Day 5

The fifth and final day in the church, holds many positives and negatives. The positives are mainly: we can get back into a normal sleeping pattern and we won’t be cold. The negatives are: Not recording music everyday, not being in the countryside everyday, not eating so well, not seeing the stars so clearly every night. A major negative is packing everything up and leaving, going back to reality.

Recording strings last night

We started the day at a slower pace than previous days. Yesterday was long and we were all in a bleary eyed state by the end of it so this morning heralded a difficult start. I drove to meet the Chris’ at Chris B’s house. We listened to the tracks and wrote a surprisingly short list of things that still needed doing. With this in mind we set off down the horizontal car park that is the M5.

Upon arriving we found our fiend Joe had beaten us here and that the builders were in full flow, which did not bode well. However inside the church it was quiet.

As Jake and Jordan would not be joining us until later I took their places. I played the swelled bass in ‘Follow Me Around’, so when you listen to it, take note that the shredding on the bass guitar is me, yeah!? When you actually listen to it, you will see the sarcasm in that statement.

Jake and I pricked around with his kick drum yesterday to get a more throaty foreboding sound out of it. It ended up with all the padding been taken out and loosening the skin an extreme amount. A strange discovery with it is that when you put a glove over a mallet it sounds amazing on it, so today I recorded it alongside Jakes floor tom part.

Chris B wasn’t content with the keyboard swell he’s added in ‘Plinky Plonk’ so we changed this into a vocal loop swell, looping a range of notes I was singing into 3 DL4’s and reversing, speeding them up and slowing them down.

We were quite taken by its sound and conjured up a similar effect in the first chorus of ‘Untitled’.

Again, after listening back this morning Chris B wanted another attempt at the guitar in the chorus of ‘Untitled’ and ‘Our Heavy Hands’. A few runs at ‘Untitled’ didn’t take long and we had a good take. ‘Our Heavy Hands’ didn’t take long either; this brought all the guitar parts to a triumphant end.  

And so to lunch. Lunch break began with a sing song around the piano of ‘Pyramid Song’ by Radiohead with Chris D on the piano and by the time we sat down to lunch we had descended into roundtable versions of ‘Shadys Back’ by Eminem and ‘Re-arrange’ by Limp Bizkit. We were full of praise for the pea and ham soup my auntie had provided. I can’t say thank you enough to my auntie and uncle for their hospitality.

Back to work. This began with jam between Chris D, Chris B and myself. In the process of this I snapped one of Jakes mallets in half, sorry Jake I’ll buy you another set.

By now Amber had turned up and it was down to violins, beginning with ‘Our Heavy Hands’. Problems arose with harmonies on the chorus but this was soon overcome. ‘Little Spoken Wars’ next. This went together almost seamlessly, harmonies and all.

A small part in the chorus of ‘Untitled’ was decided upon and after a tinkle on the keyboard to decide its course. One take and then it was modified because Chris had changed his part.

There’s a small part in ‘Little Spoken Wars’ in the step ups that was done in a few takes.

Violins done. Smashing.

Excitement rose, just a few piano parts to do and that’s it! Over to my aunties house again.

We set up and were offered a cuppa to get us through. Amber had a stab at ‘Untitled’. This took many attempts, choosing when to dampen it and how to bring it up to the crescendo. This done, we now hit the final stretch.

‘Art is..’ next, a nice song to end on. 2 takes. Pow! Done. This lead to a celebratory glass of merlot and then off to pack up and leave.

All in all a successful and extremely enjoyable week that has come to up a huge sigh of relief. Thank you to all at St Nicolas’ church for letting us have the church for a week, it’s been perfect. Also a huge thank you to Steve & Jenny Tonry for keeping us warm, fed and watered, it’s really kept us going. We also thank, in infinite amounts, Chris Donald for working the hardest behind the desk, keeping us on track and sane but mainly for putting up with us. We eagerly await the vocal recording sessions.

All packed up

Live long and prosper.