During this lockdown, many musical activities have stopped.  Gigging, touring, theatre, busking, any form of public performance is no-go.  

But what I have noticed is that people are creating more than usual and I am working with people remotely more than I ever was.  As well as the UK, I work with people from all over the world.  At the time of writing I am in the process of working with artists from Australia, USA and Eire.

If you’ve never had a song produced remotely before, here is a short guide from me.

GEAR (If you have the gear already, skip this section!)

Assuming that you already have a computer to record on, you will need four essential things: a microphone, an audio interface, a DAW and some headphones – I’ll explain each.

You can buy excellent microphones at increasingly reasonable prices these days.  For a microphone, I would recommend either the British made Aston Origin (about £190) or the Rode NT1a (about £160).  Both are highly rated in the music community and higher quality that their prices would indicate.

An audio interface is the connection between your microphone and the computer that you record on.  It turns the analog signal of your microphone into a digital one that your computer can understand.  It will also be where you connect your headphones.  Many people use the Focusrite Scarlett Solo, which is about £100.

A DAW is the program or app that you use to record the audio.  If you have an Apple computer, laptop or iPad, then I would highly recommend Garageband, which you can get for free on Apple products.  As well as being a great program or recording, Garageband is also a lot of fun and create for fleshing out demos. If your computer is PC then there is a DAW called Audacity, which is free and perfectly good for recording.

Finally, you’ll need headphones to track your vocals and play the sound back.  Audio Technica’s ATH series start at about £40 for the ATH-M20x and go up in price and quality from there.

In short, you could get set up for recording for about £300.

COMMUNICATION

I can’t express enough how much good communication matters when recording remotely.   Ensure that you have regular access to a video calling app, such as Skype or Zoom.

If we can’t be in the same room together while working on the song, then video calling is the next best thing.  Things can be sorted in a couple of minutes over a call, that may take much longer over email.

Having said that, please ensure that you have regular access to email, as that will be how I give you regular updates and you can send any short notes.

COLLABORATION

The way I work with people remotely usually goes something like this.

The artist gets in touch with me with a rough demo of the song they want to record.  From there, we will usually have a chat so I can find out more about what they want from the song and get a full idea of where to go with it.  (I ask for a 50% payment at this point.)

If it’s the first time I’ve worked with you, I may well create a very rough “mock up” of the song, using drum loops and guitars plugged directly in.  Don’t be alarmed by the lofi quality of this, it will just be to ensure that the tempo, feel and chords are all in the correct place.  If so, I will get started on the proper track.

I’ll send a first version to you when it’s ready – usually within a week.  Please listen closely and make a note of any changes.  It would be really useful for me if you could list all, the changes in one email so I can refer back.  We could also video call if there’s anything that you can’t put across in writing.  I may also ask for a guide vocal at the point.

This bit is important:  If you don’t like what I’ve done, just say.  I don’t mind; I’m a professional!  We’ll have a chat about what went wrong and I’ll start afresh.  Communication is always the key.

When you are completely happy with the track, it’s over to you to do the vocal.  We will probably chat about the best way for you to deliver the vocal and I may come up with some backing vocal ideas.  (At this point, feel free to laugh at my awful singing voice, but I will charge you an extra 20%…)

Feed the WAV into your DAW and record your lead vocal, preferably a number of times so that I have a few takes to work with.

If possible, try and record in a room free of reverberations (I know one artist that records her vocals with her bedroom duvet over her head – hey, it works).  There are other things that can ruin a vocal, such as popping, foot noise and getting too close to the mic.  I’ll let this article ably explain that.

If you’ve done a perfect vocal take with audio issues, there is a change that I may be able to rescue it with some of my magic boxes, but a clean recording is always preferred!

Export all the vocals, each as a separate file, all identical in length and clean (so no reverb, compression).  Send them to me by Dropbox or WeTransfer.

From there, I will mix the track and chat to you about mastering options.  When you’re completely happy – and only when you’re completely happy – we’re good to go!

CONCLUSION

I’ve covered a lot of ground in this blogs excuse the length.  The truth is that working remotely can be a really lovely and easy process as long as the communication is good.  

A lot of the more introverted singers like being able to record on their own, trying out new ideas or approaches on their own time with no one around.

And you can have a single or an EP or even an album done without even having to leave your house!  

God bless the internet.

Last week saw the release of Run With it, from Shropshire singer/songwriter Joe Seager.

I had previously worked with Joe on his beautiful second album, Atlas, and he started writing material for his third album almost immediately. In fact, I ended up working on over 20 songs for his third album, which were cut down to the 10 he’ll be releasing later this year.

Joe created a demo for this song on Logic, using piano and Logic’s Drummer, before sending the track over to me. Here’s a clip of the original demo, followed by some of the elements I added.

The first thing I always do is to go through the vocal tracks that Joe has supplied, pick the best and process them – in this case, I used a Study A800 tape emulation, a Neve 1073, a 1176 limiter, the Soundtoys Decapitator for warmth and liberal delay and reverb. I also have an EQ setting especially for Joe’s uniquely whistle “s” sounds!

Next up was a main guitar part which was the first thing I played on my brand new Fender Roadworn Telecaster. Yum. I often play live drums but for this song I created a drum part from BFD3 and Native Instruments Abbey Road Studio Drums, plus some live handclaps. The bass part that comes in may well have been influenced by Talking Heads’ Once In A Lifetime…

To give the track more character, I added some quirky muted guitars and a weird fuzz bass lick to divide the sections.

The middle 8 was slightly tricky as it felt it ended a change and the words/chords didn’t seem to fit the normal 4/4 feel of the rest of the song, so I changed the musical palette completely. As well as electronic drums and a heavily treated vocal, I added a looped ambient guitar that builds in the section beforehand, and some helicopter guitars.

From there, Joe added some extra vocals, including a ton of backing vocals, a quick mix (as it was largely already mixed on the go) and it was ready.

I love Joe’s songs and I have to say that his upcoming album is truly brilliant – keep an eye out for the album, and also for the regular live shows and tutorials he does on Youtube.

Hello! Hope you’re all well. Many people have asked me if I have enough work on whilst we’re all self-isolating, and the answer, so far, is yes.

I’m lucky in that my business is made up of a few diverse elements, most of which don’t involve face-to-face work. So, although I have have to cancel a number of recording sessions here, I still have remote production/mixing sessions and am working with three artists in the UK, one in Ireland, one in Indonesia and one in Australia. I’m so thankful that we live in a world where we can do remote working like this.

I have a couple of short soundtrack jobs on the go and have a database of voiceover artists who are being hired regularly. I have a database of sound effects which brings in the occasional quid. And I have some streaming royalties from Spotify, Apple Music etc.

So, for the time being I am good, which I am exceptionally glad about, as I’m aware that a lot of musicians that I work with (live musicians, sound engineers, rehearsal rooms, roadies etc) have had their livelihoods taken away. I truly hope that everyone can hang in there.

One of the artists who makes his living from live music is Joe Seager, who writes some incredible and unique songs. I recently produced his forthcoming album and the first single will be out this Friday, along with a live stream. It’s called Run With It and I’ll be doing a “The Making Of” blog soon.

Over the last few months I’ve been muttering on about music libraries in my blogs. I absolutely love doing library music and I will certainly do a blog about this soon.

My daughter and I took part in Spitfire Audio’s Pianobook day. Renowned composer Christian Henson put out a short piece of music and encouraged people to add their own parts. I added some ambient guitar (obviously) and my daughter Jen added bass guitar – I was delighted that her bass part featured prominently, along with some choice shots of her looking suitably moody!

The video is below. It’s an impressive introduction from Christian Henson, but you can skip to 9:50 for the music or to 10:28 for Jen’s cameo…

I’m taking the opportunity to have a restructuring of the studio. I want fewer leads (anyone that has worked here knows how clumsy I am with leads), better space, less clutter, sturdier hardware and a better creative space for artists who come here and for me. I’m going to get some serious feng shui action.

Someone said that if anyone can happily exist in self-isolation, it’s me – and as a fully signed up introvert, that is definitely true! Having said that, I do miss my regular walks in the Peak District and I’ve really started to value the freedom that we normally take for granted.

Although this is a testing time for most people financially, mentally and physically, there are small positives to be had. The biggest is that nature seems to be benefitting. I’m seeing loads of birds outside my window, the air feels cleaner, the park opposite me hasn’t been mown and is starting to look pleasingly meadow-like. If we can take any positives from this situation, giving the environment some breathing space is surely the most important one.

What strange times these are. I just wanted to assure anyone that I work with that I’m still in the studio daily, and will notify if anything changes.

This is where I’m at:

Sessions in the Studio
Update: I’ve obviously had to cancel/postpone all studio sessions here for now.

Remote Sessions
From my point of view, these can continue as normal, so I’m happy to work on/mix your tracks, as long as you can record your vocals at home.

Media Composition, SFX and Voiceovers
This is also going ahead as normal. A good portion of my voiceover artists have emailed to say that they’re available, so all fine here.

Having said this, a lot of musicians that I know rely on live gigs to earn their income, and it looks like most gigs will be cancelled for the foreseeable future. The only thing I can recommend is to buy music from your local artists, buy merchandise and support them in any way you can. It would be a poorer world without them.

Upsides
Surely all this staying at home will be a great time for creativity.  With people potentially stuck in their homes, surely there’s only so much Netflix they can watch, only so much tidying they can do, only so much sex they can have.  

What a great time to write brilliant music and be creative!

For my part, I will be making a lot of library music (something I’ve been doing a lot of these days and will blog about soon) and also recording a few bits and bobs of my own. Watch this space!

This is the first in a new series of blogs that I’m going to do where I talk about specific songs that I produced and how they were recorded.  Each song has a different story, each artist a different working method, so I thought it would be interesting to open up the process.

The first song I’m going to look at is Whiskey Drinkin’ Woman by Kezia Gill.  Any regular readers of my blogs will have heard her mentioned before; I’ve been working with Kezia for some time now and it’s been amazing to see her talent and hard work start to pay off with awards, festival slots and this track, which was playlist by Radio 2.

Kezia came up with the chorus on a car journey and sang it to me, almost as a joke, during the sessions for her last EP.  However, me being me, I take nothing as a joke, and suggested she recorded it, a capella, there and then.  The resulting 39-second clip was tagged onto the end of her Dead Ends and Detours EP.

After this, Kezia wrote the rest of the song and started playing it live with her band.  It went from a bluesy 6/8 to a stompy 4/4 and she came to me to get it recorded towards the end of 2019.

I started with a kick drum, which was actually a BFD3 sample, but played in real time and highly compressed.  I added a tambourine, and that was really all that was needed for the drum part.  From there, Kezia put down an acoustic guitar part that I distorted for a filthy sound (you can hear it on the chorus).  We recorded handclaps, shakers and backing vocals together and when she’d left I put down bass and some crazy guitar parts.

At the next session, Kezia recorded the vocals into a Sontronics Aria microphone (two takes was all it took) and I processed it with liberal amounts of Soundtoys Decapitator, a 1176 compressor and Roland Space Echo.  I also have a special EQ setting purely for Kezia’s voice, that smoothes out some of the wilder frequencies of this whiskey drinkin’ woman!

It was always the plan to bring Sarah Jory onto the song; Kezia showed me some videos of this incredible slide guitarist that blew my mind.  She recorded her guitar from home – four separate slide parts – and we chose the best for the song, including the swampy solo.  It made all the difference.

We convened for a final session to mix the track with Kezia’s husband Lloyd (who is always useful as a fresh pair of ears/perspective at the end of a project) and then handed it over Jack at Jack in the Box Studios for mastering.

Released at the end of January, it debuted on Bob Harris’s Radio 2 show, made the playlist and was played numerous times over February.  Just another step upwards for this superb singer/songwriter and it’s my pleasure to be part of it.

NB: My favourite thing that I’ve done on any track, ever, is the “diving aeroplane” guitar I played in the background between 2:50 and 2:54.  Makes me very very happy every time I hear it.

Tomorrow sees the release of the new album by Coldplay.  They’re a band that I’ve always been fascinated by, as I love a lot of their stuff.   They’re a lot more experimental than people give them credit for and one of their new tracks, Arabesque, is a great example.

A five-and-a-half minute ramble on one chords, with a verse in French and a two-minute freak out saxophone solo in the middle, this is a million miles from the band that many people think of, with the stately and mournful ballads such as The Scientist and Trouble.

As with most people my age, I got into them through the song Yellow in 2000.  In a musical landscape dominated by A1 and Westlife, it was a bolt of beauty, a seemingly effortless melody. 

Their debut album, Parachutes, was beautiful.  Full of late-night, acoustic laments about lost love, self-doubt and the stars.  Easy listening for indie kids.  But they seemed too fragile to last and I honestly thought they’d be a flash in the pan.

Yet, when they resurfaced in 2002, they had transformed, visually and sonically, into an arena act.  It felt very sudden and it cannot be underestimated how omnipresent that band was for the next 18 months.  I didn’t like A Rush of Blood To The Head.  I found it contrived, like they were writing songs to order and all the charm of the debut was lost.  

(I was also dismayed that The Scientist had almost exactly the same melody and chords as a piece of music that I was working on.   But that’s another story, and obviously there’s no way they could have heard my piece as it was always a work in progress on a little cassette in my bedsit.  Anyway, that’s another story.)

Their next album, X&Y, sounded like a giant, immaculate spaceship.

However, their fourth album, Viva La Vida, is by far their best, as far as I’m concerned.  Experimental, dark, jubilant and atmospheric, it is a joy to listen to from start to finish and one of my favourite albums ever.

Since then, they’ve continued to evolve and it’s amazing to think that the quiet, introverted folky band at the start of the century is the same one that doesn’t the loud, sparkling stadium shows full of poppy hits and fireworks.

It’s been quite a transformation and I’m quite excited to see where they go next.

Oh, one final thing; watch this – it’s brilliant.