Skye Ladder - 19th July 2012

Session times: 8pm-10:30pm

Janie and Paul Britton from Skye Ladder have been to Starring Studio many times before, but haven't been recently due to ill health.  This is the first time they've been since I started blogging.

Skye Ladder currently have 7 tracks recorded, but the vocals on 3 of the tracks weren't complete, so the task for tonight was to get one of them finished off.

As we hadn't met up for a while, we firstly had a chat about things they'd been doing since we last got together.  My wife and I have been out with Janie and Paul socially, so she came up to say hi and have a bit of a chin-wag.  They mentioned a 'secret diners' club in Rawtenstall where they had a fabulous Greek meal and also that they had booked a 3 week! summer holiday on the Isle of Skye. 

Just Before The Dawn

I normally record vocals with a Vocal Booth, which is OK but rather bulky. I can't see the singer to give directions, and they struggle to position the lyric sheet so they can see it.  Tonight we tried without the vocal booth.  Janie hadn't sung properly since she was last here, so it took a few warm up takes to get the vocal juices flowing.  She also spends most of the sessions giggling, and this one was no exception.

I usually record verses on a separate track to the choruses as songs generally need a slightly louder vocal for the chorus and I find it easier to set the level on each track and then leave it alone, rather than constantly altering it between verse and chorus.  The faders are motorised, so any level changes are recorded and played back as part of each track, but I find it easier just to record everything separately, set it once and then leave it along until mix time.

As well as the main vocal line Janie wanted to put on some backing vocals, so we ran through the song a couple of times just jamming and listening back to what she came up with.  One part on the chorus was particularly good, so we put that down, along with a chanting section under the instrumental break.  We decided it sounded like a saxophone solo so Janie played a melody part on the keyboard.  We really need a proper saxophone player to do this solo (and perhaps in another song too), so their task is to find someone.  When laying down the instrument tracks, we left room for a 3rd verse, but there weren't any lyrics, so Janie had just sung the 1st verse again.  Paul (who writes most of the lyrics) quickly had to write another verse, but he'd not done much else this evening so it was good to get him involved more.

We wrapped up the session at about 10:30, I mixed down and MP3'd the track and immediately emailed it to them so it was there when they got home.