In the summer of 2006 I had one of those magical holidays back in Scotland that I'll remember forever.
I managed to do so many things. Camping in the Highlands (the first time I'd camped since 1978!).
The world cup was on, so I was able to watch some of that in the pub and Travel Inn.
I was down my favourite pub, Robertsons in Rose Street in Edinburgh.
And I got to record some music with my old friends.
This was in Ian's house in Leith. He's sold his one now and is moving to a new flat next month.
I always thought I was so lucky to have friends who are such great musicians. For many years they have been able to amplify whatever microscopic musical talent I have and have been able to make sense of whatever odd, half-formed musical idea I happen to have in my head.
We managed two different sessions this holiday. Apart from the picture at the very top of this post, all these still pictures were taken at a session where we recorded a song I'm going to call "That's Why I Hate the Blues". I had the idea for the lyric around 20 years ago, in 1986.
At that time my Friend Ritchie put me up temporarily in his flat in York Place in Edinburgh, where he was staying at that time. It was my first real experience of staying in that exciting city across the water from Fife. The city I used to see every night from my bedroom in Fife. It's twinkly lights always seemed to alluring when I closed by bedroom curtains at night.
Ritchie was a huge blues fan, he later played harmonica with a number of them. The bar over the road at the top of Broughton Street, that later became "The Basement" at that time had just opened as "The Blues Basement" and live blues bands used to play there. We also used to go and see blues bands at those other long defunct Edinburgh venues, the Preservation Hall and the Jailhouse.
Never having been a huge blues fan (it all seemed to formulaic to me), but finding Ritchie's enthusiasm difficult to fight against, I began to imagine a song about a guy getting the blues about the blues. You know, having been forced to listen to so much blues music, he got the blues about the blues, real bad.
So the first session was an attempt to record the music for this song I had formulated in my head 20 years previously.
The other song that we did at the second session was called " I wish I could", which was a shorter punkier song. Darren couldn't make it to the second session, which is a shame as I love his bas playing. He always manages to play just the right thing, not too much, not to little, he has a great bass sound too.
However, Andy was on hand to do the bass too - he had a nice punky style on this song.
These video clips are great fun, they are all from the second session. We recorded "I Wish I Could" at this second session as well as changing some of "That's Why I Hate the Blues".
I wish we had the technology years ago. It would have been nice to have video of us recording our early material. I think it's really interesting to see us playing some of the material that ended up in the songs. Some of these clips are us just trying out bits and pieces for sound levels or just messing about. Other clips are first takes of pieces that didn't end up in the songs. Other clips are the actual takes that we used in the songs. The above clip is Ian trying out an idea that didn't get used for "That's Why I Hate The Blues".
This is Andy trying out a solo for "That's Why I Hate The Blues". Ian is doing his recording engineer bit here as usual. Andy is playing his beloved Gibson SG here, I think he was had it for about 25 years. You can see too in the "Tom's New Shoes" video that's in an earlier blog post here and also on my YouTube page.
This is Andy's main guitar solo for "I Wish I Could". Funny, it shows the benefit of little video clips of the recording, I had forgotten he was playing Ian's Telecaster here. This take is in the finished song.
This is Andy, on his SG again, doing a nice light little solo over my acoustic guitar at the end of "I Wish I Could". This take is in the finished song too.
This is my first attempt at the acoustic guitar for the end of "I Wish I Could". Bloody hopeless actually, the timing is very wayward and I forgot what I was doing half way through. Ian's comment that "I think the other one was a lot better" is curious, as I don't remember doing one before that.
This take is the one that we used in the final song. Only slightly better really, my timing is still pretty out. Ian cheered me up about it at the time though, by calling it "Syd Barrettesque"! It does sound a lot better on the mixed version with Andy's guitar on the top.
I just need to add vocals to these songs now and they will be finished. Hope I can get round it it one day soon. It's a good thing that there are no video clips of my plastic bucket percussion on "That's Why I Hate the Blues"!
I always thought I was so lucky to have friends who are such great musicians. For many years they have been able to amplify whatever microscopic musical talent I have and have been able to make sense of whatever odd, half-formed musical idea I happen to have in my head.
We managed two different sessions this holiday. Apart from the picture at the very top of this post, all these still pictures were taken at a session where we recorded a song I'm going to call "That's Why I Hate the Blues". I had the idea for the lyric around 20 years ago, in 1986.
At that time my Friend Ritchie put me up temporarily in his flat in York Place in Edinburgh, where he was staying at that time. It was my first real experience of staying in that exciting city across the water from Fife. The city I used to see every night from my bedroom in Fife. It's twinkly lights always seemed to alluring when I closed by bedroom curtains at night.
Ritchie was a huge blues fan, he later played harmonica with a number of them. The bar over the road at the top of Broughton Street, that later became "The Basement" at that time had just opened as "The Blues Basement" and live blues bands used to play there. We also used to go and see blues bands at those other long defunct Edinburgh venues, the Preservation Hall and the Jailhouse.
Never having been a huge blues fan (it all seemed to formulaic to me), but finding Ritchie's enthusiasm difficult to fight against, I began to imagine a song about a guy getting the blues about the blues. You know, having been forced to listen to so much blues music, he got the blues about the blues, real bad.
So the first session was an attempt to record the music for this song I had formulated in my head 20 years previously.
The other song that we did at the second session was called " I wish I could", which was a shorter punkier song. Darren couldn't make it to the second session, which is a shame as I love his bas playing. He always manages to play just the right thing, not too much, not to little, he has a great bass sound too.
However, Andy was on hand to do the bass too - he had a nice punky style on this song.
These video clips are great fun, they are all from the second session. We recorded "I Wish I Could" at this second session as well as changing some of "That's Why I Hate the Blues".
I wish we had the technology years ago. It would have been nice to have video of us recording our early material. I think it's really interesting to see us playing some of the material that ended up in the songs. Some of these clips are us just trying out bits and pieces for sound levels or just messing about. Other clips are first takes of pieces that didn't end up in the songs. Other clips are the actual takes that we used in the songs. The above clip is Ian trying out an idea that didn't get used for "That's Why I Hate The Blues".
This is Andy trying out a solo for "That's Why I Hate The Blues". Ian is doing his recording engineer bit here as usual. Andy is playing his beloved Gibson SG here, I think he was had it for about 25 years. You can see too in the "Tom's New Shoes" video that's in an earlier blog post here and also on my YouTube page.
This is Andy's main guitar solo for "I Wish I Could". Funny, it shows the benefit of little video clips of the recording, I had forgotten he was playing Ian's Telecaster here. This take is in the finished song.
This is Andy, on his SG again, doing a nice light little solo over my acoustic guitar at the end of "I Wish I Could". This take is in the finished song too.
This is my first attempt at the acoustic guitar for the end of "I Wish I Could". Bloody hopeless actually, the timing is very wayward and I forgot what I was doing half way through. Ian's comment that "I think the other one was a lot better" is curious, as I don't remember doing one before that.
This take is the one that we used in the final song. Only slightly better really, my timing is still pretty out. Ian cheered me up about it at the time though, by calling it "Syd Barrettesque"! It does sound a lot better on the mixed version with Andy's guitar on the top.
I just need to add vocals to these songs now and they will be finished. Hope I can get round it it one day soon. It's a good thing that there are no video clips of my plastic bucket percussion on "That's Why I Hate the Blues"!
No comments:
Post a Comment