TERM 1 - Planning for Recording my Track - Part 2

 In the last week, a lot has changed again. With the ongoing circumstances due to Covid-19 and everyone I was planning on collaborating with being students with completely different timetables, it was proving significantly difficult to organise any rehearsal and recording slots before the deadline of the 11th.

Because of this, I have decided to go ahead on my own and record an acoustic version of the song, which I will hand in alongside a video of a live performance with the full band, in order to showcase what it was meant to sound like initially. I have booked in a slot at Small Pond Studios on Monday 7th of December at 4:45-7:30pm. This is extremely close to the deadline, however unfortunately due to having spent two weeks trying to get 5 musicians together, I missed out on all the earlier available slots. Having said that, I know that I will be able to record a stripped back version of this by myself in two hours. This will consist of me playing guitar, singing lead vocals and then harmonising over the top. I will then also potentially overdub some simple bass/piano parts at home. Currently, there seem to be no available mixing sessions available after the 7th, so I am going to email Tom (my course leader) and ask if he can help me arrange an extra slot back to back with my recording one. Otherwise, I will have to do this myself at home to the best of my abilities.

Edit (30/11/20):

I have spoken to Tom and successfully booked a mixing session from 2-5pm on the Tuesday after my recording session. This will be perfect for getting my track completely finished, ready for the submission. I have also been talking to Chris and he is now going to come along to help me out and add some keys to the track, which I think will fill in the sound really nicely. We are planning on recording the track as a live set up.

TERM 1 - Planning for Recording my Track - Achievements and Struggles Faced

 Shown on the left is a list I wrote last week to start planning out how I am going to get my track recorded. (I added the stuff in red today seeing as a lot has changed within a week).

I am really happy that I have successfully written my own song and have been running through it with the house band in the LPW sessions. We also have the structure down completely and I have a lot of ideas for elements I would like the song to include.

Chris, an MA student who is also the keyboardist in the band, has offered to collaborate with me and help me produce/record my track. This is awesome, however unfortunately he has needed to self isolate till this Friday due to coming into contact with someone who has coronavirus so we haven't been able to start anything yet. This has made things a lot more challenging than I expected. Having said that, yesterday in LPW, I ran through the song with the rest of the band again and we are looking at what days everyone is free, so that I can book some rehearsal slots and get the song down to then be able to record it. I have also been talking through things with Chris and have sent him my lyrics and an explanation of the meaning of the song, so that he has a better understanding of the message I am conveying in this track. This means that when it comes to producing the song, he can help me get these things across as best as possible. Furthermore, yesterday in LPW, I realised that  before I go and book a recording slot and use up my available time (we are limited to one recording studio slot per term), I need to book some rehearsals with the whole band to get the song tight and make sure everyone knows exactly what they are doing. 

Luckily, if all else fails, I now have a basic DAW set up at home and could potentially track/mix everything to the best of my abilities in my bedroom. However, this would have to consist of programmed drums and would probably not sound the best, but it is always good to have a backup plan/last resort just in case!

TERM 1 - Arrangement Ideas/Overall Sound For The Song.

Here is a photo of my notes for some arrangement ideas I wrote out last week. At first I wanted the song to start off with just acoustic guitar, but after talking to George in our Songcraft lesson, I decided it would be way better to have the whole band come in at the beginning, with a repeated riff over the top to catch the listeners ear and immediately let them recognise the song; similarly to High and Dry by Radiohead (Yorke, 1995).

We also thought that skipping beat one on the first bar in the second verse would work nicely to vary up the song, create more excitement/alteration in the track and keep the listener on their toes.

Here is a link to the video of the run we did after introducing some of these elements into the track:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1A75rhv5U_1lOa39mUdCWhJ43O7U-MKWj/view?usp=sharing

It all worked really nicely, we took the slightly variated line of the melody in the verse and translated it onto the guitar for the introducing hook. This worked perfectly as I only sing this melody line once in the verse, as the rest of the lines go down. It means that when I go to sing this line, the audience is already familiar with this variation but wasn't necessarily expecting to hear it on the vocals. This adds further to the idea of 'confusion and uncertainty within what you perceive to be true or not' that I am trying to create for the listener. 

The only thing that needs to change is the half time drums we introduced in the Pre-Chorus section. Despite them being a great idea, whilst performing it and listening back to it, I felt as if it was slowing down the natural flow of the track and was making the section sound sluggish. Therefore, I have decided we should keep the original drum idea, but maybe add some cymbal crashes on the word "Back" during the bit where I sing "Back, do you want it back? Do you want it back?..." to bring out the floaty, dreamy feel I want to get across.