Uh Oh! - Tales from Shed Studios Part 1

I'd love all regular blog readers and any newbies to go check out my cynical attempt to write a hit pop song over at myspace:

www.myspace.com/mynameisalgo

It's all about fear of commitment, though that;'s really just an excuse. I'm dedicating it to my brother, Jovis who is moving in with his missus (ooer..) and will shortly be getting questions from mates like "when are you two getting engaged" "whens the big day" "is she pregnant or are you infertile", y'know - the usual.

Sorry bro.

The record was produced by David Bland of Boy Who, and On A Hill Studios working at Shed Studios in Chelmsford (which is based at a secret location never to be divulged). It is the only time it'll be recorded in this arrangement - it'll be produced differently at a later date in a style more conducive to me actually liking it.

Anyway, hope you like it. The recording sequence was interesting and I'd thought I'd share it with some of you who may not have seen many documentaires or simply never wondered how these things are done.

First I did a guide track - this is the most boring part of the process and basically means playing the main chords (pretty simple ones too) over and over again. If I recall we did this until we had four good takes to make an enormous guitar sound. This basically is done so the tiny differences between the takes fills out the gaps and makes the whole thing a bit bigger.

(In the form of two takes for each left and right speaker - one high in treble, and one more middly)

Then overdubs were done of the quieter guitar licks you can hear in the background, while it sounds like a long part over the whole chord progression it was actually recorded in three separate tracks to give a bit more control and to harmonise as well.

After that went through I went home and we got in Jim out of Boy Who (one of the bands I'm in) to play the drums. He did so. Very loudly. For hours. It's a really great performance from him though, I'm sure you'll agree.

And then I came back into the Studio on Saturday last to polish off the work, I laid down the bass line (sans drums, bizarrely, due to processor overload) and then moved onto the vocals.

I have a little gift for harmonies and double tracking, so we double tracked the main melody and then overdubbed all the harmony parts in one take each. In fact, the double tracking on the main melody is not used, we went with reverb instead (and what reverb it is).

The guitar solo after the first chorus was invented on the spot and played by me. Yes. Me. I was as surprised as anyone else.

The final addition was a little extra guitar part over the final chorus (you may not notice it first time, but its there) just to add an extra dimension to the "big finish"

Once all tracks were done it was mixed in situ and then mastered, again by David.
What a trooper he is.

I may go back and redo the very last chorus since my voice gets a little "jazzy" but I may not bother.

I hope you enjoy the song anyway.

Comments below as usual.

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