Blog: Breaking The Rules

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On Monday night we had a recording session booked, in order to move even further forward with the recording of "Dinosaur Planet: THE ALBUM". As reported previously we'd learnt up a new batch of songs to start, but these plans were put aside when it turned out Tim wouldn't be able to make it. THORTS whizzed across the interweb and it was decided to convert the session into my FAVOURITE sort of session: one that was all about ME doing MY bits. HOORAH!

I thus arrived at Snug (via a slightly confusing ride where the taxi drive got LOST) to find both Rich AND Robbie ready to ROCK. We made pretty quick work of doing Acoustic Guitars on all the tracks requiring it, including a DELIGHTFUL moment when, just as I was thinking "Now, I'd like to double track the acoustics for this one" a voice came through from the control room saying "Shall we double track the acoustics for this one?" STUDIO SYNERGY.

Next we dove into ELECTRICAL GUITAR. This is always VERY VERY EXCITING for me as I don't spend much time ROCKING OUT and, as a special treat, they plugged in THE ROCK BOX for me. This, in laymans terms, makes everything ROCK. Via a BOX. It was TERRIBLY good fun, especially when i worked out an Actually Quite Good BIT for the end of We Are The Giant Robots which makes it even MORE, well, more LUSH than it was before. Which was a LOT.

Mr FA Machine then arrived, just in time for the BEST bit: VOCALS! I shocked and appalled the more strait-laced, convention-bound members of the TEAM with my first request: to SIT DOWN to record vocals. Everyone was AGHAST. "Do you know nothing of Vocal Technique?!?" asked Frankie, SURELY rhetorically. Against ALL protestations i INSISTED on sitting down to sing - when I stand up I tend to become convinced i am LIAM GALLAGHER or something and waft about bellowing, it's MUCH nicer to sit down and do it. "But you can't!" said the doubters. "Is that what they said to JIMI HENDRIX?" I asked. "Oh no Jimi, your guitar's too close to the amp, you can't make that horrid noise." "Are you comparing your decision to sit down to Jimi's Hendrix's redefinition of The Guitar?" I was asked. NO. THAT IS FOR HISTORY TO DECIDE.

ANYWAY We took about an hour to whip through my singing, developing a strategy where I gradually went through the song, stopping when I went wrong (doing much of the song LINE BY LINE, in the case of A Little Bit) until we'd got to the end... and then doing another take almost always in ONE GO. I believe the plan will be to COMP the best bits from both... tho I hope I don't have to be there to go through it all.

With that done it was BANJO TIME - I'd wanted to do some ukelele on My Grandad Is Nuts but as the change of plan came when I was already out and about I hadn't had the chance to bring it. This ended up being FORTUITOUS as I was able to TEXT Frankie from the train to ask him to bring the BANJO, and he did some GORGEOUS work on the song.

A CD was presented to us and all that was left to say our goodbyes and nip to the pub for last orders. A good night's work, and the PRODUCT of said work sounds GRATE!

posted 2/12/2009 by MJ Hibbett

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