Friday, September 7, 2012

Young Writers Theatre

Reese's Pieces

Dan's Reese's Pieces backing track had a wonderful spirit, beautifully akin to the original ethos of IML, you can record with whatever you've got technology wise, it's not about the quality, it's about taking part and doing something. Dan's backing track (see blog post below) involved hammering something with something else to make a brilliant sound of hammering. It's a playground chant setup, so where do I turn? MY KIDS! I played the track to my 6 and 8 year old (that's 2 kids, 2 different ages rather than a trans-aged child) and asked for lyrical advice, based on the fact that the song HAD to be about a film they'd never seen involving an alien with a cranky voice who loved sweets.

We collectively listened to the track a few times, then it happened. Sam started chanting, the lyrics were written, he chanted some more, we recorded him chanting, fun ensued, track complete. Elliot (aged 8) wasn't so sure. The pressure of recording was too much, the sense of self which is gathered by that age weighed too heavy and he freaked out. There's a fine line (2 years) between abandonment and ... not-abandonment. Anyway, Layla and I weighed in for backing vocals (with much abandonment because it was such a fun track) and it was done.

Against my religion I did a bit of cutting and shifting post recording to line all the vocals up, but we all had a gas, and as Dan says, we've collectively started a new genre. But what's it called?

College

Spielberg at college. Greg's track was also a lot of fun. All the organ, swish and pizzazz of a lot of music I feel naturally inclined to, namely Georgie Fame. Slightly strapped for time due to [yawn] work, I had to create something I was happy with, that I thought would do Greg's track justice (I was late to start due to my own stupidity of recording over the wrong track to start with), so I needed to hook onto a formula to guide the writing process.

Moody's Mood For Love. There I go ... name checking a Fame track. I can't forget Greg telling me that Georgie wrote the lyrics for Moody's Mood For Love by listening to the sax line, and then writing words to fit. So I listened to Greg's track, sketched out dashes on a piece of paper to represent the syllables ... and then filled in the blanks. SKAT.

I'm sure I could have done something more meaningful but I really enjoyed trying a new technique for lyric writing and my sincere apologies for the recording quality. I wanted to go with the flow and the lyrics came pretty fast, and I didn't want to hold back the performance. The compression and EQ for the vox was all done hardware side on the Focusrite strip so not much room for fine tuning in post.