|
EXTRAS
THE BANK HOLIDAYS - SECOND RECORDING SESSIONS
Nat's studio diary
Hi, if you continue reading this page you might find out something about The Bank Holidays' second round of recording sessions for their first EP.
Saturday 21 February
Since we did our last recording with our producer/engineer Steve Bond, his neighbours have decided that they don't like the noisy rock and roll musique next door. So we've had to shift our initial drum recordings to a place called 'The Box'. So called because it is a soundproof room shaped like, umm, a box!
The Banx boyz are together in the room playing drums, guitar and bass, but Bekk is forced to sit behind a big orange baffle, facing the wall, as she sings a guide vocal for all of the songs. I suspect that looking at the wall for hours while is making her crazy and at any moment she will pull out a sharp object and reduce the band membership to 1. When she starts reading 'Valley of The Dolls', I figure perhaps she will instead dose up our orange juices in a cunning and devious manner, with deadly results. Luckily this doesn't eventuate.
Because we don't like the words 'drum solo', we term Chatesy's little section on Tread Easy a 'drum featurette'. Much of our energy is focused on this section, Chatesy being determined get as much Ringo out of it as he can. Both 'Tread Easy' and 'The City Is Too Small' drum parts are finished today.
Sunday 22 February
We manage to finish drums for the often difficult 'Along With The Sun'. Did the placement of a sheet over Chatesy's snare drum have some to do with it?
I think Jim did bass on 'Tread Easy' too.
Tuesday 24 February
Jim finished his bass parts today. I wasn't there! (hence I've got diddly to say about it, but it sounds great to listen to)
Saturday 28/Sunday 29 February
To be honest, I find it pretty boring trying to write about recording guitars. The stock standard story is - try and play as well as possible in a way sympathetic to the song. After one or two takes, the sound engineer will say "hang on, I'm just gonna add a little more treble/bass to this". Keep playing until getting the part right and the thing is done. That pretty much sums up this weekend's recording of guitars.
Wednesday 3 March
Being the strongest singer in The Bank Holidays, Bekk has earnt herself the title of 'the human keyboard', and for this reason she gets volunteered by Jim to go into the vocal booth to start the first round of singing in these sessions. 'Along With The Sun' is the first sucker up to the plate.
Bekk nails the verses quickly, but to compensate for this efficiency she then spends a whole lotta time on the middle 8. Thanks to her for putting up my demands to sing less cutely. Imagine her embarrasment when she realises that she has been singing daa-di-daa instead of naa-ni-naa during the chorus in our whole history of performing this song... yerrs. Jim and I take on our naa-ni-naas, plus some other vocal dominated sounds, and it's all done fairly quickly. Yeyah!
Saturday 6 March
I spend absolutely ages trying to get a good lead vocal on 'The City Is Too Small', plus Bekk, Chatesy and Jim put down some more harmonies on the same song. Chates reckons that our singing is like 3 twees and a Tweedy (with him as the Jeff Tweedy, of Wilco fame) and gives the EP working title of 'Hi-Fi Twee' in tribute to You Am I's album Hi-Fi Way. Not too happy with today's lead vocal work, it gets re-done later.
Sunday 7 March
More backing vocals on 'The City...'. I'm told that this song has 17 chords in it (too much of me listening to Pet Sounds are a likely cause). We work out a great harmony part for the middle 8 which involves our first ever vocal harmony on a diminished chord (if you're not a music nerd, a diminished chord is a weird and unsettling chord).
After this we all get into vocal booth together (not a common thing, we usually sing harmonies separately) and do the intro to 'The City' in an attempt to capture some Bank Holiday love and energy, and it turns out suprisingly well. Maybe we can sing after all.
Jim also does most of his lead vocal on 'Tread Easy', and I reckon it sounds great. Although for some reason he has problems saying/singing the words "ohhhh yeah" in a satisfactory manner.
Wednesday 10 March
More backing vocals. Hmmm, you're thinking, will these backing vocals ever stop? The answer - no. Working on 'Tread Easy', which means plenty more vowel dominated singing. Oooooh, yes. Ahaha. Sometimes I wonder what Steve thinks when we tell him we're gonna do some more (more, more) backing vocals... fortunately he is patient and doesn't own a baseball bat (to my knowledge).
Monday 15 March
I walk into this session two minutes after cellist Tristan Parr has left, having played some amazing psuedo-psychedelic parts on "Tread Easy'. I seriously love love love it. Look out for the cello part where Jim sings "I'll be your universal saviour", and for the whole outro/end section. Bloody great, maybe I should show up late more often.
Friday 19 March
While we diverted from basic Bank stuff and moonlighted with cellos in the previous session, Bekk and I return to take up unfinished business with some previous singing parts which were, ummm, a tad shite. Fixing up some dodgy bits on 'Tread Easy', she also creates some heavenly vocal chords by doing a 4-part harmony with herself on the same song (it's that human mellotron thing). I re-do all of my lead vocals on 'The City...', assisted by shots of gin and other stupid behaviour that may or may not involve using Steve's bed as a trampoline.
Saturday 20 March
Percussion a-hoy. Connoisseur of tinkering and hitting things, Chatesy uses a range of tambourines on 'Tread Easy', and takes it to another realm of love on 'Along With The Sun', using sleigh bells (it's Chatesy Christmas!), more tambourine, and cymbals swells. I think that's 4 non tuned instruments he plays on one song - well done lad.
Steve tells me that he has seen the photos from the second day of these recording sessions on the website. He likes them. He also asks, "where's my picture?". Ahahah nice one Stevie.
Wednesday 24 March
Trying out stupid ideas in the studio - I dig it. Even though we are working on hourly rates with Steve. Tonight I played piano on 'Along With The Sun' (thanks to my Mum for letting us use her kitchen to set up the recording gear in, and her piano). All I know about that instrument I learned between the ages of 6 and 7, so I feel a bit of a fraud sitting on that stool recording the whole thing for posterity. Regardless, it ended up sounding pretty good I'm told. Then the aforementioned stupidity (for 'Along With The Sun') begins. Witness:
Stage 1 - brushing the strings inside the piano
Stage 2 - plucking the strings inside the piano
Stage 3 - Jim & I singing into the piano's innards to create resonance and echo (I don't know how this will work on the final recording, but when we nailed a good harmony the resonance was great)
Stage 4 - playing a toy glockenspiel on 'Tread Easy'... not sure how this fits into the stupid ideas category but it was fun anyway
POSTSCRIPT: the diary finished here. You can breath a sign of relief.
return to extras
| 