Supporting Lemar, Dropboxing drums and new toys

News from last week...

Another jam-packed week of recording sailed by, with work on Alun Leppitt's EP well underway now. The first working mixes came home on Thursday and they were sounding sweet! Our good friend Andy Rowley's spending his evenings in Nashville, TN recording the drums from our pre-production templates. He dropboxes the files to us at bedtime and we download them around 4 hours later over breakfast, get to the studio and get to work with them.

It's a marvellously cool and efficient way to work, and I think more creative. Andy, by virtue of being 5,000 miles away, isn't getting the traditional micro-managed producer treatment with his parts, and we get to focus on the bits we actually play rather than doing days of tracking other people first. Rockin'.



Also, we just got back from the Old Firestation in Bournemouth where Byron supported the first night of Lemar's new tour! Sanj and I backed him up, playing some acoustic arrangements of two brand new and two older tunes, and the crowd seemed to be lovin it! Byron's also with Lemar for two more dates this coming week, so that's a really good opportunity for him.

Rachel Kerr was also at the show supporting and it was great meeting her backstage and hearing her incredible voice live. She's just won a MOBO this year so definitely one to watch out for in 2013.

Looking ahead to this week, we've got more work coming up on Alun's EP and we welcome back Enrico who's down today to finish up his single which should be dropping in the new year.

Busy times!

Also, Santa came early this year and dropped off one of these...

It's the Blue Sky from Strymon and I have to say I'm loving it big time! It's complex enough to be able to achieve lots of very usable verb settings, but it's also got some epic creative effects. I've been using it on shimmer mode for one of Alun's tunes which results in beautiful octave-shifted layers above the original tone that create a wonderful, hazy jetstream of sound. Also, been running it in stereo through my Fender vintage and a Laney solid state and I almost think it's cooler having different amps for each side as it just enhances the stereo-ness. Would definitely recommend it!

Chris

 

Posted with Blogsy

What's going on?

Well it's time for a little update.

First up, did anyone miss that we did this...

Everyone still on board?!

OK, and more recently, since mid-August we've been working hard on new singles for Byron Gold and Enrico Delves, as well as recording new tunes for Aimée and Ebonie G. Tommy's album has been moving forward as well - we've been finishing up mixes as well as recording some of the remaining collabs, which are well exciting.

Phew! Essentially everyone we work with has been through the doors in the last month and this has certainly been one of the most busy and productive times yet for us.

Here's me looking stressed and frantically busy.

And Looking ahead, we've got worship projects coming up with Alun Leppitt and NauJavan in Oct/Nov and more new writing to get done as well.

Sweet times!

Chris

 

Posted with Blogsy

Updating you all

So, dear reader(s), time for a little update. As I sit writing this, Enrico and Byron are currently improvising ideas for and wrangling over an ad lib bridge line for Enrico's forthcoming single, with Sanj patiently wading through the ideas to capture the best moments. It's great to see too great singers pushing each other to be better. Occasionally, I volunteer a "yeah" or a "no", but times like this, you mostly just get out of the way and let the magic happen around you. That is of course, providing they don't eat each other, or something...

Last week, we spent the whole week recording with Aimée Mutambo, and two great songs are now well under way with her. The vibe is poppy but with a strong live undercurrent so there's plenty of real stuff going on whilst trying to keep things sounding tight for radio. We've been enjoying layering up acoustic kit with programmed stuff and getting some excellent blends. More work to commence hopefully week after next and then you may well find sneak previews over on her blog.

Also making a welcome return to Purple Squares on Friday is Ebonie G, word! Can't wait to write some more awesome tunes with her, gonna be great!

Til next time...

Posted with Blogsy

What's going on?

Time for a mini update folks. Plenty to write home about from Hi-Sonorous HQ. First up, some of you may remember a few weeks back we linked you to this video. Well the man behind it all, our good friend and fellow producer Mr Gregory Felton organised a hip-hop orchestra show featuring Tommy Eye yesterday in Southampton. Which basically was amazing. [I wanna say it rocked, but that would be imprecise stylistically. Sadly there's no urban equivalent I can think of right now. At least not positive equivalents... Hm, significant?]

Tommy Eye made his best effort at getting the west quay shopping zombies to remember that life exists beyond retail, and a good few hundred were reminded and all the more healthier for it. Big up to G Funk for an amazing job...too cool.

Back in the studio, we've been writing a good deal of worship stuff for a future hip-hop project (Yes, I did just use the words worship and hip-hop in the same sentence) which is turning out to be a huge challenge, but one we are totally pumped about. We're also writing for this guy, and this guy, and this guy. (ok that last one is...let's say, aspirational.)

Sanj has been on particularly fine form on the beats and I've been jangling the guitar strings in between hourly sittings of this...

Sorry, that had to go on the page, I love it so much.

I'm generally finding the ebb and flow to be a little unorthodox. Staying creative is a discipline in itself. One it takes to time to learn. I'm realising more and more that you don't always just instinctively do great things. More often than not, you work for them. I sat in my snug (my house is too small for a lounge) on Friday for an hour and a half and produced two lines of lyrics.

So working is sitting and thinking. And it's an incredibly intense process sometimes. Always, always, always, lyrics come last after chords and melody. I wish it were the other way round, but the others are a piece of cake to me and words are nearly always a slog to the finish. I can sit in complete silence for a while, perhaps 10-15 minutes and just churn rhymes and ideas, ways of sayings things over and over, and get increasingly more impatient with myself. Sometimes the wall comes down before I pull myself out, and then the confidence is too low to carry on. But if not, eventually I just start to strum the chords and sing all vowels on the tune I have. And it's in this kind of spontaneous speaking tongues moment where I might randomly pull out a word or a phrase or occasionally even a whole line and it just fits and feels good, and right. Sometimes it's very closely related to the ideas that I've just been chewing on, and sometimes it's totally different. But what does seem consistent is the feeling that it's a process I have little control over, which is both exhilarating when I hit on things I think are good, but frustratingwhen I can't just get something out. It certainly increases my envy of artists like Tommy, when they freestyle all these complex rhymes and meaning and humour just totally off-the-cuff...

Anyway I said this would be mini. And now it's not.

Chris

Ps. Also shout out to the tireless independent music promoter Nick Tann who played us on his podcast show "Is this Thing On?" this week.