Blog
13
Mar
2010
This Week in the Studio: 10.03.13
Written by Jimmy
Just send off the four mixes from today’s session, so time to tell to summarise the day, which was filled with the ‘Grand Return’ of Lou and Sophie to the Studio, Mike’s power naps, Andy’s jazz hands, Hannah’s pastries, and a Tribute to Gus.
First and most importantly is that Sophie is a 2010 Scholar. She has the hoodie to prove it and a nice shiny red banner on her name now. Congrats.
And here’s 5 other things you need to know:
- Chamberlain in Munich: Day started with Andy and Jimmy working on Chamberlain in Munich, our new little country ditty. Andy and Jimmy have become a little Lennon-McCartney (or as Jimmy corrected a little Lennon-Ringo). But we’re pretty fast … Jimmy writes the lyrics and generally has the tune in his head (yield loss from head to mouth about 70% and from mouth to music about 80%, which means only 16% gets to Andy, so he writes about 84% of tune despite Jimmy being pretty sure he had it in his head). We then lay down guide tracks. Band arrived and we put down the song, playing it life, with Andy on a great slide guitar, Rob on Bass, Mike on Drums and Lou back again on Vocals. We had put together the song list for our new album, and suddenly realised to our horror that we only had one song with a Lou lead. And we know she is THE reason people like the first album. So we promise you on songs going forward are written for her (even if we have to wait for Spain to get her vocals).
- She Knows: Okay, now this gets confusing. ‘She Knows’ is a song based on the riff written by Ed as the riff for One in a Trillion (see below). We tried to put the lyrics over it, but found we were ruining the basic idea of One in a Trillion fitting it to Ed’s riff. So we did new music for One in a Trillion, saved Ed’s riff and last week Andy started ‘scatting’ over it. Not a lot of sense came out, except for the phrase ‘She Knows’. Are you keeping up? So we went with that, Jimmy wrote lyrics and early in morning today Jimmy and Andy laid down She Knows. Then band arrived and Andy got ‘Jazz Hands’ and did four backing tracks for the chorus. Then he asked Lou in and gave her Jazz Hands and Lou put down 3 backing tracks. Then he asked Hannah in, gave her Jazz hands and she put down four backing tracks. All very cool. Took Jimmy about an hour to mix the 10 Bvox, but came out well. Ed’s riff + Jazz hands and we’ve got a little hit… well not really, but it’s fun.
- One in a Trillion: Last chorus of One in a Trillion goes, ‘And the lights go down, and the band begins, playing our song, with the soft low strings.’ Given we’re a rather literal lot, we had to bring Sophie in for that bit. So we four tracked the cello and it was lovely. Oh, except for some reason, Sophie simply laughed thru all four of her tracks — not little laugh — belly laugh. And by coincidence there was talk aof banning Jimmy from the studio. I think we also took the laughing, giggling cello player and asked her to put some bits on Starin’ at My Shoes.’ (Which I need to ‘bounce to the band.’)
- Thru Love: this isn’t actually the name of the song that has no name. it is a holding name for filing purposes. Our newest find and absolute star is Gus, who is the future of music. He came on Tuesday last week and sang on ‘Starin’ at My Shoes’, transforming it. He also played two of his songs, Walking and ‘no named song.’ We took the ‘no named’ song and added a band, just to see if Gus would like it. We hope he does.
- Hannah and Lou Launch voices and search for COO’s: In addition to all the music, Hannah and Lou were busy keeping the ‘business going’ which included lots of work in blogs, on teach Sound Cloud, on launching Voices and in expanding our search for a COO. Hannah added her top five which is becoming a must read.
That’s it. Great day and thanks to all. Gus, we hope you’re okay with Thru Love. We’ll delete it all if you hate it. Oh and Mike Slept a lot. Martyn came and went in a flash and we really enjoyed Hannah’s tea and pastries.
Jimmy