EXTRAS

NAT'S STUDIO DIARY

Friday 7 November 2003
Location: Steve Bond's house
Recording: Lead vocals on Folded in Half
Backing Vocals on Folded In Half, The Greatest Game

The day of singing had arrived. No instruments, just vocal harmonies aplenty.

For inspiration I brought The Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds Recording Sessions" box-set along today (thanks to Stu Loasby for loan) - it's full of glorious a cappella versions of songs from this great record. We listened to a few tracks from this before commencing the day, and Steve played snippets of it to guide us when we lost our way.

First order of the day was for me to get into the vocal booth and sing the lead vocal for Folded In Half, which came off better than I expected, excepting some techincal problems on Steve's end. Fact: swaying, dancing and air-drumming while doing vocal takes actually helps improve my performace. Damn straight.

In between takes I can hear Jim and Bekk strumming the song on guitar while singing an unfamiliar melody that makes me suspect that they are closet Stereolab fans.

They get the chance to put the Stereolab thing into action next as the two of them take turns laying down about 4 tracks of vocals each on Folded in Half. It's great to hear it all come together and at its finish, Steve satisfies our Pet Sounds a cappella fetish by playing the song with only vocal tracks and a ton of chamber reverb while we look at each other feeling rather chuffed.

The good times are not over. We shift back to work on The Greatest Game so Chates and I can sing some bits of our own. Then we all (meaning 4 Banks plus Steve) gather around 2 microphones set-up in Steve's lounge room and yell "B-A-D-M-I-N-T-O-N!", because sometimes subtlety can be so boring.

Did I mean that the German hot dog man was on the street again? Must be a Fridays-in-summer thing.

NEXT >> Nat's studio diary - Sunday, 9th Nov 2003

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