Final two days of my stint

Hey all!

Friday 22 Jan '10

On Friday I got in a little late after getting a long overdue hair chop. Summer can be quite harsh on long haired peeps and it's good to feel the wind blowing against my neck again! These past few days I've been more of an observer as my parts are officially done so been listening to Scal sing the songs. Big ups to S&M for managing to sort out the sound card issues so swiftly! It was really unfortunate that a day was lost as technical problems really can occur at any time, especially at a studio as they always have complicated setups that I don't fully understand! But Fuzzy and the guys managed to organise a soundcard within one day so we were back on track, full steam ahead! Scal sang on "Caroline" first, one of the more ballady songs on the album. And a really good performance he put in! The lyrics ring out in such a personal way that it's hard to ignore and everyone will hopefully be able to relate to this with their own personal Caroline character. It also features probably my favourite bass line on the album, the one I had the most fun writing as there's a lot of space for me to play the melodic part of the instruments in the song, something I sought inspiration from Paul McCartney's playing with the Beatles for.

Scal also sang on "By Hook or by crook" which is one of my faves on the album. Such a cool vibe of a song and it's packed with hooks and again cool lyrics. That one didn't take too much time to track vocally so by the end it was six vocals down, six to go!

Gordon and Matt also did some mixing on a couple of songs. They've taken the approach of mixing as we go so it was mostly down to some tweaks, making sure all the parts were at fairly consistent volume, EQ'ing (equalising) some of the instruments that sounded a little too bassy or trebly, etc. That way Scal only has to sing two songs a day which helps save his voice to give his best performances.

We also got to spend time with Miles Keylock, a legendary journalist in the South African music scene just chatting about the upcoming album so there should be a couple of articles on us in the press within a couple of months.

Saturday 23 January '10

On Saturday there were a couple of hungover Plastics after my birthday vibe the previous night. But this day was all about recording strings for "Jukebox." Juki took an active role in directing them as he had composed the arrangements. I scored it but we found out there were a few issues, me being a relative newbie at it, so spent a few minutes trying to resolve those. Was beautiful listening and watching the violins, viola and cello playing in harmony on the song and it adds something different to the song which is at times thickly layered and dense sounding. Many thanks to Sarah-Jane, Nadine, Azra and Leana for agreeing to play on our album. You girls rock!

That night we played another Zula show and it was rocking! We were joined by McGuyver Knife, the 357's and the Curious Incident, bands with a lot of potential and definitely worth checking out. Gordon also played a dj set as well, spinning some really cool 80's dance music which helped set the mood between bands.

So my time in studio comes to an end. I'm gonna write a wrap-up shortly just about my thoughts about the album, Sound and Motion studios as well as working with G-Raph so check it out laters!

Till next time...
Karl