’t get me started about Jammy Dodgers. They are just not as good as M&S ones, and yet they have the definitive name. Wrong.)
Anyway, my point being, that 3 years later, with this as my only music recording experience, I find myself being taken up by Jimmy as a ‘scholar’. The equipment he’s using is amazing and the support (being Andy) is equally phenomenal. I asked myself ‘why on earth would Jimmy want me?!’ and kept repeating to J and A that ‘I’m really not very musical’, and that ‘I really can’t really write music, or know anything about writing or music theory or anything of the sort’. But really, working in a group meant that I didn’t have to do all (or any, if we’re going to be honest) of that. Working with people who could play the guitar without bass notes ringing on and on (James Blunt gig) was really what I’d been trying to do when bribing my poor housemate Ben to play with me.
When working at Abubilla, I work in three ways. The first is recording my own music. I had a huge argument with my then-very-selfish boyfriend one day, went home and wrote a song about it, took it into the studio the following Saturday and Jimmy, aka “Buttons”, gave me the whole morning to lay it down. I think we rigged a mic up for the guitar and one for my vocal and we’ve used the first, angry take (which isn’t quite right, I don’t think – it would be neater to record guitar and vocal separately, but I ain’t no guitarist so you get what you get). And then I went back over what I’d recorded, still with my tired, morning voice, and threw some harmonies over the top, praying something decent would come out which, once Andy finished editing it, turned out miraculously to happen. And there you have No Poetry. Let Love Shine I think was Jimmy’s idea – he had this kind of vision with it, that it could be a great, poppy band number. I have to say, I laid down the guide track (which I was not happy with) and left the band to it (I am deliberately skipping the bit where we all tried to jam together and I almost cried, I was so terrified they might destroy my song). Literally. I stepped out of the studio while they jammed with the chords, discovered this funky little riff and a clever style break in the bridge, and then stepped back in to record a more free vocal line, with Andy miming ‘Shirley Bassey’ to me over the reflector shield. And now there’s this pop song. Which used to be a folk number. And I really like it. Plus, I got so fed up with noone being able to ‘get’ the backing vibe that I was given studio time to work it out and do it myself (all due credit to Jimmy for the ‘bah-bah’s though).
Secondly, I work with the band to write music. As I mentioned, I’m really not particularly good or quick at writing songs, but it turns out I can make up a pretty good tune. So Ed or Andy plays a chord sequence, Jimmy hands me the words and I sing them over the top. We go over and over this a few times until something more concrete appears and there we have the basis of a song. This is most apparent in something like Immovable Thing, or Too Many Weddings (although Jimmy had quite a clear idea of the chorus tune for this one).
Thirdly, being quite new onto the scene and with time on my hands (as a resting actress), I work on the admin and development side, which is a bit barmy as I am the only person in the group who knows NOTHING about the music industry, and I mean genuinely zero, nothing, nada. I had to buy a book. Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about (good book, though: ‘Start and Run Your Own Record Label’). Since learning the hard (and very ignorant) way about most things (which mainly involved asking a lot of questions and consolidating what I’d been told (let everyone else do the work, I say)), I reckon I could now tell you a bit about setting up a music-based website, about producing a CD, about how to find people to talk to. I’ve learnt how to use WordPress (ta-da), Soundcloud and yourmailinglistprovider (not very catchy), how to set up a facebook fan page, how to edit a MySpace page (less is more, Mies van de Rohe). Yeah, it’s pretty basic, but it’s a darn sight more than I knew before. And I’m learning (as everyone knows, really) that the more you just immerse yourself in something, the more you learn simply by osmosis. Although, the boys will tell you, don’t ask me about publishing, or the PRS (google it) – and I don’t know anything about the money side of things. Yet…
Plus, on top of all of that, we go to Spain. All the time! I thought it may be twice a year (that’s the precedent that’s been set), but Jimmy asked the other day whether we thought there was any mileage in going in the Spring. Yes, Jimmy, I think we probably should. As a scholar, the summer trip is fully funded. And there’s a pool. Could it get much better?!