Studio Log: Days Three and Four

I need to fill in a bit of background to this studio log entry. Bear with me!

Sometimes a composition takes years to come to maturity. A long time ago, I'm guessing that it would be around three years ago, I went over to the studio to record some music that I hoped to punt to an agency who deals with film music. One of the compositions I took with me back then proved too hard to 'let go'; I felt it had a bit more life to it than to see it spend its days waiting for a director to pick it up and use it for some anonymous purpose. I came over all possessive, y'see...

So when I knew I was recording a new CD, I immediately thought of this particular tune and how I should seize the opportunity to at last give it wings and let it fly. But its metamorphosis wasn't quite done, because when I said I wanted to use it, producer Martin Holmes said he thought I should play it on classical guitar as per the original session and not on steel string as I had intended. The thing is, I've been playing the tune on steel string for the past three years or so and so I had got used to hearing it that way, but Martin's major point of reference was those original sessions.

Now, never let it be said that I don't respond to ideas and so I practised the piece on nylon string (an Admira Elena-E) and went over to the studio to record it. It turns out that Martin was right; the fragility and vulnerability that the classical guitar brings to the piece breathes new life into it.

So far so good, but there was another element on those original sessions. Back then, I was in the studio with a double bass player called Ken Knussen, someone I've known since we were at school together. We both had professional music in our sights back then but Ken went into classical music and is now a very busy freelance player. So I called Ken and he was able to fit a session for me into his incredibly hectic schedule.

We haven't mixed the recording yet, but it's safe to say that the piece which has the working title 'Come Find Me' has changed yet again, Ken's bass offering another dimension, not to mention a new counter-melody.

I'm wrestling with the idea of expanding it still further by adding strings, but we're adopting an 'acoustic only' policy and so it's quite likely that we'll be wrangling some faded-in guitar chords to sound like a violin section instead.

I think it will sound grand and can't wait to get back over to the studio to add the final touches.

Giving In To McMusic?

I just thought I'd air something that's been bugging me for a couple of weeks...

Reading how a daily newspaper dubbed one of the starlets in that dodgy firmament called 'pop music' as being 'brave' because she sang one verse of her new single (and mimed to the rest) live on TV recently was enough to induce a diva-sized rant from me and several of my brothers in arms. But this was just a single incident; surely the insidious practice of allowing artists to mime in a so-called 'live' situation has gone far enough?

I have friends who have turned up to gigs where they have been booked to support some of pop's finest only to find that there are absolutely no facilities which would allow them to plug in and play. In other words, miming is dangerously near to being accepted as the norm, in pop circles at least. What's more, the public (bless 'em) don't seem to feel in the slightest short changed by the fact that they have bought a concert ticket – not cheap, by anyone's standards – in order to listen to a pre-recorded performance.

And the Musicians' Union are sorta being quiet about it, too. Sure, they make the occasional growling noise, but never seem to actually bite.

I guess all this self-righteous indignation on my part comes from the fact that I know loads of people who put in many hours practising and working incredibly hard to gain their chops in order to go in front of an audience and play. They overcome nervousness and fear – stage fright, if you will – in order to do the job they love and wouldn't dream of taking the easy avenue by resorting to the artifice of let's pretend.

I don't see a resolution on the horizon, either; not while people are prepared to accept McMusic instead of true artistry...

OK. Rant over.

Another Day, Then...

Yesterday was another day spent at the recording studios for my new album – and it turned out to be a bit of an epiphany...

Let's begin at the beginning. I was booked into 'The Holmestead' (as it is called) to record a track with the working title 'Lullaby' with my producer and engineer Martin Holmes at the controls. For this I had taken the guitar that the tune had been written on, a Yamaha LLX500C. Now this is the guitar that I used to record my previous CD 'Nocturnal' in full, with the exception of one track where I used an Admira classical guitar. In other words, I had the fullest confidence in it to do a fine job.

After the usual span of time we always spend faffing about with microphones and making sure that I am 'studio-proof' which means that I have to empty my pockets of everything that might jingle or jangle and show up on mic and I also have to take off my watch because the wristband makes the occasional noise as I move my hand. (Add to this the fact that I have to remember not to wear anything with zips, buttons or rivets and it's a little like going through airport security! But it's all in the name of art...)

After the traditional inaugural mug of tea, we set about going for the first take and I think we both sensed that something wasn't quite 'right'. The last time I was over at the studio we recorded a video of another track (see blog entry below) and it had been easy; after about four takes we had it in the can. But 'Lullaby' was proving a bit difficult to get down. I knew it was an awkward piece to play in certain sections – I have this nasty habit of writing things that stretch my technique a little, but that's how you progress, isn't it?

After one of those takes where just about everything that can go wrong actually did, we decided to adjourn for coffee and a chat. I said that it shouldn't happen that you can record a track in a problem-free single take despite the added pressure of knowing that the whole thing was going down on video like we did with 'Unseen Sunlight' and yet have trouble with the next piece where silly little glitches were showing up all over the place.

Now, I know that it's a bad workman who blames his tools, but the only real difference between this and the previous session was the guitar I was using. For the video I used a Fylde Falstaff – surely it can't make that much difference? Or can it? We decided to do some checks and sure enough, when we compared the sound of the two guitars, there's no doubt that the Fylde sounds much better than the LLX – in fact I think both Martin and I were both a little shocked by how much difference there was. Even listening back to a raw, unmixed take that I did a while ago, the Fylde sounded like vintage Rioja and there was no way we were going to be able to achieve that necessary consistency of sound without using it exclusively for the rest of the sessions.

I think the thing we both previously noticed as being 'wrong' was simply the fact that there was something lacking in the quality of sound and it was affecting my performance. In the act of struggling so hard to get a good sound out of the Yamaha, I was losing my 'vision' of the piece as a whole and making stupid rookie mistakes as a result.

So we decided to throw in the towel and cancel the session with the intention of using the Fylde when we resume recording. It means I have to re-learn around six pieces on a different guitar – which doesn't sound like too much of a big deal, but the Fylde has a wider fretboard and so all the pieces will need a little re-orienteering. Then we should be good to go and I think the album will sound 100% better as a result. The proof, of course, will be what happens at the next session...

Watch this space!

The Silver Screen...

As a sort of sequel to September's 'Making The Video' blog, I thought I'd follow through and actually provide a link to the finished article.

Now it has to be said that anything you upload to You Tube has to go through a process of compression imposed by the site itself which has the effect of mashing the quality of both audio and picture. The video itself was shot in hi-def and the audio recorded at DVD resolution – 24bit 96dB – and consequently a humungous size. But by the time it's been through the masher, it's a relatively small file, but a lot of the original finesse has been somewhat pished away!

Of course I'm being defensive! Anyway, here's the video to 'Unseen Sunlight' – enjoy!

Inspiration: Where Do You Find It?

I've always been fascinated by the idea of where exactly the idea for a song begins. I've had the great fortune to speak to many great songwriters over the years and have often asked if such-and-such a composition can be traced back to its origins – and frustratingly, the answer is usually the same: no one knows!

I'll give you an example; when I interviewed Pink Floyd's David Gilmour for Guitarist magazine a few years ago, I asked him about 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond' and he told me that the song began with the band jamming in a rehearsal studio and the famous four note 'chime' just 'falling out of my guitar...'. Apparently something in those four notes reminded Roger Waters of their fallen son, Syd Barrett and a piece of prog history began to form then and there.

Singer-songwriter James Taylor insists that he is merely a conduit for his songs and that they come from somewhere outside him, whilst other people I've spoken to will go from the mundane 'it started with a collision of two chords and then the hard work began to turn that idea into a whole piece' to the mystical 'I literally woke up one morning with the melody complete in my head. I don't know how it got there...'

Possibly the most humorous comment was from Peter Frampton, talking about one particularly inspired day of songwriting: 'I wrote 'Show Me The Way' in the morning and 'Baby I Love Your Way' just as the sun was setting... I'm still trying to work out what I had for breakfast!'

For my own part, I've just returned from a week in Cornwall and naturally I took a guitar with me (I'm finishing some pieces for my new album and so I can't afford to be sans guitar for too long at present). One morning a whole middle section of a composition I've been working on just happened; I just played it, whole and complete like I'd known it all my life – and I'll be darned if I can put into words what kind of cerebral process brought it into being. One thing I suspect was that with views from our rented cottage like this one...

...it's actually hard not to be inspired!

Studio Log: Day Two – Making The Video...

It might seem a bit of an odd thing to do: making a video of a track before the actual recording sessions for the album itself have actually started. But my rationale was two fold:

1) Why not?

2) Never underestimate the power of You Tube

So off to the studio this morning in order to sit on a stool in front of a hi-def video camera to shoot some footage for a new composition of mine called 'Unseen Sunlight'.

Now, for the technically-minded, the video was shot 'live'; that is to say that I was actually playing and not miming to a backing track as is the norm in a lot of promotional videos you see online. It's a case of 'what you see is what you get' with this video. So this means that we didn't record the audio via the camera, rather it was picked up by two mics and the direct signal from my Headway FEQ pick-up inside the Fylde Falstff guitar and sent off to a hard disk via some unfathomable electronics. Video and audio will be synced by some more studio magic in the mixing suite later on.

The two mics serve an obvious purpose – stereo audio; but we also include some of the direct feed from the piezo in the mix so that the bass 'speaks' faster. Bass frequencies are notoriously lazy and tend not to do too much until you're about six feet away from the guitar. You can get around this by a little ambient miking – that is having another pair of stereo mics further away in the studio, but if you're shooting a video and space is limited then it's better not to invite the added possibility of outside noise creeping in to the mix. The piezo signal is immediate as it comes straight from the strings' passage across the bridge and so, when it's mixed back to the mic signal, voila! Instant good, solid bass.

I'm sometimes asked how to cope with 'red light fever' – the condition where something you can play in your sleep suddenly becomes like climbing Everest on stilts when someone shouts "We're rolling!". If I knew a sure-fire way of overcoming it, I'd speak up, but I find that you just have to try to focus on the music and 'blank out' the fact that you're in the somewhat artificial environs of a recording studio.

In any case, after a couple of takes to 'settle in and find my muse' (ahem) we had a video. And when it's mixed, cut and edited (and they've put all the special effects in that I asked for) it'll be up on You Tube as a trailer for things to come.

Software Vs Hardware

Once upon a time, I had a reputation as an inveterate 'fiddler' when it came to guitars. I just couldn't stop tweaking, changing pick-ups being my favourite ploy. In fact, when I bought a guitar from a well-known luthier once he said to me, 'And don't you dare change those pick-ups!' as I left his workshop. He knew me and my DIY habit well, y'see...

The thing is, now I don't know why I did it. I must have spent a fortune on replacement pick-ups back then: Seymour Duncan, DiMarzio, Paul Reed Smith – all these guys are richer because of me. I was looking for something, but I'm not quite sure what because my experience since then has taught me that a good player can get a good sound out of even the most average instrument. It's not the gear, it's the player, after all.

I sometimes see it in students I've taught, though; that idea that if they could get hold of a very expensive instrument, effects unit or amplifier then all their problems would somehow go away. After all, isn't it easier to play great blues guitar on a great blues guitar? The answer, in case you're wondering, is 'no'; it's certainly no easier, but it's arguably more pleasurable and I think that's the answer to the whole conundrum. We invest more in peripherals or changing instruments because of the way it makes us feel as opposed to the way it makes us play.

So if walking on stage with a vintage Strat makes you feel better about being there and has the knock-on effect of making you play better then it's worth the investment. But it's a heck of a lot cheaper to adopt the mindset that the majority of your investment ought to be directed at your playing, rather than your gear!